Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins
• Much of the South celebrated Christmas in shorts last month; 2015 was the warmest year on record across the globe. While droughty California became ever more parched, Texas and Oklahoma were rocked by floods in their wettest May ever. In March, a nurse filed suit after being infected with Ebola when that virus jumped borders to the U.S. But readers of the growing genre of post-apocalyptic fiction were mentally prepared for all this. Last year was stuffed with literary disaster porn — like Station Eleven, Black Moon, and Gold Fame Citrus, Claire Watkins’ novel of a waterless American West. (Think Chinatown crossed with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.) The novel’s highest achievement may be the way it avoids the disaster-as-metaphor dodge …
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