Elegy, Southwest

In the pensive latest from Watts (after The Inland Sea), an Australian woman named Eloise reflects on a road trip she took several years earlier with her American husband, Lewis. The melancholic second-person narration, addressed to Lewis, hints at some kind of loss, as Eloise recounts their journey across the American Southwest in 2018. Both are in their late 20s when they fly from New York City to Las Vegas, then visit the Hoover Dam as part of Eloise’s research for her doctoral thesis on climate change. In Phoenix, they celebrate Thanksgiving with Lewis’s family, whom they last visited for his mother’s funeral several months earlier. During a stop at Salvation Mountain, Calif., Eloise wonders if she’s pregnant, and the unsettled question adds tension to the narrative, as does her difficulty in connecting with Lewis, who deals with his grief by posting cheesy tourist photos on Instagram. A sense of foreboding grows as they drive into the Arizona mountains to meet with the widower of a land artist, whose work is supported by Lewis’s foundation. With each chapter, Eloise tries to wring deeper meaning from her memories of the trip: “A desert was a kind of objective correlative, an easy metaphor for the struggle of the soul.” Bursting with ideas and emotion, this is an accomplished tale of self-examination. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (Feb.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review misidentified the location where the character Eloise wonders if she is pregnant.