Gold Fame Citrus

An extraordinary novel: relentlessly brilliant, utterly fearless, and often savagely funny. Watkins explores the maze of human thirst in all its forms. Here’s a love story that tracks the mutating hopes of two lost souls, in prose that is fever-bright and ferociously assured. More confirmation that Watkins is one of the brightest stars in our firmament - Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia and Vampires in the Lemon Grove

A tour-de-force first novel blisters with drought, myth, and originality … Praised for writing landscape, Watkins’ grasp of the body is just as rousing … Critics will reference Annie Proulx’s bite and Joan Didion’s hypnotic West, but Watkins is magnificently original - Kirkus

A gripping, audacious novel, plausibly imagined in all its remarkable details. With Claire Vaye Watkins there was never promise: it was achievement from the start, and this book repays her admirers in spades - Thomas McGuane

An unforgettable journey into a hauntingly imagined near-future. With her mind-bending vision, breathtaking storytelling and utterly original voice, Claire Vaye Watkins is one of my favorite writers - Ruth Ozeki, author of A Tale for the Time Being

Exhilarating, upsetting, delirious, bold, Gold Fame Citrus is a head rush of a novel and establishes Claire Vaye Watkins as an important new voice in American literature - Louise Erdrich, author of The Round House

American odyssey: Set in a drought-ravaged Southern California trolled by scavengers, Gold Fame Citrus burns with a dizzying, scorching genius - Vanity Fair

She’s sharp, at times merciless, and never above a little fun … The book is instantly entrancing, alluring as a mirage, and filled with peril, mystery, sandstorms, the occult, and a cast of nuanced characters - Los Angeles Magazine

Extraordinary power and beauty … A great pleasure of the book is Watkins’s fearlessness - New York Times