From the beloved, bestselling author of Milk Fed and Death Valley, a darkly comedic novel about existential anxiety, angels, and Ralphs supermarket; a picaresque of the psyche turned tale of supernatural eros.
EMPTY AND MARVELOUS
by Melissa Broder
Scribner, May 2027
(via The Gernert Company)
A writer in Los Angeles dares tell herself, “All is well.” With this newfound serenity, she allows herself to search online for Emil, the ex she barricaded from her life. She is shocked to discover that her intoxicating former flame—the inspiration for her cult classic erotic novel The Pegasus—has died by suicide. The writer must keep the revelation a secret from her husband, because her romance with Emil almost ended their once-open marriage. She can’t share it with her publisher, who expects her to go on book tour in a matter of days (to the delight of anxious teens with their own questions about life). And given the dangerous window that Emil’s death blows open on her own depression, the writer is determined not to face it herself.
There’s only one place she feels safe, connected to humanity and the spark of the divine: the Westwood branch of Ralphs supermarket. And when she begins receiving ethereal messages among the meatstuffs and produce, sublime sexts that seem to be coming from Emil in angel form, the writer discovers that she wants to live. But only inside the supermarket.
EMPTY AND MARVELOUS is a brazenly funny, cathartic, mystically lustful novel about a woman grappling with her existence. As she contends with grief, secret pleasure, and a crisis of faith, we wonder: Do cosmic threads exist between people? What is the responsibility of an artist to her fans? And can angels actually sext? A love letter to readers, the Muses, and the cereal aisle, EMPTY AND MARVELOUS is a marvel.
Melissa Broder is the author of the novels Death Valley, Milk Fed, and The Pisces, the essay collection So Sad Today, and five collections of poems, including Superdoom. Her books are translated in over a dozen languages. Broder has written for The New York Times, Harpers Bazaar, Elle, Bon Appetit, Bookforum, and New York Magazine. She lives in Los Angeles.
In DEATH VALLEY, an unnamed woman arrives in the California desert seeking respite. Holding herself at bay and temporarily deserting her own life seems preferable to being filled by the anticipatory grief chasing her — both for a father attempting to recover from a near-fatal accident and a husband whose chronic illness is worsening. What the desert provides, however, is not inner peace but a path: a receptionist-recommended nearby hike. On this desert trail, the narrator encounters a towering cactus whose size and shape mean it should not exist in California. Yet the cactus is there. It is wounded. Its gaping injury beckons like a familiar door. So, she enters it. What this woman finds inside this mystical succulent is enough to make her believe her load can lighten. When she returns to the trail, however, the cactus is gone and in seeking it, she suddenly is more lost than ever before. Whether she can survive, and be reunited with all she found to live for while inside her cactus is up to what she is able to seek within herself. With no phone battery left to tell her where she is, whether her father is still alive, or whether her husband will be waiting if she returns, what’s written on her heart alone is her only map out.
Embracing the sacred and the profane, often simultaneously, Broder gazes into the abyss and at the human body, with humor and heartbreak, lust and terror. Broder’s language is entirely her own, marked both by brutal strangeness and raw intimacy. At turns essayistic and surreal, bouncing between the grotesque and the transcendent, SUPERDOOM is a must-have for longtime fans and the perfect introduction to one of our most brilliant and original poets.
Lucy est une thésarde en panne d’inspiration qui s’éprend d’un homme-sirène. A travers leur idylle étrange et sensuelle, l’histoire explore la définition de l’amour et les limites entre plaisir et possession, fantasmes et réalité.
L’auteure Melissa Broder et la réalisatrice Gillian Robespierre ont écrit ensemble le scénario du film. (Lire l’