Into the Valley
Ruth Galm
ISBN: 9781616955090
Published: August, 2015
Pricing
Hardcover $25.00
Paperback $15.00
Description
Ruth Galm’s spare, poetic debut novel, set in the American West of early Joan Didion, traces the drifting path of a young woman as she skirts the law and her own oppressive anxiety.
California, 1967: B. feels at home neither in the strictures of her 1950s upbringing nor the new, free-love attitude of the 196...
Ruth Galm’s spare, poetic debut novel, set in the American West of early Joan Didion, traces the drifting path of a young woman as she skirts the law and her own oppressive anxiety.
California, 1967: B. feels at home neither in the strictures of her 1950s upbringing nor the new, free-love attitude of the 1960s. She drifts around the Central Valley, cashing bad checks and engaging in high-risk behavior, trying to find something solid she can hold on to in the world while running from a disintegrative anxiety she calls “the carsickness.” B.’s story becomes that of a woman unraveling, of a desperate desire for escape without map or destination.
Media
“I reveled in a delicious state of unease reading INTO THE VALLEY, the parched atmosphere leaving me as dizzy as the protagonist, perfectly and simply known as "B". An enthralling, disturbing read, part Joan Didion and very much Patricia Highsmith, Galm stuns with this eerie, suspenseful ride of a novel. I loved this book.”
–Paula Bomer, author of Inside Madeleine
“In the luxury vehicle of her hypnotically evocative prose, Ruth Galm takes us on the journey of the mysterious B, suffering from a mysterious malaise which can only be relieved by forging checks in cool, neutral banks. Like Joan Didion’s Play It As it Lays, INTO THE VALLEY creates and re creates a wasted American landscape, and pulls us into a world whose emptiness has profound moral and social implications.”
–Mary Gordon, author of The Love of My Youth
“Into the Valley is at once gorgeous and restrained; the character is herself a kind of vivid, shifting landscape, just as the landscape is itself a beguiling, dominating character. The result is an intensely emotional and human novel.”
–Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances
“Galm’s debut is precisely written and casually paced. A standout debut. ”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review on Into the Valley
“Galm's writing is rich and evokes the desolation of the Central Valley and B.'s mental state. Readers [will] appreciate Galm's fantastic writing and the new view of an overexposed slice of American history. ”
—Kirkus Reviews on Into the Valley
“[T]he author evokes the desolate interior landscape of writers such as Joan Didion. ”
—San Jose Mercury News on Into the Valley
“Mesmerizing ... Galm's writing mimics the hyperreality of dreams, and the novel's penetrative heat is palpable ... Underpinning Into the Valley is a subtle and complicated exploration of what it means to be a woman and, more specifically, what it means to be a woman without a man.”
–Elle Magazine on Into the Valley
“This is a natural for anyone who loves Joan Didion’s work — especially her nonfiction critiques on California and that other classic of aimless driving, Play It as It Lays. ”
–Booklist, STARRED Review on Into the Valley
“An understated novel that explores the quiet but powerful emotions of loneliness and revelations that flow from losing one's way. ”
—Shelf Awareness on Into the Valley
“Ruth Galm’s hyper-vigilant and engrossing debut novel, Into the Valley, is both unsettling and, ultimately, victorious. From this novel’s simple opening sentence to its concise, shocking and surprising conclusion, it is a gorgeous, lyrical meditation ... brilliantly drawn. ”
—Cincinnati City Beat
“Galm, in a similar fashion to Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, has powerfully captured a woman’s righteous resistance in the face of a rapaciously gendered society. ”
—KQED Arts on Into the Valley
“Into the Valley is highly visual, suspenseful and appropriately grim. Galm’s prose knows exactly where it’s going, crisp and clear, it touches down lightly, like a small stone bounding down a scree slope ... a solid, muscular piece of writing. It is skillfully whispered social commentary. ”