A gorgeous, raw debut novel about a young woman braving the ups and downs of motherhood in a fractured America.
In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent – her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a ‘processing error’– Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity.
But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbour who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world.
Keenly observed, bristling with humour, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds. But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love.
About the Author
Lydia Kiesling is the editor of The Millions. Her debut novel, The Golden State, was longlisted for the Centre for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Guardian, Slate, and the New Yorker online. Kiesling lives in San Francisco with her family.
Industry Reviews
`[Kiesling's] work is always artful, accessible and never trivial. The Golden State shines with all her expected qualities and, in the scope of a novel, brimming with layered writing, she has allowed herself to be expansive as well as intense...What Kiesling describes better than anyone I can think of is the selfless depth of motherhood.' * Age *
`Vivid and immersive...Daphne's endless days with Honey capture the intensity in the tedium of parenting, and it is this that keeps The Golden State compelling.' * Saturday Paper *
`In heartrending prose, Lydia Kiesling weaves through an exploration of the political and the private, fear and love, survival and obligation, loneliness and longing.' * Best Books of Fall 2018, Buzzfeed *
`The Golden State anchors Daphne's journey in the visceral and material realities of motherhood...the result is less an untroubled analogy between the landscapes of motherhood and the American West than an invitation to think more deeply about how limited our canonical literary imaginings of each have been.' * Sarah Blackwood, The New Yorker *
`The depictions are remarkably faithful, like a trompe l'oeil painting of a single parent's mental state.' * Wall Street Journal *
`Kiesling is a talented author...with a unique voice. She's very smart, very funny, and wonderfully empathetic...[A] skilled and promising writer.' * Kirkus Reviews *
'An astute cultural commentator, shedding light on our current political divide, Kiesling writes with breathtaking precision and honesty about motherhood.' * San Francisco Chronicle *
`A lucid, lyrical look at the often alienating, disorienting experience of early motherhood...More than that, though, Kiesling beautifully explores not just the changed identity that comes with motherhood, but that which comes with partnership, aging, and the sudden realization that the parts of your identity you once thought were most immutable, are actually as ephemeral as that precious, fleeting golden hour of the day.' * Nylon, Best Books of 2018 *
`This tender, lush book-centred on a new single mom who ditches city life for the Northern California desert-profoundly depicts young motherhood and its challenges as I haven't quite read before.' * Entertainment Weekly, Best Books of 2018 *
'The Golden State is packed with insight and questions. It ruminates on age, on class and culture, on the concept of 'home', on the place of language in our identities, the way that isolation can create ignorance, and most importantly, on the value of human relationships in all the forms they take.' * Zoya Patel, South Coast Register *
`This is an endlessly readable story of a typically fallible and first-time mother who does not take herself too seriously. It is just hugely enjoyable and familiar all round.' * Otago Daily Times *
