Susan Perly is the author of Death Valley, longlisted in 2016 for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Love Street, told in the voice of late-night DJ Miss Mercy. Her memoir on art and marriage, “Picasso’s Pigeons,” set in Barcelona, appeared in Zone 3 in 2013. A former journalist and radio producer, she broadcast eyewitness reports from Guatemala, El Salvador and Argentina during the Dirty War, and from Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War. Susan Perly lives in her hometown Toronto with her husband, poet Dennis Lee.
"The novel defies genre, mashing up generous helpings of pulp
fiction and spaghetti westerns with an abridged history lesson on
America’s nuclear heritage.... Hypnotic in its weirdness, Death
Valley laments a world that has played host to the Cold War, the
atomic bomb, and wars big and small from Vietnam to Iraq."
*Toronto Star*
"Susan Perly’s novel Death Valley takes on a devastated landscape
that is simultaneously celebrated and erased in North American
consciousness. Her principal characters move through scenery that
is the setting for glamorous Hollywood versions of the West and
also the site of atomic tests past and present."
*Canadian Literature*
"We encounter strange half-human, half-animal creatures as the
group moves through Death Valley hitting up diners, motels,
army-restricted areas, ghost towns, and old film locations in a
voyage that goes in and out of focus as the perception of time
recedes and flows."
*SubTerrain*
"The novel becomes a commentary about the state of the world in
which atomic bombs and wars have become commonplace. Thus, the
absurdity of the world Perly describes is in fact a lament for the
absurdity of the world we live in – a world that has played host to
cold wars, world wars and too many other tragedies to count."
*Winnipeg Review*
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