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WONDER VALLEY

by Ivy Pochoda ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 2017

Absorbing, finely detailed, nasty California noir.

The gritty lives of Southern California drifters are entwined first by circumstance, then by love and revenge.

It begins with a classic LA overture—a traffic jam on the freeway, its physical, metaphysical, and sociological aspects evoked by Pochoda ( Visitation Street , 2013, etc.) in shimmering detail. On this sunny morning in 2010 there’s something to break up the monotony—a man jogging stark naked against the flow of traffic. To decode this image, the rest of the book moves back and forth between 2006 and 2010, picking out the thread of each character like strands of a knot loosened and tightened. Britt is a college tennis player on the run from a terrible mistake. She stumbles upon a desert commune/organic chicken farm where a guru type named Patrick holds emotional and sexual sway over a band of tripped-out “interns,” the term itself a bit of comic relief under the circumstances. Patrick’s twin 15-year-old sons, Owen and James, have even more to rebel against than the average teenager; when Owen is humiliated by his father after a disgusting chicken slaughter, he takes off into the desert. There he runs into Sam and Blake, a violent, nasty pair of criminals whose flight from the law has been interrupted by the now-suppurating fracture of Sam’s ankle. These two end up back at the chicken ranch seeking healing from Patrick, but his talents only go so far. Also in the mix are a boy named Ren and his mother, Laila. Just released from juvie for a crime committed when he was 12, Ren crosses the country in search of his mother and finds her in failing health and miserable straits, living on the streets in LA. He has stolen a car to take her to the beach when he sees the naked jogger....

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-06-265635-3

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017

LITERARY FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE

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by Ivy Pochoda

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Our Verdict

New York Times Bestseller

by Max Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2020

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.

Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).

A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.

Pub Date: June 16, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine

Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020

GENERAL SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SCIENCE FICTION

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BOOK TO SCREEN

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection , 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS | SUSPENSE | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER

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by Kathy Reichs

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‘Wonder Valley’ is an L.A. thriller that refuses to let readers look away

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“Wonder Valley,” the third novel from author Ivy Pochoda, begins with a classic Los Angeles tableau: a chase on the 101, complete with a police helicopter, camera-toting news crews and spectators recording the spectacle on their smartphones.

But this chase is different. For one thing, it’s not a car speeding down the freeway, it’s a young man on foot. It’s also not immediately clear who, if anyone, is in pursuit of him. And the man happens to be completely naked. The police are unable to catch him, but one observer surmises that his freedom is likely short-lived: “Because no one can vanish for good. Not in Los Angeles. Not with so many people watching.”

Things get even weirder, and much darker, from there. “Wonder Valley” follows several people on the edge, most paying in some way for poor decisions they’ve made, whose lives intersect in surprising and at times terrifying ways. It’s a dizzying, kaleidoscopic thriller that refuses to let readers look away from the dark side of Southern California.

Pochoda has a real gift for pacing, and she’s a remarkably psychologically astute writer.

Pochoda’s novel goes back and forth in time, alternating between 2006 and 2010, when the naked man sets out on his unusual marathon. The first character we’re introduced to is Tony, a dissatisfied attorney; he and his social-climbing wife “have a tenuous grip on the city’s glamour.” Tony is stuck in traffic on the 101 when he sees the naked man run by, and, for reasons he has trouble articulating, gets out of his car and chases after him.

Soon after, young Ren makes his appearance. He’s recently been released from juvenile detention in New York, where he was doing time for killing a man when he was 12. He’s come to Los Angeles to find his mother, Laila, who moved across the country while Ren was imprisoned. His time in custody has left him somewhat hard and somewhat shaken: “Kill someone at age twelve,” he reflects, and things “don’t really start haunting you until you understand what life is, how breakable people are.” Ren tracks down his mother on skid row, and he’s heartbroken by what she’s become.

Similarly haunted is Blake, on the run from the law with his partner in crime, Sam. After Sam breaks a bone, the pair are forced to hide out in Wonder Valley at an abandoned collection of cabins in the desert 30 miles east of Joshua Tree. It happens to be near a commune run by Patrick, a creepy hippie who lives there with his wife and twin boys. Patrick soon catches the eye of Britt, a former USC student trying to build “a new person on top of the one she’d been trying to escape.”

It’s difficult to discuss how the lives of the characters in “Wonder Valley” come together without giving away the revelations that make the novel nearly impossible to put down. That’s not to say the book is dependent on twists; while Pochoda takes her readers in unexpected directions, it’s the memorable characters and beautiful prose that make the novel so successful.

It’s a dizzying, kaleidoscopic thriller that refuses to let readers look away from the dark side of Southern California.

Particularly compelling is Blake, a hardened criminal who nonetheless nurses doubts about the direction his life has taken, and about his sociopathic partner, Sam. “Sam was fearless. Blake worked hard to be,” writes Pochoda. Blake, she reveals, had “been haunted by the people he and Sam had harmed — a sickening slideshow that kept him up at night and made his dreams bad when he managed to sleep.” It’s not uncommon for writers to imagine a criminal with hints of remorse, but Pochoda makes Blake a character all his own, far from perfect, but perhaps not irredeemable.

Pochoda’s portrayal of Patrick’s property, and the New Age-y “interns” who help slaughter the chickens that account for the group’s income, is also fascinating. When introduced to a Southern California quasi-commune with a charismatic leader, readers will probably flash back to Topanga Canyon in 1968. But Pochoda doesn’t go in this direction, and she even manages to mine some humor out of the group, courtesy of his teenage son, who’s skeptical of his father’s followers: “If he dragged a stick through the sand, someone asked him if he was drawing a mystical sign. If he sat on the deck after dark, an intern praised him for tapping into the lunar power source.”

Fairly or not, literary thrillers live or die by their endings, and the last pages of “Wonder Valley” are unexpected and pitch-perfect — there’s no unearned redemption, but also no needlessly dark nihilism. Pochoda has a real gift for pacing, and she’s a remarkably psychologically astute writer; it’s hard not to feel at least some kind of sympathy for all the characters, even the ones capable of monstrous acts of violence and selfishness. It’s a gorgeous portrayal of, as one character puts it, “the place to be when you don’t belong anywhere else, when you’ve done things that make the straight world an impossible place to live.”

Schaub is a writer who lives in Texas. He’s on Twitter at @michaelschaub .

“ Wonder Valley ”

Ivy Pochoda

Ecco: 336 pp., $26.99

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Ivy Pochoda's Wonder Valley is a mesmerizing California novel: EW review

In Wonder Valley , drifters of various stripes make jaunts out west. They fantasize about the vast oases of the Mojave Desert, the soothing crashes of waves along the Pacific coastline, the redemption that comes with one’s arrival in the City of Angels. They expect to see the light — because there, right above them, is the SoCal sun, beating down with enough heat and brightness to force the catharsis right out of them.

The novel, written by Ivy Pochoda ( Visitation Street ), begins in 2010 with the audacious sequence of a young man running naked along the L.A. freeway, zipping by commuters stuck in traffic. It’s liberating but disruptive, rhythmic yet bizarre. That dissonance is reflected in the way certain observers — a mother and son headed to the beach in a stolen car, a lawyer suffocating in the tightness of his vehicle — absorb the scene. Pochoda’s touch is deft here, peeking into intimate spaces before zooming back out to the surreality of the action beyond them. She introduces a collection of characters, each with a specific destination in mind, and stays with them patiently throughout the novel, unpeeling the reasons why they’re on the move.

The story spins out in several directions from the prologue. In 2006, a young woman harboring secrets wanders onto a desert commune where she encounters a dysfunctional family, while a pair of career criminals on the run hole up nearby; later in 2010, the aforementioned lawyer chases the aforementioned nude runner through Los Angeles before getting caught, and a Brooklyn-born teenager who’d just spent years in juvie tracks his mother down across the country. Each subplot is shrouded in mystery, though they all beg the same question: What are these people running from? Their stories collide, if only briefly — that their narratives are all entwined feels cosmic.

In that sense, Wonder Valley is a panorama of despair and yearning, shifting between timelines and locations in its portrait of individuals bound by the desire to escape, forget, and reinvent. It works in contrasts, between the grimy concrete of Skid Row and the pristine beaches of Malibu — between reality and fantasy. It’s a California novel through and through: a collection of character studies drenched in enough sunlight to illuminate the harshest of truths.

Pochoda’s sharpness as a writer comes through in her patience. Early on, it’s clear that, as with many books that share Wonder Valley ’s structure, vignettes will overlap and mysteries will eventually be pieced together. Yet uniquely, revelations arrive without announcement; pivotal moments quietly creep into paragraphs. The ending is magnificently unexpected, almost ingenious, and the surprise factor sneaks up on you. Its subtle brilliance is just that — subtle.

Pochoda demonstrates range in her vivid illustrations of diverse communities. They’re threaded with an underlying melancholy — blots of darkness spotlighted by the blue sky. The intense dry heat of the Mojave, the collection of smells of Skid Row, and the agonizing mellowness of Beverlywood all emanate from her crisp, poetic descriptions. (In one case, a little too much: A chicken slaughter scene early on is not for the squeamish.)

There’s heartbreak and disappointment to spare in Wonder Valley , and every character is rendered with empathy. Each element in the story has texture, from the weather to the architecture to the people inhabiting it. Pochoda lets no one off easy, and, at times, she gets a little carried away sketching out the idiosyncrasies of her setting. But crucially, Wonder Valley has an innate understanding of what makes hiding from home, or taking a leap into the unknown, or ripping off your clothes and racing through traffic, naked, such deeply human impulses. The book tells an essential truth: Everybody’s running from something. B+

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Review: Author delivers compassionate look at the displaced

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“Wonder Valley” (Ecco), by Ivy Pochoda

A naked man running through rush-hour traffic that’s backed up for miles jumpstarts “Wonder Valley,” author Ivy Pochoda’s enthralling look at people mired in a nomadic existence, anonymous to most and longing for a connection with another.

With its large cast of characters and unconventional storytelling, “Wonder Valley” works as the literary version of the Oscar-winning film “Crash.” Not every character is sympathetic, but the increasingly heightened drama that surrounds each character’s life never falters. These are people who are alone, even when surrounded by those to whom they should be closest. Adding to the feeling of anonymity, the novel is nearly two-thirds finished before a last name is evoked.

Married lawyer Tony becomes obsessed with that naked man that he leaves his car to run after, feeling a “tingling sense of freedom” in the man’s “unburdened stride.” There is Ren, who has traveled to Los Angeles to find his mother, who refuses to leave her little corner of Skid Row. Britt is running from her past when she ends up at a ranch in Twentynine Palms before eventually making it to Los Angeles. And there are Blake and Sam, two violent drifters in search of Wonder Valley where they plan to settle. For these two, Wonder Valley is the stuff of dreams, a near-mythical place that’s really just a half-abandoned community of run-down cabins.

Pochoda deftly moves each of these characters together, making their connection realistic while pulling “Wonder Valley” from the past to the present to illustrate what led each to this particular moment. Los Angeles and Southern California emerge as vital characters, too, showing how the area affects each person. This look at a broad segment of people imbued Pochoda’s last novel, “Visitation Street,” which was one of the bright spots of 2013.

Pochoda delivers a compassionate look at the displaced that treats each with respect and humanity in “Wonder Valley.”

https://www.ivypochoda.com/

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, wonder valley.

In Ivy Pochoda’s WONDER VALLEY, the desert is a harsh and unforgiving place, with nowhere, literally or figuratively, to hide. And the city of Los Angeles is dangerous in its own ways, never quite providing the shelter, anonymity or respite that the characters need. Pochoda sets her story against these stark backdrops, and they heighten the lack of control her characters feel as the novel moves back and forth between 2006 and 2010 and the connections among six people become clear.

In 2006, teenage twins Owen and James are living with their parents on a desert chicken ranch at Twentynine Palms. Their father Patrick is a charismatic, if predatory, guru of sorts to a group of young “interns” who live and work on the ranch, participating in his twisted group therapy. College student athlete Britt is running away from a terrible accident and finds herself at Twentynine Palms, slowly but surely drawn in by Patrick. Though she watches how destructive a force he is --- to the interns and to his family --- she nevertheless is attracted to him and his ideas.

"WONDER VALLEY is a powerfully written page-turner, full of interesting and complex characters.... Both dreamy and gritty, this is an intense and often sorrowful and totally fantastic novel."

Just as Britt begins to settle in with Patrick and the others, Blake and Sam arrive. They are a duo of criminals on the run from the police and the ghosts of their past deeds. Sam, the older and more violent of the two, is seriously injured, and Blake, feeling not just indebted to him but emotionally dependent, will do anything to take care of him. Little does everyone know that there already is a connection among Blake, Sam and James, so the appearance of the dangerous pair introduces an extra layer of peril to an already tense situation.

In 2010, Ren has been recently released from juvenile detention, having served time for a terrible accident many years prior. He sets out from the east coast to the west to find the mother who abandoned him while he was locked out. He finds her living on the streets of Los Angeles and, while possessed of a certain clarity, not any healthier than she was when he last saw her. Like Blake for Sam, Ren is willing to risk so much to protect and care for his mother, even putting himself in jeopardy. Events in the past collide as Ren works and schemes to aid her, as he finds James after many years looking for him, and as Britt meets a man inspired by a sight he understands as an act of rebellion and freedom.

From run-down trailers and long-empty buildings to urban dive bars and suburban homes, Pochoda’s characters are desperate for resolution and peace.

WONDER VALLEY is a powerfully written page-turner, full of interesting and complex characters. Tested by circumstance and environment, they weave in and out of each other’s orbits as Pochoda brings the various strands of her tale together. Southern California smolders and is the perfect backdrop for the book’s themes of family and betrayal, loss and hope, transgression and redemption. Both dreamy and gritty, this is an intense and often sorrowful and totally fantastic novel.

Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman on November 17, 2017

Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda

• Publication Date: July 3, 2018
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ecco
• ISBN-10: 0062656368
• ISBN-13: 9780062656360

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Wonder Valley

As a gift from the library universe, my library hold for Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda became available during the December holidays, and I had downtime to spend reading. The book opens with a man running naked through rush hour traffic in downtown Los Angeles, drawing police and television reporters in hot pursuit. I thought, this book has potential to show what we're living with here in LA.

Multiple characters whose lives are interwoven represent different parts of Southern California society: the seekers in the desert, the destitute on Skid Row, and the self-absorbed from the Westside. Just as when Angelinos discover that the subject of a newspaper story is a co-worker's cousin, or the middle school music teacher who used to play with a famous pop band, Wonder Valley's characters come to learn of the connections that bind them together, even as those connections might be deadly.

Pochoda further segments the narrative into two time streams: 2006 in the high desert community of Wonder Valley and 2010 in the City of Los Angeles. In 2006, a self-awareness commune explores truth and spiritual enlightenment, only to come into conflict when the commune is compromised by both inside rebellion and vile trespassers. In 2010, the loose ends remaining from the demise of the Wonder Valley community knit back together on Los Angeles' Skid Row and other downtown neighborhoods.

It takes some effort on behalf of the reader, which is richly rewarded, to follow the many characters’ stories across the two time settings, but transformation is the common theme. Characters organize around spiritual beliefs, criminal pursuits, family love, and none of the circumstances endures, nor are they meant to. Settlements in Wonder Valley or on Skid Row are not permanent. Relationships in the high desert and westward prove to be conditional and transactional, even when lives are at stake.

When I first heard of the book, Wonder Valley , I thought, ok, another book about Southern California by an East Coast writer. It will have the usual cliches of dreams pursued then dashed, an ugly duckling blooms into an elegant swan, a teenage outcast is transformed into the creator of the next tech unicorn. Class, ethnic and race differences will be explored, contrasted, and in some small closing scene, reconciled in a manner that eases the general social discomfort that arose as the differences were exposed. Wonder Valley is satisfyingly fresh even as the LA neighborhood settings are familiar. After finishing the book, I wanted to learn how Pochoda could so clearly portray our Los Angeles people without reaching for cliches. I read that she had spent some years here in the city, and the final answer came by turning back to the book’s dedication page: To the writers and artists in the LAMP Arts Program , a Skid Row “housing first” community 

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Wonder Valley: A Novel

• By Ivy Pochoda
• Reviewed by Fatima Azam
• January 26, 2018

The lives of six seemingly unconnected characters collide in L.A.

Ivy Pochoda’s third literary outing, Wonder Valley , is not to be missed, though it does contain a few minor flaws. The opening outlines a chaotic scene: a teenage boy running against traffic down L.A.’s Highway 110. As the police and various reporters relay the scene, the book jumps around to different commuters stuck in the jam. In this manner, most of the characters are introduced.

Some already know the runner; others have no idea who he is but are drawn to him regardless. He becomes the epicenter of this intriguing novel as the text carefully begins unraveling a powerful story of disenchantment, the struggle for more, and the seeming futility of trying to escape the life in which one is stuck.

The offbeat early morning run is set in 2010, but the book quickly shifts to 2006. Throughout, readers are volleyed between these years and offered little bridge-building clues to strengthen any links in the timelines.

In 2006, the stories of Britt (a college dropout whose loss of a tennis scholarship is the least of her worries), Blake and Sam (a criminal duo), and James and Owen (twins separated by a traumatic event) all begin. Conversely, the tales of Tony and Ren stay solidly in 2010.

The novel follows the delicate balance between the life a character lives versus the life for which he or she wishes. Wonder Valley is a chronicle of the quotidian and the ever-present struggle to rise above it. As the character James says to Ren, “We’ve all got stories. And trust me, there’s always someone whose story is worse than yours.”   

Pochoda’s book has many strengths, but the plot feels forced at times. For example, the fact that James, Blake, Britt, and Ren all end up on Skid Row seems farfetched; the author’s puppet strings become visible.

Also, the first two quarters of Wonder Valley bounce haphazardly between characters and timelines. Consequently, the gradual reveal of how the 2006 events relate to — and influence — the later ones are less satisfying than they otherwise might have been.

These flaws aside, however, Pochoda’s novel is compelling. While it’s true that readers hoping for a linear plot may be sorely disappointed, those searching for brilliant characterization will be delighted. For them, the author’s skill creates an experience of total immersion.

Fatima Azam is working on her Ph.D. in comparative literature at the University of Maryland while also teaching English writing and literature. She resides in Maryland, where she is working on her novel. She loves words almost as much as chocolate pastries.

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Review: Wonder Valley

Book by IVY POCHODA

Reviewed by LISA ALEXANDER and JULIA LICHTBLAU

In Ivy Pochoda’s latest novel, Wonder Valley , we find ourselves amidst a scruffy, largely invisible subset of Los Angelenos: drifters, con artists, criminals, quack healers, the homeless. The few in their orbit who have money or a measure of success are in danger of losing their souls. Everyone is close to the edge, all the time. Yearning. Longing. Trying to get someplace. Anywhere but here.

Like Pochoda’s previous book, Visitation Street , which was set in Brooklyn, Wonder Valley is a literary thriller at heart. It has been called “California Noir” and “California Nasty Noir.” It gallops along at a breathless pace. The language is street-smart. Pochoda has a good ear for dialect. It’s also a deeply compassionate book. She dedicates it to the writers and artists in the Lamp Arts Program in L.A.’s Skid Row, where she teaches. Her eyes are wide open with an informed empathy for people most of us step over or block out.

The novel isn’t one story, but a Rubik’s cube of interlocking stories occurring between 2006 and 2010, across the region, from the freeways to Skid Row to the desert to the ocean. Everyone here has a guilty conscience. By accident or on purpose, they’ve hurt, killed, or endangered someone. Their lives have gone irrevocably off-track as a result, and they’re desperate for respite and release, like characters in the Greek myths, pursued by the Fates.

The book begins with an image—a video, really: a morning in 2010, stopped traffic on a snarl of Los Angeles freeways and the beacon of a man, a naked man, running through the lanes: “… shirtless, the hint of swimmer’s muscle rippling below his tanned skin, his arms pumping in a one-two rhythm in sync with the beat of his feet…”

The trapped, bored drivers on their phones are riveted. The naked runner becomes a media event, an Internet sensation. Police helicopters circle. To Tony, a lawyer, a Westside failure, whose marriage is crumbling along with his sense of self, the runner is a metaphor for the freedom he’s lost. Tony is haunted by his own negligence. He let a drunk summer intern go home alone from an office bash, and she was killed by a train. He leaps out of his car, chases and loses the runner. The next thing he knows, he’s on the ground, handcuffed, trying to explain to a cop that he didn’t even know the guy.

In another car, there’s Ren, a Brooklyn boy who spent eight years in juvie for an unintended childhood crime, who returned home to find his family gone, and has come to LA to atone. He’s doing a good deed in a bad way, using a “borrowed” car to take his dying mother to the beach. The police helicopters make him sweat. He just has to get through this moment. (This is as good a place as any to point out that Pochoda has transplanted her most endearing character from Visitation Street to L.A., where he continues to be the street kid equivalent of a mensch. Maybe he’ll finally get the good life he deserves in her next book.)

It takes a while, maybe more than one reading, to follow how all the stories fit together. Pochoda makes the reader work. Narrated in present tense, the stories seem to all be happening consecutively or at the same time. Actually, the first time we meet a character, he/she may be well along in his/her saga, and the next time we connect will be earlier. That’s the case with Ren on the freeway. And Britt, a college tennis star whose crisis of conscience is that she fled from a car accident, leaving a friend unconscious or dead. We meet her in Tony’s second chapter. Drawn by curiosity, or some sixth sense that he could be useful, Tony goes back to the police station to find out what became of the runner—he’s a nuisance to the cops—and Britt, who needs to find the runner herself, recognizes Tony from the online videos. Tony takes her to a dive bar—it’s Saturday morning—and discovers that the runner’s name is James, and a dangerous guy named Blake is also chasing him—and Britt.

The narrative doesn’t so much progress as back and fill, moving each story, then leaving it for another. Each episode is labelled by name, place, and year, to help the reader keep track, as in “James, Twentynine Palms, 2006” or “Tony, Los Angeles, 2010. In any case, the desperation in Wonder Valley gets worse in linear fashion, escalating the literary tension with it. The book’s least redeemable characters drift deep in the desert. Blake is a low-life drug dealer who sells prescription meds, and Sam is a Samoan behemoth/murderer who’s superstitious, mean, and being slowly poisoned by gangrene from a broken leg. These two are also on a collision course with a commune off a desert highway called Wonder Valley not far from Twentynine Palms, a town about 100 miles inland from Los Angeles. James and his brother Owen are the twin sons of a scuzzy “healer” named Patrick and his cynical, disgruntled wife. Britt washes up here too, while running away from herself. The scenes in the commune, where a bunch of stoned and starry-eyed “interns” are manipulated into savaging each other emotionally, slaughtering chickens, and having sex with Patrick, are the most graphic and gruesome of the book.  

Pochoda’s good at holding the camera still, even for a scene of chicken carnage that ends with Patrick forcing one of his twins to eat a hawk he shot after refusing to behead a chicken. The reader might flinch though:  

James slipped off. He plunged into the pond where he could see Owen. His brother was crouched at the edge of the fire. Their father stood over him as he plucked the hawk’s feathers. The quills were stubborn, forcing Owen to yank hard, stretching the bird’s tough skin. Every so often Patrick would hold the bird up, examining its naked flesh. It took Owen nearly an hour to denude the hawk’s body….James ducked under so he wouldn’t have to smell the hawk’s muscled flesh roasting over the fire…When he returned, Owen was back at the fire, eating one of the charred legs. Their father waited until he was finished…before handing him a second helping. Owen held up his hand, clutched his stomach, put a hand over his mouth. But Patrick insisted…”

As seen here, the writing is spare. Every once in a while there’s a poetic line like “the setting sun left the sky over the Sheep Hole Mountains the color of the flesh of an overripe plum,” but Pochoda doesn’t linger over descriptions. The stories are too important.

Everyone here twists and turns, piling on more guilt for bad deeds—new, old, and imagined—until eventually the stories converge and the good find, yes, some measure of redemption. After all that suffering and yearning, the last scene feels transcendent. We are right back where we started, but now Tony, after helping Britt, finds that place which is “essentially and undeniably him. It’s small and solid like the sea-smoothed rocks beneath his feet.” All anyone can ask for in the end.

Lisa Alexander ’s work has appeared, among other places, in Cimarron Review, Fifth Wednesday, Litro, Meridian, Prick of the Spindle, Fugue, and Southern California Review . Her fiction won the UCLA James Kirkwood Award in Creative Writing. She has an MFA in Fiction from Bennington College.

Julia Lichtblau is the book review editor of The Common . Her work is forthcoming in American Fiction 17 and has appeared in The American Scholar, Blackbird, Narrative, The Florida Review, and other publications. She teaches at Drew University and covered international finance in New York and Paris for BusinessWeek and Dow Jones Newswires . She has an MFA in Fiction from Bennington College and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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Wonder Valley : Book summary and reviews of Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda

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Wonder Valley

by Ivy Pochoda

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Published Nov 2017 336 pages Genre: Literary Fiction Publication Information

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About this book

Book summary.

From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street , a visionary and masterful portrait of contemporary Los Angeles.

It's a familiar sight in Los Angeles, traveling on the 110 during peak morning rush hour: an endless sea of commuters, with no respite for miles. But this traffic jam is different - a runner is dodging and weaving between the cars at an astonishing clip. He's moving so fast he's almost a blur. But what's clearly evident is that he is completely naked. This seemingly mundane highway backup turns into a seminal moment for a handful of Angelenos-people whose lives are in desperate need of a change. Out of this ordinary event, Ivy Pochoda spins a web that stretches all over the City of Angels, from Skid Row to the gentrified enclaves, from the desert to the ocean, all featuring characters in some sort of disarray. There's Ren, from Brooklyn and just out of juvie, who makes his way to LA to look for his mother on Skid Row who has been lost to him for years. There's Owen and James, 14-year old twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, Patrick, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful, dangerous sway over his many disciples. There's Britt, a wayward soul in search of adventure, who ends up the center of Patrick's attention. There's Tony, a successful lawyer who hates his job and his marriage and is looking for meaning. And there's Blake, a violent drifter laying low in the desert, but who unwittingly gets caught up with James and Patrick and the whole sham healing game.  When one of the twins runs away after a disturbing incident on Patrick's commune, a series of events bring these characters, all so real and true, and imbued with endless amounts of empathy and wisdom, together. Whether running away from the past, or looking to reclaim their future, they all will do anything for a semblance of peace. Ivy Pochoda, who the  Boston Globe  said has "a profound understanding of human resilience," has written a sweeping portrait of angst, violence, heartache, and yearning-a breathtaking novel of remarkable wisdom and empathy.

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Reader reviews.

"Pochoda paints southern California with a vibrant brush, rendering an evocative landscape on which her desperate characters seek out redemption and rejuvenation." - Booklist " Wonder Valley is destined to be a classic L.A. novel. From desert scrub to cold blue sea, it carries an eloquent yet hard-edge take on the contradictions of a place so difficult to define. It's impossible to put down." - Michael Connelly, author of The Wrong Side of Goodbye "Ivy Pochoda's Wonder Valley offers us a vision of Southern California that is at once panoramic and intimate. This novel paints an unforgettable portrait of people who long, above all else, for community and connection." - Edan Lepucki, author of California "Despite the initial confusion, Pochoda ( Visitation Street ) takes readers places they don't often see with authenticity and clarity. Her description of the daily lives of the urban homeless is particularly vivid and sympathetic. Each of the main characters does achieve some sort of peace or resolution by the dark and often violent book's end" - Library Journal "Pochada has written a novel alive with empathy for the dispossessed and detailed descriptions of the California landscape, with a little of the film Crash thrown in. But as sympathetic as the characters are, their stories fail to come together as a dramatic whole." - Publishers Weekly

...10 more reader reviews

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Ivy Pochoda Author Biography

Photo: Justin Nowell

Ivy Pochoda is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Visitation Street published by Ecco / Dennis Lehane Books. Visitation Street was chosen as an Amazon Best Book of the Month, Amazon Best Book of 2013, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , The Los Angeles Review of Books , The Huffington Post , Self , and House & Garden . Her first novel The Art of Disappearing , was published by St. Martin's Press in 2009. She has a BA from Harvard College in Classical Greek and an MFA from Bennington College in fiction. Ivy grew up in Brooklyn, NY and currently lives in downtown Los Angeles with her husband Justin Nowell.

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Ivy Pochoda

It's a familiar sight in Los Angeles, traveling on the 110 during peak morning rush hour: an endless sea of commuters, with no respite for miles. But this traffic jam is different-a runner is dodging and weaving between the cars at an astonishing clip. He's moving so fast he's almost a blur. But what's clearly evident is that he is completely naked. This seemingly mundane highway backup turns into a seminal moment for a handful of Angelenos-people whose lives are in desperate need of a change.

Out of this ordinary event, Ivy Pochoda spins a web that stretches all over the City of Angels, from Skid Row to the gentrified enclaves, from the desert to the ocean, all featuring characters in some sort of disarray. There's Ren, from Brooklyn and just out of juvie, who makes his way to LA to look for his mother on Skid Row who has been lost to him for years. There's Owen and James, 14-year old twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, Patrick, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful, dangerous sway over his many disciples. There's Britt, a wayward soul in search of adventure, who ends up the center of Patrick's attention. There's Tony, a successful lawyer who hates his job and his marriage and is looking for meaning. And there's Blake, a violent drifter laying low in the desert, but who unwittingly gets caught up with James and Patrick and the whole sham healing game.

When one of the twins runs away after a disturbing incident on Patrick's commune, a series of events bring these characters, all so real and true, and imbued with endless amounts of empathy and wisdom, together. Whether running away from the past, or looking to reclaim their future, they all will do anything for a semblance of peace.

IVY POCHODA

Novelist & writer.

Copyright 2023 Ivy Pochoda

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Wonder Valley (Pochoda)

Wonder Valley   Ivy Pochoda, 2017 HaroerCollins 336 pp. ISBN-13: 9780062656353 Summary When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles. From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street , a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row . During a typically crowded morning commute, a naked runner is dodging between the stalled cars.  The strange sight makes the local news and captures the imaginations of a stunning cast of misfits and lost souls … ♦ There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother. ♦ There's Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune   where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway   over his disciples. ♦ There's Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret. ♦ There's Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner. ♦ And there's Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts. Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city. Wonder Valley is a swirling mix of angst, violence, heartache, and yearning—a masterpiece by a writer on the rise. ( From the publisher .)

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Wonder Valley

£ 12.99

Ivy Pochoda

North American customers should contact local and online retailers

• Description
• Media coverage

When a teenager runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that connects a cast of six characters who narrate Wonder Valley .

There’s Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother. There’s Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There’s Britt, who shows up at the commune harbouring a dark secret. There’s Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner. And there’s Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts.

Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city.

‘Wonder Valley is destined to be a classic L.A. novel. From desert scrub to cold blue sea, it carries an eloquent yet hard-edge take on the contradictions of a place so difficult to define. It’s impossible to put down.’ —Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author

‘A vision of Southern California that is at once panoramic and intimate… This novel paints an unforgettable portrait of people who long, above all else, for community and connection.’ —Edan Lepucki, author of California

‘Wonder Valley seethes with the vivid, searching idea of Southern California. But as the intersecting journeys of hippie acolytes, restless hoods, lost boys and all manner of runaways converge, Pochoda enacts a aching dream of home that will possess and haunt you.’ —Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek

Dimensions: Demy paperback with french flaps Length: 341 pages Published: 20 September 2018 ISBN: 978-1999683344 Cover design: © House of Thought

Publici st: Susie Nicklin at The Indigo Press Agent: Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge & White Foreign rights: The Marsh Agency

About the author

Ivy Pochoda is a novelist and writer, previously a world ranked squash player. Her novel Visitation Street was chosen as an Amazon Best Book of 2013 and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel.

She has written for a number of outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books and The Huffington Post . She teaches creative writing at the Lamp Arts Studio in Skid Row.

Her book, Wonder Valley , was published in September 2018.

Los Angeles, 2010

He is almost beautiful – running with the San Gabriels over one shoulder, the rise of the Hollywood Freeway as it arcs above the Pasadena Freeway over the other. He is shirtless, the hint of swimmer’s muscle rippling below his tanned skin, his arms pumping in a one-two rhythm in sync with the beat of his feet. There is a chance you envy him.

Seven a.m. and traffic is already jammed through downtown, ground to a standstill as cars attempt to cross five lanes, moving in increments so small their progress is nearly invisible. They merge in jerks and starts from the Pasadena Freeway onto the Hollywood or the Santa Ana. But he is flowing freely, reverse commuting through the stalled vehicles.

The drivers watch from behind their steering wheels, distracted from toggling between radio stations, fixing their makeup in the rearview, talking to friends back east for whom the day is fully formed. They left home early, hoping to avoid the bumper to bumper, the inevitable slowdown of their mornings. They’ve mastered their mathematical calculations – the distance x rate x time of the trip to work. Yet they are stuck. In this city of drivers, he is a rebuke.

He runs unburdened by the hundreds of sacrifices these commuters have made to arrive at this traffic jam on time – the breakfast missed, the children unseen, the husband abandoned in bed, the night cut short on account of the early morning, the weak gas station coffee, the unpleasant carpool, the sleep lost, the hasty shower, last night’s clothes, last night’s makeup.

He ignores the commuters sealed off in their climate-controlled cars, trapped in the first news cycle and the wheel of Top 40. He holds a straight line through the morning’s small desperations, the problems waiting to unfold, the desire to be elsewhere, to be anywhere but here today and tomorrow and all the mornings that run together into one citywide tangle of freeways and on-ramp closures and Sig Alerts, a whole day narrowed to the stop and go.

His expression is mid-marathon serene, focused on the goal and not yet overwhelmed by the distance. He shows no strain. But the woman in the battered soft-top convertible will say he looked drugged. The man in a souped-up hatchback claims he was crazy-high, totally loco, you know what I mean. A couple of teenage girls driving an SUV way beyond their pay grade insist that, although they barely noticed him, he looked like a superhero, but not one of the cool ones.

The day is an indeterminate, weatherless gray. The sun is just another thing delayed this morning. Beneath the 10, the air over the bungalows of West Adams and Pico-Union is a dull, apocalyptic color. The color of bad things or their aftermath.

The other city – the remembered and imagined one – stretches west, past the sprawling ethnic neighborhoods where Koreans overlap with Salvadorans and Armenians back into Thais. It begins on the big-name crosstown boulevards lined with deco theaters, faded tropical motels, and restaurants with sentinel valets, and ends where the streets run into the ocean. But in this trench where the 110 sinks through downtown, that place is barely a memory. Here there is only the jam of the cars and the blank faces of the glass towers.

The runner is on pace for an eight-minute mile or so it seems to the man behind the wheel of his SUV who woke up late and didn’t have time for his own jog. He missed his pre-dawn tour of Beverlywood, the empty silence of the residential neighborhood when he visits other people’s cul-de-sacs, peering into the living rooms of dark houses as his pedometer records his footsteps, marking calories and distance until the morning’s ritual is complete. He wonders what went unseen – coyotes slinking home before sunup, a car haphazardly left in a driveway after one too many, a man sleeping in the blue glare of his TV, a teenager sneaking through her back gate, liquor bottles shoved into bags and left at someone else’s curb. During these stolen hours before his wife and kids need him, he believes he glimpses his neighborhood’s secret soul, seeing beyond the façades of the bungalows and the manicured squares of unremarkable lawns into hidden discontents.

There is never anyone to encourage him on his early morning runs, no one to witness his labored breathing in the sixth mile, his heroic triumph over his ebbing willpower. Watching the runner navigate the stationary cars, this driver is aware of the jellied muscles of his own legs after a weekend’s drinking.

He wants to reach back for the hour he cheated from himself, when he lay in bed and instead of lacing up his shoes, rolled over, checking the clock to see how long before others needed him. Without his run, today will belong to the commuters in their cars, to the team waiting for him at work, and now to this shirtless jogger cutting through traffic on the 110.

He rolls down his window and wedges his torso out to watch the runner pass. The man’s mechanics aren’t bad – his chest upright, shoulders relaxed, hands not balled into fists. He cups a hand over his mouth, shouting at the man to keep going. Then he sees that the runner is naked. He pulls back inside, raises the window, and busies himself with his cell phone, moving on to the next thing in his day .

Shirley Whiteside for Book Oxygen, 20 September 2018:  ‘Review: Wonder Valley’

Fatima Azam for Washington Independent, 26 January 2018:  ‘Wonder Valley: A Novel’

Lisa Alexander and Julia Lichtblau for The Common , 26 January 2018: ‘Review: Wonder Valley’

Smith Henderson for The Los Angeles Review of Books , 1 January 2018:  ‘Genre Be Damned: Smith Henderson interviews Ivy Pochoda ‘

Michael Natalie for The Brooklyn Rail, 17 December 2017: ‘Structures in Service to Wonder: Ivy Pochoda’s Wonder Valley’

Jane Gayduk for  Interview Magazine, 14 November 2017:  ‘Ivy Pochada’s new novel is an ode to the misunderstood parts (and people) of California’

Michael Schaub for The Los Angeles Times , 10 November 2017: ‘Wonder Valley is an L.A. thriller that refuses to let readers look away’

National Public Radio, 10 November 2017: ‘Author Interview: In ‘Wonder Valley’ There’s More Than One Los Angeles’

David Canfield for  Entertainment Weekly , 10 November 2017: ‘Ivy Pochoda’s  Wonder Valley is a mesmerizing California novel: EW review’

Kristopher for BOLO Books, 7 November 2017:  ‘Wonder Valley – The BOLO Books Review’

Thane Tierney for  Book Page, November 2017:  ‘Wonder Valley’

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A Dance With Books

Slump Valley | How I Deal with a Reading Slump | Wyrd and Wonder

As I was poking through the list of prompts of our Wyrd and Wonder prompt list , Slump Valley caught my eye. Slump Valley, as the name suggests, is about how you deal with a reading slump. It has been a while since I last talked about that topic so I figured I might as well have another go.

Give Myself a Break

The first way I deal with a reading slump is to give myself a break. I don’t force myself to read anything for a week or two at least. As soon as I feel an itch I will certainly pick up a book. It is also good to question why I am not able to pick up a book. Am I busy? Am I stressed? Or am I in the middle of a book that isn’t working for me? Sometimes just realizing that will be enough for me to start reading again.

Sometimes this period lasts longer than two weeks because when it is stress and mental health, some of that needs to be sorted first. But sometimes there are other things that help me out. Sometimes some of the below are a great help to cure a slump in answer to whatever you have answered to yourself here.

Novella’s & Graphic Novels

Novella’s can be a great palet cleanser. They can still offer a great story but do not bring along the strings that a full novel or a novel in a series brings along often. And finishing it makes you feels accomplished and that helps me be motivated again to pick up other books again.

Graphic novels work in the same way though some can be quite hefty and they are often apart of a series. But having illustrations to back up the word can make it easier to pick up.

Something that is cozy and low stakes, that can feel like a warm blanket. They are ideal for me because they tend to make you feel good and there is no worries about trigger warnings or too much emotional loads from the main characters.

Different Genre

I’m a pretty hefty fantasy reader. And when I am in a slump it can help to read something else. Sci-Fi or even a contemporary/romance might be something I grab to. Breaking up the slew of Fantasy sometimes is just needed. Especially if I’ve had some heavy ones or if they all had some similar topics. It can make me slumpy.

Grabbing an old favorite can help as you know what you are getting into. They work like cozies in a way because they can feel like a warm blanket as well. Its easier to work your way through the book. Some books that I have found that were great rereads: Mercy Thompson, Enchanted Inc., Howl’s Moving Casttle, Monstress and Hogfather.

Sometimes what can make me slump is that I have too many reading obligations in the form of ARCS or readalongs. Then, just picking up something at random because I feel like it can really work to break that slump. Afterwards I can go back to my reading obligations just fine.

What are some of your best ways to deal with a reading slump?

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7 thoughts on “ Slump Valley | How I Deal with a Reading Slump | Wyrd and Wonder ”

I don’t think I often get reading slumps but I have felt pressured by too many ARCs to read and then not wanted to read any of them. My usual way out is to reread something I know very well which gives my brain a rest but I’m still able to read something.

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Yeah it really helps.

I don’t know if I have ever had a reading slump. Yes, there are times when my brain struggles to focus on books or when a lot of books I pick up just aren’t catching my attention – usually when my stress is too high – but I don’t think of that as a slump. I read every day, as I need to read to help shit my brain up enough to get to sleep each night. When I’m super stressed and having trouble focusing, I’ll usually lean heavily on the romance genre. Or I might reread some very easy reading books (Mercy Thompson is on my list there too). But I have very eclectic reading tastes and can appreciate books from the trashy Mills and Boon to the cerebral science fiction and almost everything in between. It really comes down to what mood am I in and how well is the book written.

It works different for everyone 🙂

I did a similar post when I finally got back to blogging last month. I experienced a slump that lasted for YEARS… and I 100% agree with what you mentioned in your first tip — sometimes, there’s a big issue that needs to be sorted first. 🙂 I found myself getting back into reading after I graudated from university and the phase of academic anxiety was finally over. 💖

Yes exactly. And knowing the reason can help you feel less bad about it. Or less like you have to push through it.

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The Angry Video Game Nerd

The Angry Video Game Nerd is an Internet series based on a main character, the "Nerd", created and portrayed by James D. Rolfe. In each episode, the Nerd reviews a terrible video game and rants about it using profane language . Mike Matei helps Rolfe by playing guest characters in certain episodes (Bugs Bunny, The Joker, etc.). Kyle Justin sings and plays the theme song written by Rolfe.

The first two episodes were made in 2004 by Rolfe as a joke to his friends but in 2006, Matei suggested to Rolfe that it should become a regular series.

• 1.1 Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
• 1.2 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
• 2.1 The Karate Kid
• 2.2 Who Framed Roger Rabbit
• 2.3 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• 2.4 Back to the Future
• 2.5 M.C. Kids
• 2.6 Wally Bear and the NO! Gang
• 2.7 Master Chu and the Drunkard Hu
• 2.8 Top Gun
• 2.9 Double Dragon III
• 2.10 Friday the 13th
• 2.11 A Nightmare on Elm Street
• 2.12 Power Glove
• 2.13 Chronologically Confused
• 2.15 Bible Games
• 3.1 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III Part One
• 3.2 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III Part Two
• 3.3 Atari 5200
• 3.4 Ghostbusters
• 3.5 Ghostbusters Followup
• 3.6 Ghostbusters Conclusion
• 3.7 Spider-Man
• 3.8 Sega CD
• 3.9 Sega 32X
• 3.10 Silver Surfer
• 3.11 Die Hard
• 3.12 Independence Day
• 3.13 The Simpsons
• 3.14 The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout
• 3.15 Atari Porn
• 3.16 Nintendo Power
• 3.17 Fester's Quest
• 3.18 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• 3.19 Halloween
• 3.20 Dragon's Lair
• 3.21 An Angry Nerd Christmas Carol Part One
• 3.22 An Angry Nerd Christmas Carol Part Two
• 3.23 Chronologically Confused 2: The Legend of Zelda Timeline
• 4.1 Virtual Boy
• 4.2 The Wizard of Oz
• 4.3 Double Vision Part One
• 4.4 Double Vision Part Two
• 4.5 The Wizard and Super Mario Bros. 3
• 4.6 NES Accessories
• 4.7 Indiana Jones Trilogy
• 4.8 Star Trek
• 4.9 Superman
• 4.10 Superman 64
• 4.11 Batman Part One
• 4.12 Batman Part Two
• 4.13 Deadly Towers
• 4.14 Battletoads
• 4.15 Dick Tracy
• 4.16 Dracula
• 4.17 Frankenstein
• 4.18 CD-i Part One
• 4.19 CD-i Part Two
• 4.20 CD-i Part Three
• 4.21 Bible Games II
• 4.22 Michael Jackson's Moonwalker
• 4.23 Milon's Secret Castle
• 5.1 Atari Jaguar Part One
• 5.2 Atari Jaguar Part Two
• 5.3 Metal Gear
• 5.4 Odyssey
• 5.6 The Terminator
• 5.7 Terminator 2: Judgement Day
• 5.8 Transformers
• 5.9 Mario Is Missing
• 5.10 Plumbers Don't Wear Ties
• 5.11 The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle
• 5.12 Super Pitfall!
• 5.13 Godzilla
• 5.14 Wayne's World
• 5.15 Castlevania Part One
• 5.16 CastleVania Part Two
• 5.17 Castlevania Part Three
• 5.18 Castlevania Part Four
• 5.19 Little Red Hood
• 5.20 Winter Games
• 5.21 Street Fighter 2010
• 5.22 Hydlide
• 5.23 Ninja Gaiden
• 5.24 Swordquest
• 5.25 Pong Consoles
• 6.1 Action 52
• 6.2 Cheetahmen
• 6.3 Game Glitches
• 6.4 Zelda II
• 6.5 Back To The Future Trilogy
• 6.6 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Re-Revisited
• 6.7 Lester the Unlikely
• 6.8 How The Nerd Stole Christmas
• 6.9 Day Dreamin' Davey
• 6.10 Star Wars
• 6.11 R.O.B. The Robot
• 7.1 Spielberg Games
• 7.2 The Making of an Angry Video Game Nerd episode/Barbie
• 7.3 Kid Kool
• 7.4 Nintendo World Championships
• 7.5 Dark Castle
• 7.6 Bible Games III
• 8.1 Schwarzenegger Games
• 8.2 Ghosts 'n Goblins
• 8.3 Atari Sports
• 8.4 Ikari Warriors
• 8.5 Toxic Crusaders
• 8.6 Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure
• 8.7 Tiger Electronic Games
• 8.8 Alien 3
• 8.9 AVGN Games
• 8.10 AVGN Wish List (Part 1)
• 8.11 AVGN Wish List (Part 2)
• 9.1 Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing
• 9.2 Desert Bus
• 9.3 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• 9.4 Beetlejuice
• 10.1 1. Tagin' Dragon
• 10.2 2. ALF
• 10.3 3. CrazyBus
• 10.4 4. Ren and Stimpy: Fire Dogs
• 10.5 5. Rocky and Bullwinkle
• 10.6 6. Mary-Kate and Ashley: Get A Clue
• 10.7 7. V.I.P with Pamela Anderson
• 10.8 8. Lethal Weapon
• 10.9 9. Porky's
• 10.10 10. HyperScan
• 10.11 11. Universal Studios Theme Parks Adventure
• 10.12 12. LJN Video Art System
• 11.1 Hong Kong 97
• 11.2 Darkwing Duck
• 11.3 Seaman
• 11.4 The Crow
• 11.5 Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero
• 12.1 Mega Man Games
• 12.2 Paperboy
• 12.3 Beavis and Butt-Head
• 12.4 The Berenstain Bears
• 12.5 Sega Activator and Aura Interactor
• 13.1 Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers
• 13.2 Sonic '06
• 13.3 Planet of the Apes
• 13.4 Game Boy Accessories
• 13.5 Treasure Master
• 13.6 Wrestling Games
• 13.7 Polybius
• 13.8 Robocop NES Games
• 13.9 Sonic '06 (Part 2)
• 13.10 Charlie’s Angels (GameCube)
• 13.11 Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi
• 13.12 Lightspan Adventures
• 14.1 EarthBound
• 14.2 Dirty Harry
• 14.3 Drake of the 99 Dragons
• 14.4 Tomb Raider Games
• 14.5 Resident Evil Survivor
• 14.6 Super Hydlide and Virtual Hydlide
• 14.7 Amiga CD³²™
• 14.8 The Town With No Name
• 14.9 Home Alone
• 15.1 Chronologically Confused about Kingdom Hearts Timeline
• 15.2 Video Game Magazines
• 15.3 Aladdin Deck Enhancer (NES)
• 15.4 Pepsiman (PS1)
• 15.5 Superman 64 Returns!!
• 15.6 Life of Black Tiger with Gilbert Gottfried
• 15.7 Chex Quest
• 15.8 Jurassic Park: Trespasser
• 15.9 The Immortal
• 15.10 Spawn Games
• 15.11 The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
• 16.1 Raid 2020
• 16.2 Mortal Kombat 1 Ports
• 16.3 Mortal Kombat Rip-Offs
• 16.4 Dennis the Menace
• 16.5 The Incredible Crash Dummies
• 16.6 Bad Final Fight Games
• 16.7 Mission Impossible
• 16.8 Ecco the Dolphin
• 16.9 Countdown Vampires
• 16.10 The Legend of Kage
• 16.11 Taito Legends
• 16.12 The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man
• 17.1 Shrek: Fairy Tale Freakdown
• 17.2 Darkman
• 17.3 Fear and Loathing in Vegas Stakes
• 17.4 3DO Interactive Player
• 17.5 Corpse Killer
• 17.6 Sega Game Gear VHS Tapes
• 17.7 Carmaggedon 64
• 17.8 Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures
• 17.9 The Rocketeer
• 17.10 Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude
• 17.11 Commodore 64
• 17.12 Freddy and Jason Commodore 64
• 17.13 LJN Games Part One (Movie Games)
• 17.14 LJN Games Part Two (Sports and Marvel Games)
• 17.15 LJN Games Part Three (Wrestling and Other Games)
• 18.1 The Last Ninja (NES)
• 18.2 Contra, How I Remember It
• 18.3 Purr Pals
• 18.4 Hudson Hawk
• 18.6 Garfield
• 19.1 Kid Icarus
• 19.2 Earthworm Jim Trilogy
• 19.3 Indiana Jones: Crystal Skull & More
• 19.4 A Boy and His Blob
• 19.5 Beating Jekyll and Hyde
• 19.6 Final Fantasy VI
• 20.1 The Goonies 1 & 2
• 21 External links

Pilots [ edit ]

Castlevania ii: simon's quest [ edit ], dr. jekyll and mr. hyde [ edit ], season one [ edit ], the karate kid [ edit ], who framed roger rabbit [ edit ], teenage mutant ninja turtles [ edit ], back to the future [ edit ], m.c. kids [ edit ], wally bear and the no gang [ edit ], master chu and the drunkard hu [ edit ], top gun [ edit ].

[The Nerd sweats profusely getting closer to the TV. The plane misses the aircraft carrier and crashes into the ocean .]

Double Dragon III [ edit ]

Friday the 13th [ edit ], a nightmare on elm street [ edit ], power glove [ edit ], chronologically confused [ edit ], rocky [ edit ], bible games [ edit ], season two [ edit ], teenage mutant ninja turtles iii part one [ edit ], teenage mutant ninja turtles iii part two [ edit ], atari 5200 [ edit ], ghostbusters [ edit ], ghostbusters followup [ edit ], ghostbusters conclusion [ edit ], spider-man [ edit ], sega cd [ edit ], sega 32x [ edit ], silver surfer [ edit ], die hard [ edit ], independence day [ edit ], the simpsons [ edit ], the bugs bunny birthday blowout [ edit ], atari porn [ edit ], nintendo power [ edit ], fester's quest [ edit ], the texas chainsaw massacre [ edit ], halloween [ edit ].

[the Nerd hears a knock as his door, and sees two kids; one dressed as Optimus Prime and the other dressed as Swamp Thing at his door]

Dragon's Lair [ edit ]

An angry nerd christmas carol part one [ edit ], an angry nerd christmas carol part two [ edit ], chronologically confused 2: the legend of zelda timeline [ edit ], rambo [ edit ], season three [ edit ], virtual boy [ edit ], the wizard of oz [ edit ], double vision part one [ edit ], double vision part two [ edit ], the wizard and super mario bros. 3 [ edit ].

Video Armageddon Host: Come up here, my little beauties!! Crowd: 6! 6! 6!

NES Accessories [ edit ]

Indiana jones trilogy [ edit ], star trek [ edit ], superman [ edit ], superman 64 [ edit ], batman part one [ edit ], batman part two [ edit ], deadly towers [ edit ], battletoads [ edit ], dick tracy [ edit ], dracula [ edit ], frankenstein [ edit ], cd-i part one [ edit ], cd-i part two [ edit ], cd-i part three [ edit ], bible games ii [ edit ], michael jackson's moonwalker [ edit ], milon's secret castle [ edit ], season four [ edit ], atari jaguar part one [ edit ], atari jaguar part two [ edit ], metal gear [ edit ], odyssey [ edit ], x-men [ edit ], the terminator [ edit ], terminator 2: judgement day [ edit ], transformers [ edit ], mario is missing [ edit ], plumbers don't wear ties [ edit ], the bugs bunny crazy castle [ edit ], super pitfall [ edit ], godzilla [ edit ], wayne's world [ edit ], castlevania part one [ edit ], castlevania part two [ edit ], castlevania part three [ edit ], castlevania part four [ edit ], little red hood [ edit ], winter games [ edit ], street fighter 2010 [ edit ], hydlide [ edit ], ninja gaiden [ edit ], swordquest [ edit ], pong consoles [ edit ], season five [ edit ], action 52 [ edit ], cheetahmen [ edit ], game glitches [ edit ], zelda ii [ edit ], back to the future trilogy [ edit ], dr. jekyll and mr. hyde re-revisited [ edit ], lester the unlikely [ edit ], how the nerd stole christmas [ edit ], day dreamin' davey [ edit ], star wars [ edit ], r.o.b. the robot [ edit ], season six [ edit ], spielberg games [ edit ], the making of an angry video game nerd episode/ barbie [ edit ], kid kool [ edit ], nintendo world championships [ edit ], dark castle [ edit ], bible games iii [ edit ], season seven [ edit ], schwarzenegger games [ edit ], ghosts 'n goblins [ edit ], atari sports [ edit ], ikari warriors [ edit ], toxic crusaders [ edit ], bill & ted's excellent video game adventure [ edit ], tiger electronic games [ edit ], alien 3 [ edit ], avgn games [ edit ], avgn wish list (part 1) [ edit ], avgn wish list (part 2) [ edit ], season eight [ edit ], big rigs: over the road racing [ edit ], desert bus [ edit ], e.t. the extra-terrestrial [ edit ], beetlejuice [ edit ], the twelve days of shitsmas [ edit ], 1. tagin' dragon [ edit ], 2. alf [ edit ], 3. crazybus [ edit ], 4. ren and stimpy: fire dogs [ edit ], 5. rocky and bullwinkle [ edit ], 6. mary-kate and ashley: get a clue [ edit ], 7. v.i.p with pamela anderson [ edit ], 8. lethal weapon [ edit ], 9. porky's [ edit ], 10. hyperscan [ edit ], 11. universal studios theme parks adventure [ edit ], 12. ljn video art system [ edit ].

[Upon turning on the video game system, the game just blares static]

Season Nine [ edit ]

Hong kong 97 [ edit ], darkwing duck [ edit ], seaman [ edit ], the crow [ edit ].

AVGN : This game is worse than a Mischief Night prank! Mischief Night is throwing toilet paper all over someone's yard. This game is the equivalent of throwing toilet paper after you wiped your ass! It's as refreshing as a horse's anus! Fuck The Crow up its bird ass! And fuck you, you fuckin' clown-faced joker kiss makeup wearin' King Diamond Beetlejuice Alice Cooper Marilyn Manson motherfucker!!

Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero [ edit ]

Season ten [ edit ], mega man games [ edit ], paperboy [ edit ], beavis and butt-head [ edit ], the berenstain bears [ edit ], sega activator and aura interactor [ edit ], season eleven [ edit ], mighty morphin' power rangers [ edit ], sonic '06 [ edit ].

[ Tails jumps over the rail and dies in water ]

[ Tails falls off the rail again and dies ]

[ falls off the rail and dies again ]

Planet of the Apes [ edit ]

Game boy accessories [ edit ], treasure master [ edit ], wrestling games [ edit ], polybius [ edit ], robocop nes games [ edit ], sonic '06 (part 2) [ edit ], charlie’s angels (gamecube) [ edit ], star wars: masters of teras kasi [ edit ].

[The Nerd is looking through a 'Star Wars' encyclopedia]

Lightspan Adventures [ edit ]

Season twelve [ edit ], earthbound [ edit ], dirty harry [ edit ], drake of the 99 dragons [ edit ], tomb raider games [ edit ], resident evil survivor [ edit ], super hydlide and virtual hydlide [ edit ], amiga cd³²™ [ edit ], the town with no name [ edit ], home alone [ edit ], season thirteen [ edit ], chronologically confused about kingdom hearts timeline [ edit ], video game magazines [ edit ], aladdin deck enhancer (nes) [ edit ], pepsiman (ps1) [ edit ], superman 64 returns [ edit ], life of black tiger with gilbert gottfried [ edit ], chex quest [ edit ], jurassic park: trespasser [ edit ], the immortal [ edit ], spawn games [ edit ], the legend of zelda: majora’s mask [ edit ], season fourteen [ edit ], raid 2020 [ edit ], mortal kombat 1 ports [ edit ], mortal kombat rip-offs [ edit ], dennis the menace [ edit ], the incredible crash dummies [ edit ], bad final fight games [ edit ], mission impossible [ edit ], ecco the dolphin [ edit ], countdown vampires [ edit ], the legend of kage [ edit ], taito legends [ edit ], the simpsons: bartman meets radioactive man [ edit ], season fifteen [ edit ], shrek: fairy tale freakdown [ edit ], darkman [ edit ], fear and loathing in vegas stakes [ edit ], 3do interactive player [ edit ], corpse killer [ edit ], sega game gear vhs tapes [ edit ], carmaggedon 64 [ edit ], pac-man 2: the new adventures [ edit ], the rocketeer [ edit ], greendog: the beached surfer dude [ edit ], commodore 64 [ edit ], freddy and jason commodore 64 [ edit ], ljn games part one (movie games) [ edit ], ljn games part two (sports and marvel games) [ edit ], ljn games part three (wrestling and other games) [ edit ], season sixteen [ edit ], the last ninja (nes) [ edit ], contra, how i remember it [ edit ], purr pals [ edit ], hudson hawk [ edit ], doom [ edit ], garfield [ edit ], season seventeen [ edit ], kid icarus [ edit ], earthworm jim trilogy [ edit ], indiana jones: crystal skull & more [ edit ], a boy and his blob [ edit ], beating jekyll and hyde [ edit ], final fantasy vi [ edit ], season eighteen [ edit ], the goonies 1 & 2 [ edit ], external links [ edit ].

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Wonder Valley: A Novel Kindle Edition

NPR Best Book of 2017

Los Angeles Times Best Fiction Pick

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BOLO Books Top Read of 2017

“Destined to be a classic L.A. novel.”—Michael Connelly

When a teen runs away from his father’s mysterious commune, he sets in motion a domino effect that will connect six characters desperate for hope and love, set across the sun-bleached canvas of Los Angeles.

From the acclaimed author of Visitation Street , a visionary portrait of contemporary Los Angeles in all its facets, from the Mojave Desert to the Pacific, from the 110 to Skid Row.

During a typically crowded morning commute, a naked runner is dodging between the stalled cars.  The strange sight makes the local news and captures the imaginations of a stunning cast of misfits and lost souls.

There's Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to LA in search of his mother. There's Owen and James, teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There's Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret. There's Tony, a bored and unhappy lawyer who is inspired by the runner. And there's Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts.  Their lives will all intertwine and come crashing together in a shocking way, one that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city.

Wonder Valley is a swirling mix of angst, violence, heartache, and yearning—a masterpiece by a writer on the rise.

• Print length 334 pages
• Language English
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• Publication date November 7, 2017
• File size 4407 KB
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“Incandescent… Pochoda keeps you guessing while bringing these lost souls wonderfully, intensely alive.” — People , Book of the Week

“A dizzying, kaleidoscopic thriller that refuses to let readers look away from the dark side of Southern California. . . . Impossible to put down. . . . It’s the memorable characters and beautiful prose that make the novel so successful. . . . Unexpected and pitch-perfect.” — Los Angeles Times

“Audacious. . . . Each character is realized with vivid empathy. . . . A richly Californian novel, drenched in enough sunlight to illuminate the harshest of truths.” — Entertainment Weekly

“Enthralling. . . . A compassionate look at the displaced that treats each with respect and humanity.” — Associated Press

“Pochoda’s steady hand and sharp eye keep all of her characters moving swiftly and gracefully through the variegated L.A. landscape.” — LitHub

“Pochoda is a masterful storyteller. . . . [She’s] come up with a harmonious narrative that showcases the human condition, full of ecstasy, angst, rage, and beauty.” — Nylon Magazine

“Pochoda is a master. . . . It’s not a far stretch to consider Pochoda to be in company of James Ellroy, Michael Connelly and T. Jefferson Parker. . . . It wouldn’t be a big surprise to find Wonder Valley on the short list for several awards.” — BookPage

“Evoked by Pochoda in shimmering detail. . . . Absorbing, finely detailed, nasty California noir.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Pochoda has written a novel alive with empathy for the dispossessed and detailed description of the California landscape.” — Publishers Weekly

“Ambitious, absorbing. . . . Pochoda paints southern California with a vibrant brush, rendering an evocative landscape on which her desperate characters seek out redemption and rejuvenation.” — Booklist

“Pochoda takes readers places they don’t often see with authenticity and clarity. . . . Vivid and sympathetic.” — Library Journal

“ Wonder Valley seethes with the vivid, searching idea of southern California. But as the intersecting journeys of hippie acolytes, restless hoods, lost boys and all manner of runaways converge, Pochoda enacts an aching dream of home that will possess and haunt you.” — Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek

“ Wonder Valley is destined to be a classic L.A. novel. From desert scrub to cold blue sea, it carries an eloquent yet hard-edge take on the contradictions of a place so difficult to define. It’s impossible to put down.” — Michael Connelly, author of The Wrong Side of Goodbye

“A vision of Southern California that is at once panoramic and intimate. . . . This novel paints an unforgettable portrait of people who long, above all else, for community and connection.” — Edan Lepucki, author of California

From the Back Cover

There’s Ren, just out of juvie, who travels to L.A. in search of his mother. Owen and James are teenage twins who live in a desert commune, where their father, a self-proclaimed healer, holds a powerful sway over his disciples. There’s Britt, who shows up at the commune harboring a dark secret. Tony, an unhappy lawyer, finds inspiration from an unlikely source. And there’s Blake, a drifter hiding in the desert, doing his best to fight off his most violent instincts. Their lives will come crashing together in a shocking way that could only happen in this enchanting, dangerous city.

About the Author

Ivy Pochoda grew up in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and is a former professional squash player. She is the author of The Art of Disappearing and Visitation Street . She now lives in Los Angeles with her family.

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B06X3TXY8H
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ecco (November 7, 2017)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 7, 2017
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 4407 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 334 pages
• #801 in Contemporary Urban Fiction
• #3,193 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
• #3,722 in Fiction Urban Life

About the author

Ivy pochoda.

Ivy Pochoda is the author of Wonder Valley, Visitation Street, These Women, and Sing Her Down. She won the 2018 Strand Critics Award for Best Novel and the Prix Page America in France, and has been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Edgar Award, among other prizes.

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The Valley Recap: Big Bear It All

Can you imagine how tiring, how soul-crushingly, hair-curlingly, taint-spasmingly exhausting it must be to be married to Jax Freakin’ Taylor? This is a man so inanely and quotidianly awful that even Maya Angelou would put that cackling canary back in its cage and tell it never to sing again. That is true of almost all of these men, though, with the exception of my favorite jungle gym, Jason, the only man in the group who actually knows what a Napoleon complex is. This was really an hour that made me ask if men are okay. I say this as a man who knows he’s not okay. (I mean, nothing that a nap and a Malibu Mango smoothie from Erehwon won’t fix, but not okay nonetheless.)

Before we can get to Jax being an absolute asshole to his wife, we have to tie up the loose end from last week, which was Michelle admitting that she texts all sorts of other men, including celebrities. She says Jesse knows all about it, that it’s only for work purposes, and that Kristen saying she is texting them sexy pictures of herself is as crazy as ordering tiramisu at a Mexican restaurant. Michelle says she’ll talk to Jesse about it and goes upstairs to broach the subject. As soon as she says Jax told her something, Jesse bellows for him to come upstairs even though Michelle is patiently trying to talk to him. What if she just wants a personal chat with her husband? I guess that’s too much to ask. Anyway, Jesse says he knows about it and doesn’t care, and the bombshell from the last episode feels both less bomby and less shelly.

The guys convene outside by the fire pit, and it is just a  bunch of dumb bitches telling each other “exactly.”  Danny is still upset that Jesse wanted to engage in some light horseplay with him, and that devolves into him saying how unappreciated he is because he’s not sleeping because all he does is put babies on boobs. Yes, I’m sure that’s exhausting, but what about the person who owns the boobs that the babies are sucking on, biting to raw nubs, and then vomiting all over? How do you think that person feels? But no, all the bros grunt “Exactly, exactly, exactly” at each other like they’re  Tim the Tool Man Taylor . Then Jesse says he thinks it’s over between him and Michelle, and they all cry and sob, and Jason is like, “Um, I invited you here to tell me how awesome being a dad is going to be, and now it feels like a divorce support group at a sad furnished condo in Marina Del Rey.”

When Janet comes out to use the grill, Jesse shouts at her, “No, back inside.” Can you imagine talking to anyone like that? Especially a woman? Especially a woman who is not your wife? Especially a woman who is not your wife who is pregnant? Especially a woman who is not your wife who is pregnant who is trying to cook you dinner? Especially a woman who is not your wife, who is pregnant, who is trying to cook you dinner while you sit around and complain about how hard your lives are? It could not be me.

Janet is prone to freakouts, but this one is absolutely justified, and Jesse was being a giant asshole. Now, if we’re talking about the one she has when Zack posts on his Instagram story just a black screen with the location tag saying “Big Bear,” then that one is completely irrational. She says she couldn’t sleep all night because she was worried that Zack and Kristen were going to pop out from a tree, ruin her holiday, and cause her cervix to dilate 1 million centimeters and cause the premature birth of her baby or something. What was she so worried was going to happen? So what if they crash? Is that the end of the world? Also, Janet is as absolutely petty as they come. She can’t spot a base-level troll like this? It’s easier to spot than the 19-pound turquoise watch that Zack is brandishing on his wrist all episode.

All evening, Jax is intoning that the reason Brittany’s feeling sick, staying in bed, and intermittently throwing up is because she’s drunker than all the bachelorettes in Nashville. He says, “Everyone else is normal. Why can’t you be?” So is he upset that she’s drunk, upset that she can’t handle her liquor, or upset that she’s not normal? Whatever it is, how about holding onto being upset until your wife is feeling slightly better?

After dinner, he starts this up again, and the women say she’s not drunk. She’s car sick. Jax says, “I’m going to ask one time. Answer the damn question. How much was she drinking on the boat?” The women in unison shout, “Zero!” and this is enough to wake Brittney from her restless slumber.

“You’re trying to make me look like a bad person,” Brittany says. “You think I wanna be in here not feeling good? Fuck you.” She couldn’t throw in a “rawt in hell” for old time’s sake? Now this thing is a full-blown fight, and Jax tries to spin everything he’s been saying. He tells Brittany he was asking the girls how much she was drinking because he didn’t know what was wrong with her, but when they said she wasn’t drinking, he thought she must be sick. This is such a retcon to what he was actually doing, accusing her of being wasted before he even asked what is going on with Brittany.

There are a lot of things that are true here all at once. I do believe that Jax is frustrated with Brittany and her drinking and that this is something he’s been dealing with for years. I do believe that, like he says, he’s tried to talk to her calmly, he’s tried to talk to her mother and their friends about it, but Brittany isn’t ready to give up drinking or have a conversation about it. He also says that if drinking makes her feel this awful, then maybe she shouldn’t drink, which seems logical. It’s also true that Jax is overreacting, making his wife look like a bad person, and being needlessly cruel to someone who is quite obviously going through it. It’s all conflicting, but it’s all true.

The problem is that Jax thinks she’s getting hammered because she misses “fun Brittany” and doesn’t want to be “mom Brittany.” He sees her as some unruly alcoholic when everything we’ve seen about Brittany over the years indicates she’s nothing of the sort. The only time she’s gotten really hammered all season was at the girls’ night in Malibu and that was the point of that whole evening and Jax gave her a temporary dispensation to get as wasted as she wanted. Jax also seems to be alluding to the idea that Brittany’s drinking makes her a bad or inattentive mother somehow. He even said part of the reason they can’t have a second child is because of her drinking.

Jax says, “You’re one of ten girls drinking, and you’re the only one who gets this sick.” He sees this as a cause for anger, and I see this as a cause for concern. There seems to be something wrong with the way Brittany’s body metabolizes liquor. Remember at the Benihana night, she had one sip of sake and had to go home because she was so ill? Also, she claims to have only had two drinks all day, and she’s laid up for the rest of the night puking. Yes, Brittany has a problem with alcohol but I don’t think it’s in the way that Jax thinks it is.

Later, he says, “There’s something wrong that she needs to drink this much that she needs to throw up.” No, the problem is that she drinks so  little  and throws up. Jax is right that Brittany should stop drinking, but it’s not that she’s some lush with wine in her Stanley mug driving Cruz to play dates. There seems to be something medically wrong with her stomach or digestive tract, and instead of yelling at her about being a bad mother, maybe Jax should try to see it as a health issue. He shouldn’t be mad. He should be worried. If he could take the moralizing out of it, he might be able to save her.

In the morning they wake up and talk about it calmly and Jax apologizes and says he’ll never do it again, but he says it in a way that we know he doesn’t mean. How many times in his life has Jax said something would never happen again just for it to happen all over again? Remember when he ended up in bed with Faith and some old lady? I bet he said cheating would never happen again, and, well, I’m sure it has.

The boys go off on a fishing trip together while the girls stay back at the house to get ready for Janet’s surprise baby shower. What starts as a conversation about Jesse and Michelle’s doomed union is quickly usurped by the black hole of need that is Jax Taylor’s ego. He says that Brittany wears the pants in the family, which leads Jesse to an astute observation. “She tries to put the pants on, and you yank them down,” he says. “I think you’re a fighter, you’ve always been fighting, and you’ve been fighting to prove yourself for a long time, and you don’t need to prove yourself to your wife.” Exactly! Jax is always robbing Brittany of any ideas or agency that she has by taking control and fighting with her over things. Jax is so insecure that he constantly needs to prove he is right and in control when that is the thing that will tear them apart.

When talking about it, Jax says to Jesse, “My marriage is on the fence, too.” But then he takes it back. “My marriage is far from on the fence. My wife and I love each other to death and we don’t believe in divorce,” he says. “We don’t believe in separation. We don’t believe in any of that. My wife is going to have to bury me in the backyard. I will never go anywhere, and she will never leave.” Sure, you may not believe in divorce, but what if divorce believes in you? This also illustrates a problem that Brittany was discussing earlier, that Jax thinks she’ll never leave him so he treats her like shit because there will be no repercussions other than more of Brittany’s permanent frown.

We also already know this is not true. We know that whether or not they believe in separation,  they are currently separated . We also know that Jax is just the right kind of idiot whose insistence that he will never get divorced is just what will do his relationship in. We know he will never change, we know that Brittany won’t take it forever, and, as sure as we know there are corpses at the bottom of that lake, we know that before this even airs, they’ll already be separated. And after this was the first time I believed that these two might have busted up for real, not for a publicity stunt to get people to tune into their new show.

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