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The road trip from hell: Elegy, Southwest, by Madeleine Watts, reviewed

Watts skilfully conjures a sense of impending doom as a young couple’s expedition to the American Southwest is threatened by deadly fires sweeping through California

Chloë Ashby
Madeleine Watts. 
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 26 April 2025
issue 26 April 2025

Throughout her quietly compelling second novel, Elegy, Southwest, Madeleine Watts conjures a sense of trundling steadily towards disaster. The narrator, a young Australian woman called Eloise, is recounting a road trip that she and her husband Lewis took through the American Southwest in 2018 – while a deadly fire was sweeping through northern California.

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