Where the streets have no name
A terrific novel about hope and transience
Ivy Pochoda is often referred to as a rising star in contemporary literary fiction, and judging by “Wonder Valley,” it’s easy to see why.
Her writing is rich and original and sometimes breathtaking in its eloquence. While the novel, her third, is far from a perfect realization of its author’s obvious potential, this is a terrific book. Ms. Pochoda is a writer to watch.
“Wonder Valley” follows five main characters as they crisscross the Southern California desert, pursuing various human desires and follies.
The novel initially reads like a collection of short stories, though the narrative threads eventually intertwine.
Underlying these separate stories are common themes of humans in crisis. While some might classify “Wonder Valley” as noir, this is a novel less about institutional decay or the dwindling solace of cynicism than the emotional cost such decay can incur within the lives of individual people.
There’s Ren, a teenager just sprung from juvie searching the streets of Los Angeles for his wayward mother; Britt, a USC tennis player experiencing a sort of nervous breakdown after an auto accident; and James, a 15-year-old kid living on the desert commune where Britt becomes marooned. The outlier of the group is Tony, a well-to-do entertainment lawyer who experiences a moment of zen in the middle of L.A. traffic, one that threatens to upend his comfortable life. The novel’s narrative momentum is less a matter of conflict than catharsis.
Most of the action involves its characters breaking down or falling apart, and then stopping to consider at length what had held them together for so long.
Blake, the most interesting and surprising character of “Wonder Valley,” is a career criminal and longtime transient. While the novel has much to say on what poverty is like for those who live through it, Blake seems to represent something more elemental. Ms. Pochoda’s other characters would be at home with the drugged-out derelicts of Hunter S. Thompson, but Blake belongs to the world of Cormac McCarthy.
He is by turns savage and tender, insightful and unreflective of his crimes, wracked with guilt even while barreling headlong into a revenge plot.
Unclassifiable, Blake feels like a rebuke to the reader’s impulse to put any of the novel’s characters into a box.
“Wonder Valley” has a great sense of place. Ms. Pochoda effectively maps the streets of Skid Row in Los Angeles and the desert outside Joshua Tree National Park as one contiguous wasteland community.
While Ms. Pochoda meditates meaningfully on the universal character of poverty — its privations as well as the flashes of humanity and dignity that persist through it all — this story could not have happened anywhere else than where and when it does.
This is all to say that “Wonder Valley” never fails to be interesting. Where the novel sometimes goes wrong is at the intersection of realism and melodrama. Ms. Pochoda seems equally invested in showing impoverished people “as they really are,” while also instilling their lives with drama and intrigue.
The results sometimes do not work. The narrative structure of “Wonder Valley” often comes across as stilted and flat, its world over-cluttered with detail. Ms. Pochoda’s lack of descriptive restraint and her undercooked storytelling technique distract from moments of brilliance.
But these flaws do not take away from the novel’s overall effect. “Wonder Valley” exists within a storied tradition of beleaguered characters whose tragic falls elicit themes of renewal and hope.