NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION 5 UNDER 35 PICK. LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION’S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE. Named one of the Best Books of 2018 by NPR, Bookforum and Bustle. One of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 Best Debut Novels of 2018. An Amazon Best Book of the Month and named a fall read by Buzzfeed, Nylon, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Refinery29 and Mind Body GreenA gorgeous, raw … Vulture, Refinery29 and Mind Body Green
A gorgeous, raw debut novel about a young woman braving the ups and downs of motherhood in a fractured America
In Lydia Kiesling’s razor-sharp debut novel, The Golden State, we accompany Daphne, a young mother on the edge of a breakdown, as she flees her sensible but strained life in San Francisco for the high desert of Altavista with her toddler, Honey. Bucking under the weight of being a single parent—her Turkish husband is unable to return to the United States because of a “processing error”—Daphne takes refuge in a mobile home left to her by her grandparents in hopes that the quiet will bring clarity.
But clarity proves elusive. Over the next ten days Daphne is anxious, she behaves a little erratically, she drinks too much. She wanders the town looking for anyone and anything to punctuate the long hours alone with the baby. Among others, she meets Cindy, a neighbor who is active in a secessionist movement, and befriends the elderly Alice, who has traveled to Altavista as she approaches the end of her life. When her relationships with these women culminate in a dangerous standoff, Daphne must reconcile her inner narrative with the reality of a deeply divided world.
Keenly observed, bristling with humor, and set against the beauty of a little-known part of California, The Golden State is about class and cultural breakdowns, and desperate attempts to bridge old and new worlds. But more than anything, it is about motherhood: its voracious worry, frequent tedium, and enthralling, wondrous love.
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The Golden State is a perfect evocation of the beautiful, strange, frightening, funny territory of new motherhood. Lydia Kiesling writes with great intelligence and candor about the surreal topography of a day with an infant, and toggles skillfully between the landscape of Daphne’s interior and the California desert, her postpartum body and the body politic. A love story for our fractured era.
Lydia Kiesling has written a bold, keenly detailed, and distinctively female coming-of-age story about a woman who, having happily stumbled into marriage, motherhood, and a great job, must now rethink everything. Kiesling makes her patch of high-California desert as vivid a character as the secessionist next door. Beautifully, intricately written, true to life and to women’s experience in particular; full of insight and humor and memorable landscapes, The Golden State is a marvelous and captivating literary debut.
Simply could not get “into” this book.
Don’t bother reading this. Weak story that leads you nowhere. A waste of the precious time I reserve for rest and relaxation.
Reads like an uninspired journal, documenting mundane details of each day.
This book was tedious and very repetitive.
What a sleeper! I didn’t think a book set in the current world could have charm. The author does something really difficult: makes the everyday, very detailed, child care chores assume a rhythm and play the dramatic occurrences against it. I feel as if I have inhabited the settings, and I will remember the narrator and “the crone” for a long time.
I barely got to her parents home – it was a tedious trip with an unpleasant kid. – I can’t read more but I hope it got better
An original, voice-propelled journey through California’s northern regions—this is a pleasurable motherhood narrative that veers far from the typical motherhood tropes to feel modern, engaging, provocative, and enjoyable.
The Golden State is spectacularly good at rendering maternal obsession and panic. Lydia Kiesling is brilliant on our certainty that for all we feel, we don’t do nearly enough for those we love.
3.5 Stars
Review by Amy
Late Night Reviewer
Up All Night w/ Books Blog
I was so excited to read The Golden State by Lydia Kiesling. I have been a Golden State girl my whole life and enjoy reading about regions that I am familiar with.
The premise of the story was drawing, as I’m sure everyone at some time or another has envisioned running away from daily stresses and hiding out for a while. That is exactly what Daphne does when she leaves bustling San Francisco to lay low in Altavista, California in her grandparent’s mobile home. She runs into some who remember her family, and others who are just passing through, building relationships along the way and struggling to figure out her next step.
I enjoyed the broad concept of this story, and there were parts of the book I thoroughly appreciated. The writing style was a bit wandering at times and tended to move a bit slow for my preference. Kiesling’s descriptions were in depth and well expressed. I felt as though I was with her on the journey. There was a lack of connection with Daphne for me, even though I felt I could totally relate to her circumstances, for some reason I cannot place I just did not build a deep affinity for her personality or character.
Overall a well written literary fiction read that took a deep look at small town California and the pressures of taking on a single mom role in this day and age.
A big, rollicking adventure of a novel, overflowing with the kind of intense, fractal consciousness life with small children entails, the world at once collapsed and expanded infinitely, in which whole lifetimes are contained in each and every single day, Lydia Kiesling’s The Golden State is as funny and alive a story as they come.
The Golden State is a rare and important novel not only because it depicts with blazing accuracy the everyday experience of raising a young child but also because it uses the quotidian to reveal larger truths about humanity’s gifts and deficits. In Lydia Kiesling’s remarkable first novel, the familiar and the foreign are not so different after all, and what we remember may not be what is. A profound book.