海角大神

Our fictional future ain鈥檛 looking so good, and California often catches the brunt of the authorial imagination. (Exhibit A: last year鈥檚 dystopian novel "California," by Edan Lepucki.) As global warming has morphed from a topic of climatologists鈥� periodic reports to a reality that鈥檚 mentioned in retirement-planning advice columns, California鈥檚 demise, in the popular imagination, has gone from maybe-someday to almost-here.

So the premise of Claire Vaye Watkins鈥檚 debut novel might seem familiar.听Gold Fame Citrus听is set in a near future when water in California is in such short supply that the pools are all dry, tubs and shower stalls are empty receptacles that mock people with memories of bathing, dust and sand stick to everything, and nothing but the heartiest of prickly plants will grow. Even drinking water is strictly rationed, and often all that鈥檚 available to quench people鈥檚 thirst (and there鈥檚 a lot of thirst in this book) is a syrupy cola that鈥檚 been distributed around. A can of blueberries can sell on the black market for $200. Inland, an ever-expanding sand dune is gradually swallowing whole cities.

Needless to say, most people have gotten the hell out, including the starlet who inhabited the Los Angeles mansion where Luz and Ray, the couple at the story鈥檚 center, are squatting. But getting out is hard and growing harder. Armed guards control the borders to greener eastern states, as well as the Northwest, where those blueberries come from. They鈥檙e bent on keeping out the 鈥淢ojavs鈥� 鈥� people who came to California looking for a better life (the 鈥済old, fame, citrus鈥� of the title) 鈥� and now are just trying to survive. Those who are permitted to enter are placed in internment camps.

Luz is one of those Mojavs, an over-the-hill model who as a girl was a literal posterchild for water preservation efforts (a coincidence that鈥檚 permissible because Watkins exploits it so richly). She couldn鈥檛 get it together to go to New York City when she still had the chance, and then she met Ray, a drifting military veteran. The two have been knocking around L.A. since, indulging in love among the ruins. Once they end up with a strange lost toddler, Ig, in their care, they decide to journey eastward, toward the hope of a better life. When "Gold Fame Citrus"moves to a commune of desert nomads led by a man who keeps them supplied with water he dowses for during night missions, it becomes a story of the hold that mysticism and the cult of personality can have when people have nothing else to cling to.

While the听idea听of a bone-dry California may seem familiar, the reality, in Watkins鈥檚 fiercely talented hands, is far harsher. (Taking a shower after reading a few chapters of "Gold Fame Citrus"feels obscenely luxuriant.) It鈥檚 also sadder. In one eerie nighttime scene, Luz and Ray jubilantly spy a large stand of yuccas in the desert, only to discover that they鈥檙e dead husks. They run around kicking them over, 鈥渃rushing large swaths through the papier-m芒ch茅 forest, trampling the flimsy giants, pulverizing the ghostly gray cellulose carcasses and sending up great clouds of dust and cinder.鈥�

Watkins has made her California wasteland a specific place, and the landscape 鈥� both as it鈥檚 described and as it determines her characters鈥� fate 鈥� is reminiscent of the one that defines classic Westerns, even if the getaway is made in an old sports car with a spare gas can in the trunk, rather than on horseback. Watkins鈥檚 awareness of the past seeps into these pages in other ways, too.听Where many futuristic novels settle for the menace of the unknown, only hinting at the cataclysms that led to whatever grim circumstances they describe, "Gold Fame Citrus"is intimate with the history of disaster. As in her previous short-story collection,"Battleborn," Watkins traces the past onto her landscape and her characters with permanent ink.

At key moments she pulls back to catalogue the political dealing, water squandering, and scientific hemming and hawing that led to environmental disaster: 鈥淲ho had drained first Owens Lake, then Mono Lake, Mammoth Lake, Lake Havasu and so on, leaving behind wide white smears of dust? Who had diverted the coast鈥檚 rainwater and sapped the Great Basin of its groundwater? Who had tunneled beneath Lake Mead, installed a gaping outlet at its bottommost point, and drained it like a sink?鈥� Cities, regional authorities, and federal agencies, all guilty of failing to take the long view.

Watkins鈥檚 imagination and ingenuity are astounding. But at times her cup runneth over. Even the smallest details merit inventive descriptions, which can distract from the larger story she鈥檚 telling. When Luz sweats through the slip she鈥檚 wearing during a car ride, for instance, Watkins describes the damp stains as 鈥渆clipses leeching from her armpits, a Rorschach line below her breasts.鈥� And occasionally her story gets ahead of her, as in a section set in a detention center that leaves too many unanswered questions and features an improbable escape. But these are mere quibbles.

As I read "Gold Fame Citrus," I was less surprised by plot twists than by character twists. Luz is a woman of deep feeling who can also be impulsive, selfish, and fickle, especially when an attractive man is around. Ray is strong and competent, but isn鈥檛 always the rock he pretends to be. He sometimes infantilizes Luz, and she鈥檚 happy to allow it, at least for a time. In other words, they鈥檙e a real couple. Furthermore, though both Luz and Ray are devoted to Ig, becoming surrogate parents doesn鈥檛 change them into better people鈥攁 story arc so common that it鈥檚 shocking to see parenthood rendered as something other than a character transformation.

"Gold Fame Citrus"is a cautionary environmental vision, an unflinching critique of our need to believe in myths (especially about each other) when hope seems lost, but most of all it is a love story. That Luz and Ray are selfish when they鈥檙e pretending to be selfless, that they hurt and even betray each other, sometimes unforgivably, does not negate that love. And yet love, like water, is necessary, but not always sufficient.