I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness

A Novel

By: Claire Vaye Watkins

Narrated by: Kristen Sieh

Named a Best Book of the Year by the Washington Post, Vogue, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Esquire, and Kirkus

“There’s some kind of genius sorcery in this novel. It’s startlingly original, hilarious and harrowing by turns, finally transcendent. Watkins writes like an avenging angel. It's thrilling and terrifying to stand in her wake.” (Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather)

A darkly funny, soul-rending novel of love in an epoch of collapse - one woman’s furious revisiting of family, marriage, work, sex, and motherhood.

Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things. a) As much as I ever did. b) Not quite as much now. c) Not so much now. d) Not at all. Leaving behind her husband and their baby daughter, a writer gets on a flight for a speaking engagement in Reno, not carrying much besides a breast pump and a spiraling case of postpartum depression. Her temporary escape from domestic duties and an opportunity to reconnect with old friends mutates into an extended romp away from the confines of marriage and motherhood, and a seemingly bottomless descent into the past. Deep in the Mojave Desert where she grew up, she meets her ghosts at every turn: the first love whose self-destruction still haunts her; her father, a member of the most famous cult in American history; her mother, whose native spark gutters with every passing year. She can’t go back in time to make any of it right, but what exactly is her way forward? Alone in the wilderness, at last she begins to make herself at home in the world.

Bold, tender, and often hilarious, I Love You but I’ve Chosen Darkness reaffirms Watkins as one of the signal writers of our time.

©2021 Claire Vaye Watkins (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Intense, intelligent, and bristly...angry and alive...a virtuoso performance.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“An audaciously candid story.... Watkins’s book sparks the same electric jolt that The Awakening must have sent juicing through Kate Chopin’s readers in 1899.” (The Washington Post)

“A tour-de-force.... Much of motherhood literature can radiate a sort of wounded egotism, as if the greatest crime that society might commit against a woman were to think ill of her. Watkins, though, neither stews nor panders. She just follows her light.” (The New Yorker)

Just wow!

Stunning book and stunning performance. I will be sitting with this for a long time.

underwhelming, wanted more

the author had some good one-liners, speaking dark truths that most women I know would never say out loud, but I wanted more of them and in more detail. there was too much useless backstory in my opinion, too much unnecessary dialogue. I was underwhelmed and it left with a lot unexplained.

Brilliantly written; Good narration

Brilliant writing of a personal story with reflection that’s vulnerable, funny, and relatable. Love the perspective of someone wise with years looking back on their life to navigate their journey through the present and somehow to the future, and telling that story in their own voice and on their own terms. Highly recommend this audiobook.

strange

“I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness”. Just from the title alone, I was intrigued. It’s billed as a woman trying to cope with being a new mother and a wife. Plus it’s one of the most anticipated novels of the Fall of 2021.

Author Claire Vaye Watkins chooses to name her protagonist, well, Claire Watkins. Hmmm…does a work of fiction by an author ever name their main character after themselves??? Is this a memoir??? Watkins uses her life as fodder, and most likely has fun with her reading audience, having us all ponder what is real and what is not. Even the first sentence “I’ve tried to tell this story a bunch of times.” leads the reader to consider. Plus, novel Claire is an author too.

In the story, she abandons her infant and husband for a book tour. From the start, we understand that Claire is struggling with motherhood. She takes the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression test, which is hilarious. She ponders, when does postnatal depression become just depression?? The beginning of the story was the funniest to me. Most mothers can empathize with the endeavors of being a new mom with a crying baby.

Furthermore, she has an ongoing debate about “The Oregon Trail Generation” which is sandwiched between Gen X and the Millennials. It’s the generation that came of age on the internet. Those who played “The Oregon Trail” and those who parented children who played “The Oregon Trail” understand. It’s an interesting discussion.

Lines are crossed between fiction and memoir when novel Claire has the same father as author Claire. And that father was part of the Charles Manson cult. The father wasn’t involved in the notable killings, but he was involved in supplying women/girls to Manson. Let’s say Claire’s young life in a cult most likely influenced her life as a new mother.

Where lines are not crossed is book Claire’s obsession with her vagina, specifically teeth that are growing in her vagina. I needed to google this, as it is a thing in mythical format. Yes, cysts can contain teeth (mostly those near the ovaries). Can a woman have a vagina full of teeth? The answer is no, but book Claire’s does. Bizarre, yet I went on.

The title of the story came from a boyfriend who had that statement tattooed on his body. The boyfriend had a religious mother who wanted him to be good. Well, he got a tattoo with that statement explaining his feelings. Claire spends time searching for this ex-boyfriend and we get a bit of the backstory. Claire decides that she’s not choosing darkness, but darkness is choosing her. Don’t we all feel that at times??

This is a strange story, and I don’t think I was the intended target audience. I give a full 5 stars to the title. 5 stars for quirkiness. 1 star for format as it was too strange to follow at times (perhaps it’s because I used the audio format). 1 star for falling short of what this story could have been.

Not what I expected

I totally understand that my misunderstanding of what this novel about has no effect on the caliber of the book. But after a thorough history of the Manson cult, I truly thought I had started the wrong book. It wasn't bad. Just some stuff made me tilt my head in confusion. A lot. The narration was good. Story was strange.

Self Absorbed

A better title for this book would be 'I Love You But I've Chosen Self-Absorption'

Hits right. This is the new American Western.

I am going to buy copies of this book and hand them out to every one of my friends. Then I am going to wait for them to come back to me with either OMFG we need to make an altar and worship Claire Vaye Watkins OR WTF did you give this to me for? I am going to take the first group of friends on a crazy retreat in Tecopa and never tell the second group. The event will not be televised.

When you know, you know. I am not sure if this book distills universal truth or was just written for me.

On a random note:
I literally BEGGED a surgeon to give me the biohazard bag that contained the teeth and hair from my dermoid cyst. The author is a freaking genius - I think about my beloved cyst all the time.

Dark and interesting.

I really appreciated this book. It is dark and about a women that has chosen the road less traveled. It’s pretty real and raw. As a Millennial women raised in ca, I appreciates the references and the want for something beyond the prescribed life. I thought the unique story telling was interesting and vulnerable.

waste of money

Struggled to finish, it was so poorly written and the story was noy easy to follow.

Overall wouldn’t recommend

I guess I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from this book. All of the small stories the main character mentioned seemed so random. I couldn’t connect with this book at all, and I’m from Las Vegas born and raised. I guess that’s the only part I connected with. It was hard to get through, but I finished it because it was part of our book club. Definitely an acquired taste.