Mulholland Dive

<p><b>“It was the year us girls had a feminine desire to go missing,” Vanessa Roveto, acclaimed author of <i>bodys</i>, begins her book within the remnants of a car crash, fragmenting identity, grief, and heart.</b></p><p>Beginning with the death of daddy, the “I” soon meshes with whatever and whomever she comes into contact with—strangers, actors, a Covid crush. She absorbs these people and objects, dispersing them into the Southern California landscape, the Uncanny Valley, warping time and naturalizing dreams.</p><p>Documenting a period of both global and personal loss, Roveto crafts a book-length poem that weighs heavier than the Ego in L.A. Splintering Self between Other and palm trees in the summer heat, <i>Mulholland Dive</i> spins a Lynchian setting within a feminine eruption of alluring language, fluked romance, and the aftershocks of grief.</p>