Dinosaurs
Over twelve novels and two collections Lydia Millet has emerged as a major American novelist. Hailed as a writer without limits (Karen Russell) and a stone-cold genius (Jenny Offill), Millet makes fiction that vividly evokes the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction.
Her exquisite new novel is the story of a man named Gil who walks from New York to Arizona to recover from a failed love. After he arrives, new neighbors move into the glass-walled house next door and his life begins to mesh with theirs. In this warmly textured, drily funny, and philosophical account of Gil's unexpected devotion to the family, Millet explores the uncanny territory where the self ends and community begins--what one person can do in a world beset by emergencies.
Dinosaurs is both sharp-edged and tender, an emotionally moving, intellectually resonant novel that asks: In the shadow of existential threat, where does hope live?
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Dinosaurs solidifies a new phase of Millet's career....The spaciousness of the style makes the sense of loss richer and the questions posed--what constitutes moral action, how best can we help one another--at once simpler and more profound.... Millet's great insight--why her writing matters so much right now--is that looking outside the human is what gives human life its meaning.--Christine Smallwood "New York Times Magazine"
This gentle, redemptive novel follows a damaged, trusting man as he heals through human connection and requited love.... it leaves a warm afterglow and an optimism that lingers.--Sally Morris "Daily Mail"
Millet returns with a brilliant story of survival, one subtler and more effective than the NBA-shortlisted A Children's Bible (2020)....This wonderful and dynamic writer is at the top of her game.-- "Publishers Weekly (starred review)"
[I]ridescent prose.--Katie O'Reilly "Sierra"
Millet has perfected charged, science-based prose that takes a surgeon's loupe to how people interact with nature.--L. A. Taggart "San Francisco Chronicle"
Deceptively simple and quietly lovely.--Adrienne Westenfeld "Esquire"
[E]nfolds thematic and psychological depths in elegant, deceptively simply prose.... Another life-affirming work from a writer who always carves her own literary path.-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)"
[A]n intriguing portrait of a lonesome man trying to do good in a grim world.--Donna Seaman "Booklist (starred review)"
[S]harp and implacably funny...The novel is both aubade and vesper. It implies that some people can't escape the prisons of who they are.... Millet's novels draw solace from the idea that we are infinitely bigger than ourselves.--Katy Waldman "The New Yorker"
Minimalist, well-crafted... Millet is exceptionally skilled at what she does.--Sandra Newman "The Guardian"
