Lydia Millet

Dinosaurs with Lydia Millet

The title of Lydia Millet’s last novel – Dinosaurs – seems to wink at the threat of human extinction, and, yet, its explicit referent in the book is to birds, those sometimes-alien creatures who survived the impact of the asteroid that wiped out most of their kind. This kind of double meaning, something like a…

Read More

Lydia Millet’s Mermaids in Paradise

Mermaids are the fly in the ointment in Lydia Millet’s very funny satirical novel Mermaids in Paradise, “an absurdist entry into the mundane,” as she puts it. And, yet, her mermaids, who have bad teeth and the particular features of individuals, also draw us into the wonders of the ocean itself.  Mermaid lore, Millet reminds…

Read More