A01=Lydia Millet
Author_Lydia Millet
ca
Category=FBA
Category=FS
Category=FYB
cultist
dramatist
eq_anthologies-novellas-short-stories
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
futurist
linked
mixologist
satire
short fiction
social commentary
southern california
suburban fictiontourist
Product details
- ISBN 9781324074410
- Weight: 339g
- Dimensions: 147 x 218mm
- Publication Date: 22 Apr 2025
- Publisher: WW Norton & Co
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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From Lydia Millet—“the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves” (Chicago Tribune)—comes an inventive new collection of short fiction. Atavists follows a group of families, couples and loners in their collisions, confessions and conflicts in a post-pandemic America of artificially lush lawns, beauty salons, tech-bro mansions, assisted-living facilities, big-box stores, gastropubs, college campuses and medieval role-playing festivals.
The various “-ists” who people these linked stories—from futurists to insurrectionists to cosmetologists—include a professor who’s morbidly fixated on an old friend’s Instagram account; a woman convinced that her bright young son-in-law is watching geriatric porn; a bodybuilder who lives an incel’s fantasy life; a couple who surveil the neighbours after finding obscene notes in their mailbox; a pretentious academic accused of plagiarism; and a suburban ex-marathoner father obsessed with hosting refugees in a tiny house in his garden.
Lydia Millet is the author of A Children’s Bible, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times “10 Best Books” of the year. Her first collection of short fiction, Love in Infant Monkeys, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She works at the Center for Biological Diversity and lives outside Tucson, Arizona.
