Edinburgh Companion to the Millennial Novel

Loïc Bourdeau is a scholar of French Studies and the Medical Humanities in the School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Maynooth University, formerly Louisiana Board of Regents Associate Professor of Francophone Studies at UL Lafayette. He has published extensively on contemporary cultural productions by marginalised voices in France and Québec. In addition to several chapters and articles, he has edited or co-edited four volumes, including Horrible Mothers. Representations across Francophone North America (2019), ReFocus: The Films of François Ozon (2021), and Revisiting HIV/AIDS in French Culture: Raw Matters (2022). He has edited special issues of the Australian Journal of French Studies (2020), Nouvelles Études Francophones (2022), and a special issue of Nottingham French Studies on ‘The Twenty-first Century Social Novel in French’ (2024). Christopher Lloyd is Associate Professor of Learning and Teaching at the University of Hertfordshire. He is the author of the monographs Corporeal Legacies in the US South: Memory and Embodiment in Contemporary Culture (Palgrave, 2018) and Rooting Memory, Rooting Place: Regionalism in the Twenty-First-Century American South (Palgrave, 2015) as well as the co-edited collection The Affects of Pedagogy in Literary Studies (Routledge, 2023) with Hilary Emmett. Christopher is also the author of the poetry pamphlet Pick Up Your Feelings (2024) and the forthcoming monograph A Queer Bestiary: Non/Humans in Contemporary US Literature. Christopher is the co-editor of the European Journal of American Culture, the Vice-Chair of the British Association of American Studies, and the producer/editor of the Diversifying and Decolonising the University podcast.

Bourdeau and Lloyd’s expertly compiled volume provides a compassionate, capacious and complex analysis of the over-discussed but under-analysed concept of the millennial and its relationship to long-form fiction. Taking the term as a marketing and generational provocation, it boldly expands our understanding of the millennial’s potential and limitations.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Adulting, Generational Blame and a World of Uncertainty; or The Case for the Millennial NovelLoïc Bourdeau and Christopher Lloyd1. ‘My generation, her generation, blah blah blah’: Forms of Generationality in the Millennial NovelRichard Bingham2. Modest Temporalities: Time and Tense in Millennial NovelsAlexandra Ksenofontova3. Dialectic Conflict and Dialogic Becoming: Millennial Authors and the (Re)Negotiation of a Queer Arab NarrativeRashad Nimr and Michael Karam4. Trauma, Protest and the Dream: The Australian Millennial NovelJessica Gildersleeve5. (Queer) Passing and Diasporic Aesthetics in Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half and Kama La Mackerel’s ZOM-FAMAshwiny O. Kistnareddy6. Writing Millennial Lives at the Intersection of Class, Queerness and Refugeeism: Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly GorgeousAlexandra Kurmann7. Édouard Louis: Repetition and TransformationMarieke Mueller8. You-narration and Anticipatory Shame in the Millennial NovelDenise Wong9. Choosing Marriage, Choosing Motherhood: (Be)Longing as Resistance in Alice Zeniter’s Jusque dans nos bras (Take This Man) and Sophie Mackintosh’s Blue TicketSonja Stojanovic10. From Millennial Matrophobia to Millennial Matricide in Sophie White’s Where I EndJulie Rodgers11. ‘I’m not a junkie or something’: Millennial Fiction’s Depressed Women and Self-Medication in Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and RelaxationEmma Woodhead12. ‘Love is Communist’: Sally Rooney and the Form of the CoupleRebecca Waalkes13. Hardly Working or Working Hard: Registering the Long Downturn in Halle Butler’s The New Me and Raven Leilani’s LusterWill Berrington14. The Work of Writing/Writing of Work in the Millennial NovelKatie da Cunha Lewin15. ‘Made in China’: Racial Capitalism and the Spectre of Coolie Labour in Ling Ma’s SeveranceHarriet Stilley16. Anxiety of Form: The Millennial Novel and Postsecular PoliticsRyan Lackey17. Faith is Not beyond the Self: Reconciling Contradictory Impulses in Fatima Daas’s La Petite DernièreMrinmoyee Bhattacharya18. Desi Millennial Fiction: Refusal, Expectations and Misunderstanding in the Age of TerrorJay N. Shelat19. After the Flood: Rising Waters as the New Normal in Millennial EcofictionMarc André Fortin20. Solastalgia contra the Good Life: The Failures of Dutch Millennial Climate FictionJesse van AmelsvoortCoda: What Comes After the Millennial Novel?Loïc Bourdeau and Christopher LloydA Millenial Novel BibliographyNotes on ContributorsIndex