Lydia Millet – författare

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s sublime new novel—her first since the National Book Award–longlisted Sweet Lamb of Heaven— follows a group of eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their parents at a lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their elders, who pass their days in a hedonistic stupor, the children are driven out into a chaotic landscape after a great storm descends. The story’s narrator, Eve, devotes herself to the safety of her beloved little brother as events around them begin to mimic scenes from his cherished picture Bible.Millet, praised as “unnervingly talented” (San Francisco Chronicle), has produced a heartbreaking story of the legacy of climate change denial. Her parable of the coming generational divide offers a lucid vision of what awaits us on the other side of Revelation.

On the grounds of a Caribbean island resort, newlyweds Deb and Chip—our opinionated, skeptical narrator and her cheerful jock husband who's friendly to a fault—meet a marine biologist who says she's sighted mermaids in a coral reef.As the resort's "parent company" swoops in to corner the market on mythological creatures, the couple joins forces with other adventurous souls, including an ex–Navy SEAL with a love of explosives and a hipster Tokyo VJ, to save said mermaids from the "Venture of Marvels," which wants to turn their reef into a theme park.Mermaids in Paradise is Lydia Millet's funniest book yet, tempering the sharp satire of her early career with the empathy and subtlety of her more recent novels and short stories. This is an unforgettable, mesmerizing tale, darkly comic on the surface and illuminating in its depths.

In this “comic masterpiece” (Salon), honeymooners Deb and Chip—our opinionated, skeptical narrator and her cheerful jock husband—befriend a marine biologist who discovers mermaids in a coral reef. As a resort chain swoops in to exploit the shy creatures, the newlyweds unite with other adventurous vacationers to stop the company from turning the reef into a theme park. Mermaids in Paradise is Lydia Millet’s most fun book yet, tempering the sharp satire of her early career with the empathy and subtlety of her more recent novels and short stories.

Lydia Millet’s previous work has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Likewise greeted with rapturous praise, Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a first-person account of a young mother, Anna, fleeing her cold and unfaithful husband, a businessman who’s just launched his first campaign for political office. When Ned chases Anna and their six-year-old daughter from Alaska to Maine, the two go into hiding in a run-down motel on the coast. But the longer they stay, the less the guests in the dingy motel look like typical tourists—and the less Ned resembles a typical candidate. As his pursuit of Anna and their child moves from threatening to criminal, Ned begins to alter his wife’s world in ways she never could have imagined. A double-edged and satisfying story with a strong female protagonist, a thrilling plot, and a creeping sense of the apocalyptic, Sweet Lamb of Heaven builds to a shattering ending with profound implications for its characters—and for all of us.

This wonderfully original collection proves once again that Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet is “the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves” (Chicago Tribune). In Fight No More, Nina, a lonely real-estate broker estranged from her only relative, is at the center of a web of stories connecting a community through the houses they inhabit. With crackling satire and surprising tenderness, Millet introduces an indelible cast of untidy teens, beastly men, and strong-minded women whose stories begin to outline the fate of one particular family being torn apart by forces they recognize but cannot control. Millet’s intellect and beautiful prose deliver profound insight into human behavior, from the ordinary to the bizarre, and draws startling contrasts between house and home.

In a claustrophobic, surreal California house, teenager Estée Kraft lives with her domineering father, whose obsession with insect taxonomy bleeds into sadism. As his schemes multiply, Estée’s bedridden mother, entranced by the glow of the shopping channel, remains oblivious to the escalating chaos. Estée manages to escape her childhood home only to find new horrors awaiting her in marriage and motherhood. In a climactic twist, her traumas take form in flesh and blood—a legacy of the voracious male appetites that have haunted her life.With acerbic wit, philosophical depth, and enthralling lyricism, Omnivores cuts to the core of America’s hypocrisies and anxieties, and introduced Lydia Millet as one of the wildest satirists of our time.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s sublime new novel—her first since the National Book Award–longlisted Sweet Lamb of Heaven— follows a group of eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their parents at a lakeside mansion. Contemptuous of their elders, who pass their days in a hedonistic stupor, the children are driven out into a chaotic landscape after a great storm descends. The story’s narrator, Eve, devotes herself to the safety of her beloved little brother as events around them begin to mimic scenes from his cherished picture Bible.Millet, praised as “unnervingly talented” (San Francisco Chronicle), has produced a heartbreaking story of the legacy of climate change denial. Her parable of the coming generational divide offers a lucid vision of what awaits us on the other side of Revelation.

Over twelve novels and two collections Lydia Millet has emerged as a major American novelist, writing vividly about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her exquisite new novel, the first since A Children’s Bible (ISBN 978 0 393 86738 1) (“a blistering little classic”—Ron Charles, Washington Post), tells the story of an Arizona man’s relationship with the family next door, whose house has one wall made entirely out of glass.The story delivers attraction and love, friendship and grief. But Millet also evokes the uncanny. Through close observation of human and animal life in the desert, she captures the daunting scale of human society without losing sight of the real difference one person can make in the world. Written with humour and benevolence, Dinosaurs asks big questions. Can a person be good? Can a man be good? Compellingly told, emotionally moving, intellectually rich, Dinosaurs may be Millet’s finest novel yet.

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 neighbours 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?

Acclaimed novelist Lydia Millet's first work of non-fiction, We Loved It All, is a genre-defying tour de force that makes an impassioned argument for people to see their emotional and spiritual lives as infinitely dependent on the lives of non-human beings. Drawing on a quarter-century of experience as an advocate for endangered species at the Center for Biological Diversity, Millet offers intimate portraits of what she calls "the others"—the extraordinary animals with whom we still share the world, along with those already lost. Humans, too, fill this book, as Millet touches on the lives of her world-travelling parents, fascinating partners and friends and colourful relatives, from diplomats to nut farmers—all figure in the complex tapestry each of us weaves with the surrounding world. Written in the tradition of Annie Dillard or Robert Macfarlane, We Loved It All is an incantatory work that will appeal to anyone concerned about the future of life on earth—including our own.

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.

Across more than a dozen acclaimed works of fiction, readers have become intimate with Lydia Millet’s distinctive voice and sly wit. We Loved It All, her first nonfiction book, combines the precision of fact with the power of narrative to evoke our enmeshment with the more-than-human world.Emerging from Millet’s quarter century of wildlife and climate advocacy, We Loved It All marries scenes from her life with moments of nearness to “the others”— the animals and plants with whom we share the earth. Accounts of fears and failures, jobs and friendships, childhood and motherhood are interspersed with exquisite accounts of non-humans and arresting meditations on the power of story to shape the future.Seeking to understand why we immerse ourselves in the domestic and immediate, turning away from more sweeping views, she examines how grand cultural myths can deny our longing for the company of nature and deprive us of its charisma and inspiration. In a thrilling distillation of experience and emotion, she evinces the familiar sense of feeling both well-meaning and powerless—a creature subject to forces that are baffling in their immensity. The fear and grief of extinction and climate change, Millet suggests, are forms of love that might be turned to resistance.We Loved It All shimmers with curiosity and laconic humour yet addresses with reverence the most urgent crises of our day. An incantatory, bewitching devotional to the vast and precious bestiary of the earth, it asks that we extend to other living beings the protection they deserve—the simple grace of continued existence.

From Lydia Millet—“the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves” (Chicago Tribune)—comes an inventive 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.

Lydia Millet’s dialogue-driven, fast-moving double novel Fair Ones follows two Brooklyn women in their forties reeling from the sudden and baffling death of their friend Claire. Fair, Mara’s account, opens in the wake of initial shock as she and Jen try come to grips with the enigma of Claire’s killing. Ones, told from Jen’s point of view, picks up a year later as she and Mara wrestle with new relationships and old secrets.In this vibrant, funny-sad fiction of companionship and solitude, Millet dazzles with dry wit and sharp prose. The narrators’ inner and outer conversations, and their ongoing entanglement with the memory of Claire, explore the ways we create and define ourselves through others. Fair Ones is a love song to the intricate annoyances of families both chosen and unchosen—and to the banality, bombast, and humble beauties of midlife friendships.

En ask med fyra noveller som fått titeln Min fyrbenta vän. Novellerna är skrivna av Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, Jeanette Winterson och Lydia Millet. Över­sättning av Andreas Vesterlund. Vi har samlat fyra noveller om hundar, tryckt dem i var sin liten bok och lagt dem i en behändig ask. Den moderna litteraturens drottning Virginia Woolf är främst känd för romanerna Mrs Dalloway och Mot fyren samt essäboken Ett eget rum. Hon tillhörde det litterära kotteriet Bloomsburygruppen och startade tillsammans med sin man Leonard Woolf bokförlaget Hogarth Press. Hon var även en varm hundvän och skrev emellanåt om sina hundar, bland annat denna novell om en riktig strykarhund som en dag struttade in i hennes liv. Novellen har titeln ”Byrackan”. Doris Lessing växte upp i Zimbabwe där hennes romandebut Gräset sjunger (som hon skrev sedan hon flyttat till London) utspelar sig. Till hennes många viktiga verk hör den delvis självbiografiska feministiska romanen Den femte sanningen. Hon författade även science fiction, t ex fem romaner med samlingstiteln Canopus in Argos. År 2007 tilldelades hon Nobelpriset i litteratur. I vår novell – ”Berättelsen om två hundar” – minns hon sin barndoms hundar i en fullkomligt hisnande berättelse. Jeanette Winterson fick sitt internationella genombrott redan med debutromanen Det finns annan frukt än apelsiner. Boken är delvis självbiografisk, i övrigt fabulerad. Mer självbiografisk är hennes roman Varför vara lycklig när man kan vara normal? Nämnas bör också Vintergatan går genom magen, en febrig kärleksroman med tre deltagare som samtliga är fanatiska forskare i kärnfysik. Winterson är kattmänniska. Hennes novell – med titeln ”24-timmarshunden” – handlar om ett tappert försök under ett oförglömligt dygn att också bli hundägare. Lydia Millet är en prisbelönt kanadensisk-amerikansk författare som debuterade med romanen Omnivores och sedan dess har skrivit ett dussin romaner samt novellsamlingen Love in Infant Monkeys. När hon nominerades till Pulitzerpriset uttryckte sig en kritiker så här: ”Millets berättarkonst rör sig över hela människans känsloliv, ända ut till gränsen”. Denna novell – med titeln ”Sir Henry” – handlar om en hundrastare i New York, som går helt upp i sitt värv och får en nästan språklig kontakt med hundarna han rastar. Min fyrbenta vän. Ask med fyra hundnoveller författade av Virginia Woolf, Doris Lessing, Jeanette Winterson och Lydia Millet. ISBN 978 91 7742 515 1. Högkvalitetspapper, sydda ark, mjuka pärmar. Fyra små böcker i en ask, mjuka pärmar, 24, 48, 24 och 24 sidor. Översättning av Andreas Vesterlund.

Lydia Millet’s chilling new novel is the first-person account of a young mother, Anna, escaping her cold and unfaithful husband, a businessman who’s just launched his first campaign for political office. When Ned chases Anna and their six-year-old daughter from Alaska to Maine, the two go into hiding in a run-down motel on the coast. But the longer they stay, the less the guests in the dingy motel look like typical tourists—and the less Ned resembles a typical candidate. As his pursuit of Anna and their child moves from threatening to criminal, Ned begins to alter his wife’s world in ways she never could have imagined.A double-edged and satisfying story with a strong female protagonist, a thrilling plot, and a creeping sense of the apocalyptic, Sweet Lamb of Heaven builds to a shattering ending with profound implications for its characters—and for all of us.

Ghost Lights stars an IRS bureaucrat named Hal—a man baffled by his wife’s obsession with her missing employer. In a moment of drunken heroism, Hal embarks on a quest to find the man, embroiling himself in a surreal tropical adventure (and an unexpected affair with a beguiling German woman). Ghost Lights is Lydia Millet at her best—beautifully written, engaging, full of insight into the heartbreaking devotion of parenthood and the charismatic oddity of human behavior.

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet is "one of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation" (Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times). Salon praised her for writing that is "always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an experience that precedes language itself." The Village Voice added, "If Kurt Vonnegut were still alive, he would be extremely jealous."This stunning new novel presents Susan Lindley, a woman adrift after her husband’s death and the dissolution of her family. Embarking on a new phase in her life after inheriting her uncle’s sprawling mansion and its vast collection of taxidermy, Susan decides to restore the neglected, moth-eaten animal mounts, tending to “the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails.” Meanwhile an equally derelict human menagerie—including an unfaithful husband and a chorus of eccentric old women—joins her in residence.In a setting both wondrous and absurd, Susan defends her legacy from freeloading relatives and explores the mansion’s unknown spaces. Funny and heartbreaking, Magnificence explores evolution and extinction, children and parenthood, loss and revelation. The result is the rapturous final act to the critically acclaimed cycle of novels that began with How the Dead Dream.

Praise for the Dissenters Series: "Millet's prose is lyrically evocative ('the rhythmic scoop and splash of their paddles'). A lush and intelligent opener for a topical eco-fantasy series."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "A thoughtful and thought-provoking beginning to a new fantasy series. The Cape Cod woods, wildlife, and beaches are depicted with loving detail, and the dark forces arrayed against the young protagonists are at once tantalizingly mystifying and alarmingly timely."--Patricia McKillip "Readers will want to leave the lights on well after finishing this book as the detail depicted will create similarities in your mind to Clive Barker's Abarat books. Readers will likely want Cara on their team as they jump, like Alice down the rabbit hole, through the guide book that turns into a window through another world."--VOYA How well do you actually know your family? In the third and final installment in the thrilling Dissenters series, Cara Sykes and her family are hoping to enjoy a normal Cape Cod summer. But there are strong and surprising forces lined up against them, there will be unexpected revelations, and the highest price will have to be paid.Lydia Millet is the author of many novels for adult readers, including PEN-USA Award--winner My Happy Life. She has taught at Columbia University and the University of Arizona and now works as a writer and editor at an endangered-species protection group called the Center for Biological Diversity.

Kirkus Reviews: Best of 2011 A Junior Library Guild Selection Selected for the ABC Best Books for Children Catalog "A lush and intelligent opener for a topical eco-fantasy series."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review In the first of the Dissenters series, Cara's mother has disappeared. Her father isn't talking about it. Her big brother Max is hiding behind his iPod, and her genius little brother Jackson is busy studying the creatures he collects from the beach. But when a watery specter begins to haunt the family's Cape Cod home, Cara and her brothers realize that their scientist mother may not be who they thought she was--and that the world has much stranger, much older inhabitants than they had imagined. With help from Cara's best friend Hayley, the three embark on a quest that will lead them from the Cape's hidden, ancient places to a shipwreck at the bottom of the sea. They're soon on the front lines of an ancient battle between good and evil, with the terrifying "pouring man" close on their heels. Packed with memorable characters and thrilling imagery, Lydia Millet weaves a page-turning adventure even as she brings the seaside world of Cape Cod to magical life.The first in a series of books about the Sykes children, The Fires Beneath the Sea is a rip-cracking middle-grade novel that will make perfect beach reading--for readers of any age!