Atavists

A fast-moving, heartbreaking collection of linked stories that evokes the joy and alienation between generations and classes in the era of mass overwhelm

"Very few writers can make the apocalypse hilarious and sentimental. Millet is the kind of contemporary genius who should be at every book festival and on every creative writing course."

"[Millet] knows how to put a story together. How to pace drama and consummate tension, when to turn up the volume and when to leave us alone with what she’s put in motion."

"Although optimism is understandably in short supply, Millet delivers her doom with a generous dose of subversive humour… Millet has an excellent ear for dialogue, and her characters are endearing."

"All this tension, which Millet renders keenly and readably, is built and released in the face of immense and existential forces of undoing... the stories are presented conventionally, in clean, polished prose."

"Millet playfully skewers Los Angeles liberals while leaving their social concerns quietly intact on the page… in the hands of the Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist these characters arrive fully formed, complex and warm."

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.