The actors in Atavists, a set of 14 madcap stories from Lydia Millet, spout their harebrained opinions, where social media-connected teens of Gen Z and Millennials speak at cross-purposes, summarily correct each other’s political correctness, and dream trendy dreams and visualize leveraging them into celebrity and big paydays. Millet’s tone and content blend to produce frothy pitch-perfect comedy, while beneath it roil the real and apparently intractable 21st Century challenges.
The author weaves brief episodes in the lives of a few families and their contacts — friends, frenemies, exes, coworkers — into a single overarching plot that addresses questions and gives the reader closure. Or at least a hint at closure.
I celebrate Millet’s ear for au courant patter and her unerring feel for the zeitgeist currently plaguing America. Characters pay close attention to their favored online platforms, combing through posts to follow, accuse, disparage, or glorify whomever might be in the crosshairs. They ponder the subjects and viewpoints they might use to influence followers, and how to monetize them. Or they want their trendy, buzzword-filled talking points to climb the best-seller list, thus proving their correctitude, and granting access to the hottest restaurants and resorts.
The author’s petard becomes crowded with all the hoisting. I love the fun she pokes at almost everything she sees, and I admire her tangential acknowledgement of the real issues facing the country, the economy, and the planet. Part of her design is to highlight the ineffectual lip service these characters pay to this toxic mix — their attitude, almost without exception — is to cite the issue in didactic terms to prove their superior correctness, and let it go at that.
Pick up Atavists and live alongside these modern-day players; they’re self-absorbed, glib, and out for ol’ #1, but some of them achieve wisdom, perspective, or perform a worthwhile charitable role. Millet is at the absolute forefront of current novelists writing in English, one of my very favorites. She shows a light touch with the fabulous foibles and an unblinking way with the cunning self-interest of her cast. Take and enjoy!
Wrenching life episodes told in plain language; human urges and inadequacies portrayed perfectly; the long-term inescapable consequences of life decisions—all these are on display in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s felicitous and big-hearted latest novel, Theft. Set in the author’s native Tanzania, the book takes up the lives of a couple of extended families, and explores themes of love, betrayal, class oppression, and international economics. It all seems so effortless, and it concludes in such a balanced and generous way. It’s quite artful and unreservedly recommended.
The events of Theft depend on complex family relationships, and they reflect a well-entrenched, if quirky, ethos. This culture reflects an openness to relatives in need, but the need arises from outmoded and frequently misanthropic attitudes. Young people are ostracized—shunted off into service to unfriendly relations and deprived of education—for the offense of having miscreant or unorthodox parents. Tourists to the area show off their wealth and their disregard for local customs and mores. This book contains an unveiled indictment of the systems that result in such abuses.
Gurnah, the 2021 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, composes in plain-spoken, unassuming language; he relies on it to carry the weight of the events which sometimes wreak havoc on his characters’ lives, which it does beautifully. These characters represent the full range of personalities—greed, prejudice, anger, generosity, respectfulness, acceptance—and the author unfailingly presents them as arising from the everyday human business of surviving. The tone is very effective; it’s all superb in his hands.
Generous, deceptively deep, and rewarding, this novel is well worth taking up.
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