Dinosaurs
Ratings16
Average rating3.9
15
Ratings16
Average rating3.9
One of NPR's Books We Love for 2022 • A New Yorker Best Book of 2022 So Far • A Publishers Weekly Best Novel of 2022 • A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2022 • One of Time's 100 Must-Read Books of 2022 • An Oprah Daily and Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2022 • A BookBrowse Best Novel for Book Clubs in 2024 A stunning new novel from the author of A Children’s Bible, a National Book Award finalist and one of the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2020. 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 neighbors 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?
Reviews with the most likes.
An intimate and introspective look at one man's search for meaning in his life after a traumatic breakup. Millet writes with a delicate hand, Gil's story is respectfully told and his relationships with his neighbours and friends feel realistic and well thought out. An author I would definitely read again.
Gil leaves the life he has in New York and starts over in Arizona, buying a house sight unseen except for some Internet photos, and he chooses to begin his new life with a walk out west. He gets settled in his new home, and it isn't long before the house next door, also for sale, has new owners and a family soon moves in. The house next door has a glass wall that permits Gil to look in on their day-to-day activities. Gil and the family quickly get to know each other and become friends.
A quietly meditative book that centers on Gil, a man with a traumatic start to life, but who has a gift for establishing relationships with people, who has a magical way of daring to gently speak truth and work through difficulties, who is a deep and genuine friend to all he comes to know.
The author is masterful at creating scenes that are emotionally resonant without resorting to tanks and cannonballs. Millet draws an intricate picture of life in our world, pulling in elements of human society as well as the natural world, and respects her readers enough to allow us to take away from the scenes what we will. And we do. Dinosaurs is the sort of story that makes us keep going back to the book after we have finished it and rereading parts and thinking about the story and the characters again and again.
