Synopses & Reviews
Hal is a mild-mannered IRS bureaucrat who suspects that his wife is cheating with her younger, more virile coworker. At a drunken dinner party, Hal volunteers to fly to Belize in search of Susan's employer, T. the protagonist of Lydia Millet's much-lauded novel How the Dead Dream who has vanished in a tropical jungle, initiating a darkly humorous descent into strange and unpredictable terrain. Salon raved that Millet's writing is always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an experience that precedes language itself. In Ghost Lights, she combines her characteristic wit and a sharp eye for the weirdness that governs human (and nonhuman) interactions. With the scathing satire and tender honesty of Sam Lipsyte and a dark, quirky, absurdist style reminiscent of Joy Williams, Millet has created a comic, startling, and surprisingly philosophical story about idealism and disillusionment, home and not home, and the singular, heartbreaking devotion of parenthood.
Review
"[Lydia Millet] takes aim at the metaphysical jugular...her gorgeous narration...exists in some extraordinary place, at once discursive, editorial, and ruminative.... If literature can under the best circumstances transport, then Millet's extraordinary vision brings us in on the float." Minna Proctor
Review
"In Lydia Millet's brilliant new novel, a skeptical tax man follows a runaway millionaire to Latin America.
Can it be a coincidence that this year -- when the issue of taxes has become an abyss that both divides and conquers our national government -- we also have two new books about IRS workers by important novelists of ideas? The first, of course, is David Foster Wallace's posthumously published The Pale King.... The second is Lydia Millet's new novel, Ghost Lights....
...Millet is seldom compared to J.M Coetzee, who seems an obvious and fruitful influence on...Ghost Lights.... Their prose has a similar, lovely stillness, and both portray characters nudged beyond typical human navel-gazing...." Bookforum
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"Richly imagined." Laura Miller Salon.com
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"Millet... skillfully interweaves the personal and the political, making Hal's journey both specific and universal." New York Times Book Review
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"Millet is that rare writer of ideas who can turn a ruminative passage into something deeply personal. She can also be wickedly funny, most often at the expense of the unexamined life." Martha Stewart Whole Living
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"...surreal, darkly hilarious and profound... With its linguistic and plot pranks and underlying moral complexity, recalls the laconic, Lacanian novels of Paul Auster. Like Auster, Millet presents a disoriented postmodern hero who becomes a willing but only marginally competent detective in a mystery that requires a series of absurd divagations leading to a life-changing or life-threatening existential inquiry." Christine DeZelar-Tiedman Library Journal
Review
"[A] whip-smart, funny novel.... A yarn about marriage, fatherhood, and idealism, its every page idiosyncratically entertaining, amusing, and insightful. Millet proves she might have Jonathan Franzen beat at expertly mixing the political and domestic." Carolyn Cooke San Francisco Chronicle
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"At her best [Millet] exhibits the sweep and Pop-Art lyricism of Don DeLillo, the satiric acerbity of Kurt Vonnegut, the everyday-cum-surrealism harmonics of Haruki Murakami, and the muted-moral outrage of Joy Williams... Strange, alternately quirky, and profound... Millet is operating at a high level in , and the book provides a fascinating glimpse of what can happen if the self's rhythms and certainties are shaken. We should be grateful that such an interesting writer has turned her attention to this rich, terrifying subject." Josh Emmons
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"Richly imagined." Vanity Fair
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
"Surreal, darkly hilarious and profound."--San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis
stars an IRS bureaucrat named Hal--a man baffled by his wife's obsession with her young employer, T., and haunted by the accident that paralyzed his daughter, Casey. In a moment of drunken heroism, Hal embarks on a quest to find T.--the protagonist of Lydia Millet's much-lauded novel --who has vanished in a jungle. On his trip to Central America, Hal embroils himself in a surreal tropical adventure, descending into strange and unpredictable terrain (and an unexpected affair with a beguiling German woman). is Millet at her best--beautifully written, engaging, full of dead-on insights into the heartbreaking devotion of parenthood and the charismatic oddity of human behavior. The book draws us into a darkly humorous, sometimes off-kilter world where bonds of affection remain a reliable magnetic north. is a startling, comic, and surprisingly philosophical story.
Synopsis
“Surreal, darkly hilarious and profound.”—San Francisco Chronicle
About the Author
Lydia Millet is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Ghost Lights and eight other works of fiction. Her short story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives with her children outside Tucson, Arizona.