Lydia Millet

Lydia Millet's novel tells an extraordinary story of the three scientists who formed the core of the team that developed the atomic bomb. With the exploding of the first bomb in Nevada, Robert Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi are transported to today's America. As they gradually realise what has happened to them, all three are consumed by guilt at the impact of their brainchild. At first the only person who believes they are who they say they are is a librarian who recognises Oppenheimer from his photograph in a book. With her they travel to Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Bikini, in the footsteps of the bomb itself, on a journey of atonement which eventually leads them to organise a protest march from Nevada to Washington DC. As the media increasingly respond to their presence and their claims, an ever stranger crowd of followers gather round the three scientists, first of young leftists, subsequently of fundamentalist Christians, some of whom see Oppenheimer as Messiah, leading to a climactic apothesis that is both utterly surreal and movingly beautiful. Oh Pure and Radiant Heart is no more a SF novel than The Time-Traveller's Wife. Instead it is a powerful and original fiction of responsibility and guilt, today's America, and the peculiar terrors of our nuclear world.

Finalista del National Book Award 2020Una de las cinco mejores novelas de 2020 para The New York TimesUna de las mejores novelas del año según Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Tribune, Esquire

FINALISTA DEL PREMI PULITZER I DEL NATIONAL BOOK AWARD Progressistes, urbanites i amb bones feines, diversos matrimonis amb fills passen les vacances d'estiu en una gran mansió vora un llac. Ho tene

Un roman puissant sur laliénation adolescente et la complaisance des adultes dans un monde en mutation.Finaliste du National Book Award.Lun des dix meilleurs livres de lannée selon le New York Times. Un roman prophetique sur le monde de demain.Une grande maison de vacances au bord dun lac. Cet ete-la, cette maison est le domaine de douze adolescents a la maturite etonnante et de leurs parents qui passent leurs journees dans une torpeur ou se melent alcool, drogue et sexe.Lorsquune tempete sabat sur la region et que le pays plonge dans le chaos, les enfants dont Eve, la narratrice decident de prendre les choses en main. Ils quittent la maison, emmenant lesplus jeunes et laissant derriere eux ces parents apathiques quils meprisent et dont linaction les exaspere autant quelle les effraie.

Comment faire le bien et tisser des liens dans une société fracturée ?À la suite dune déception amoureuse, Gil quitte New York pour rejoindre lArizona, à pied.Gil, le solitaire, passe ses journées da

Nat y Sam son hermanos y están a punto de compartir las últimas horas de vida de sus padres en la Gran Isla de Hawái, asistidos por miembros de la corporación encargada de hacer que la Semana Final sea un idilico tiempo lleno de recuerdos y experiencias emotivas.Una historia que acontece en un futuro muy muy lejano, en el que el planeta Tierra ya ha sido devastado por el calentamiento global, las migraciones humanas son habituales, el agua y la comida escasean, tener hijos es ilegal y la dieta alimentaria incluye farmacos que dan la felicidad.

Transported to the 21st century, Oppenheimer, Leo Szilard, and Enrico Fermi grapple with the legacy of the atom bomb in this shattering and beautiful time travel novel (Entertainment Weekly). Oh Pure and Radiant Heart plucks the three scientists who were key to the invention of the atom bombOppenheimer, Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermias they watch historys first mushroom cloud rise over the desert on July 16th, 1945 . . . and places them down in modern-day Santa Fe. One by one, the scientists are spotted by a shy librarian who becomes convinced of their authenticity. Entranced, bewildered, overwhelmed by their significance as historical markers on the one hand, and their peculiar personalities on the other, she, to the dismay of her husband, devotes herself to them. Soon the scientists acquire a sugar daddya young pothead millionaire from Tokyo who bankrolls them. Heroes to some, lunatics or con artists to others, the scientists finally become messianic religious figureheads to fanatics, who believe Oppenheimer to be the Second Coming. As the ever-growing convoy traverses the country in a fleet of RVs on a pilgrimage to the UN, the scientists wrestle with the legacy of their invention and their growing celebrity, while Ann and her husband struggle with the strain on their marriage, a personal journey married to a history of thermonuclear weapons.Possesses the nervy irreverence of Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller . . . Can only be described as, well, genius. Vanity Fair

A young Los Angeles real estate developer consumed by power and political ambitions finds his orderly, upwardly mobile life thrown into chaos by the sudden appearance of his nutty mother, whos been deserted by T.s now outofthecloset fatherAfter his mothers suicide attempt and two other deaths, T. finds himself increasingly estranged from his latest project: a retirement community in the middle of the California desert. As he juggles family, business, and social responsibilities, T. begins to nurture a curious obsession with vanishing species. Soon hes living a double life, building sprawling subdivisions by day and breaking into zoos at night to be near the animals. A series of calamities forces T. to a tropical island, where he takes a Conradesque journey up a river into the remote jungle. Millets devastating wit, psychological acuity, and remarkable empathy for flawed humankind contend with her vision of a world slowly murdering itself.

At the opening of My Happy Life, the unnamed narrator has been abandoned in a locked room of a deserted mental hospital. She hasnt seen the nice man who brings her food in days; so shes eaten the soap, the toothpaste, and even tried to eat the plaster on her walls a dietary adventure that ended none too well. This womans story, covering decades and spanning continents, is tragic, yet she is curiously at peace, even happy. Despite a lifetime of neglect, physical abuse, and loss, shes incapable of perceiving slight or injury. She has infinite faith in the goodwill of others, loves even her enemies, and finds grace and communion in places most people wouldnt dare to brave. Lauded by both critics and readers, My Happy Life consistently surprises and excites with its original vision of a unique woman whose rich interior life protects her from the horrors of external reality.

Animals and celebrities share unusual relationships in these hilarious satirical stories by an award-winning contemporary writer. Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasantsall have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture in a wildly inventive collection of stories that evoke the spectrum of human feeling and also its limits (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review). While in so much fiction animals exist as symbols of good and evil or as author stand-ins, they represent nothing but themselves in Millets ruthlessly lucid prose. Implacable in their actions, the animals in Millets spiraling fictional riffs and flounces show up their humans as bloated with foolishness yet curiously vulnerable, as in a tour-de-force, Kabbalah-infused interior monologue by Madonna after she shoots a pheasant on her Scottish estate. Millet treads newly imaginative territory with these charismatic tales. These incredibly crafted stories, with their rare intelligence, humor, and empathy, describe the furious collision of nature and science, man and animal, everyday citizen and celebrity, fact and fiction. Lydia Millets writing sparkles with urgent brilliance. Joe Meno

A supremely wacky [and] astute novel by a PEN Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist (The Washington Post).In Los Angeles, Dean Decetes, a pornographer with messianic delusions, spins out of control, spending his time drinking himself into a stupor, getting beaten up by strangers hes recklessly insulted, stealing credit cards to pay for sex, being arrested, begging favors, and mounting a PR campaign to make himself famous with the help of a loyal foot soldiera porn-loving midget he met in jail.Meanwhile his pious, romantic spinster sister, who reluctantly keeps house for him, busies herself writing quasi-religious love notes to the boss she worships, and two of her coworkers at the statistics companyan obsessive-compulsive Christian Scientist in a twisted marriage and a promiscuous, depressed blond bombshellbecome enmeshed in her life as she dreams of ridding herself of her freeloading brother and being carried away on a white horse by her employer.Then a teenage math genius runs away from home after her mother humiliates her in school, and hooks up at a bar with Decetess suicidal editor. Told from five points of view, over three wild days in which these lives intersect, this is a rollickingly funny yet heart-wrenching novel from one of todays most acclaimed literary voices.Taken at surface level, its presentation of over-the-top characters placed in bizarre situations is supremely wacky, but underneath is an astute examination of how contemporary society fosters alienation and loneliness so acute that it takes outsized actions to allow any possibility of driving the demons away. The Washington Post

Finalista del National Book Award2020Una de las cinco mejores novelas de 2020 para TheNew York TimesUna de las mejores novelas del año según Time, The Washington Post, NPR, Chicago Tribune, Esquire y BBCUna Biblia para niños sigue a un grupo de doce niños de madurez escalofriante a los que, contra su voluntad, arrastran a una mansion junto a un lago para pasar las vacaciones con sus respectivas familias. En un arrebato de rechazo hacia sus padres, los niños deciden escaparse justo cuando estalla una tormenta descomunal en el lugar. Asi, el grupo, en medio de su incursion, se ve envuelto en el caos del mundo exterior.Lydia Millet concibe, en esta aclamada novela escrita en un tono realista pero con un claro mensaje alegorico, una historia profetica y descorazonadora que explora el conflicto intergeneracional y nos muestra una vision inquietante sobre lo que nos espera al otro lado del Apocalipsis.