Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet

Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet

Published October 2022 by Norton, W. W. and Company, Inc. 

240 pages

Publisher's Summary: 

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?

My Thoughts: 

My alarm to put the house to bed for the night so that I can put myself to bed for the night has just gone off but it's time to get my thoughts down about this one before I forget them. And I might; because, while this is a lovely story, it's also a quiet, small work that so closely feels like real life that it almost blends into it. 

• If you're looking for action, look elsewhere. This is the stuff of one man's life and the family he finds for himself after years of not really having one. And while there are grand ideas (for goodness sake, Gil walks from New York City to Phoenix; he confronts a man who's bullying his wife and son), those moments are not the highlight of this book, rather they are explanations of Gil's character and moments in which to see him grow and open himself up. 
• Is it a little unbelievable to that Gil would wind up in Phoenix and have a family of four move in next door, all four of whom he is able to win over simply by dint of being himself? Yes. But also, it's so wonderfully written that it doesn't feel unbelievable when you're reading it. 
• It's a lesson to be mindful of the special people in your life, to be kind, to give back when you can, and to open yourself up to life's experiences. 
• It's funny. Not in the laugh out loud way but in the chuckle and smile way. A quiet way, like so much about the book. 
• Millet does, what appears to me to be, a terrific job of writing her male characters in particular. 
• It took me a while to understand the title, and all of the talk of birds. But in the end, this is what I understood Millet to be asking: are humane, kind people on the verge of extinction or will humanity find a way to survive, just as those dinosaurs who survived extinction to become birds did? One can only hope.