Animals and celebrities share unusual relationships in these hilarious
satirical stories by an award-winning contemporary writer.
Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants--all 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 Millet's
ruthlessly lucid prose. Implacable in their actions, the animals in
Millet's 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
Millet's writing sparkles with urgent brilliance." --Joe Meno
