Fair Ones: A Double Novel - Hardcover

by Lydia Millet (Author)

Lydia Millet's dialogue-driven, fast-moving double novel Fair Ones follows two Brooklyn women in their forties reeling from the sudden and baffling death of their friend Claire. Fair, Mara's account, opens in the wake of initial shock as she and Jen come to grips with the enigma of Claire's killing. Ones, told from Jen's point of view, picks up a year later as she and Mara wrestle with new relationships and old secrets.

In this vibrant, funny-sad fiction of companionship and solitude, Millet dazzles with dry wit and sharp prose. The narrators' inner and outer conversations, and their ongoing entanglement with the memory of Claire, explore the ways we create and define ourselves through others. Fair Ones is a love song to the intricate annoyances of families both chosen and unchosen--and to the banality, bombast, and humble beauties of midlife friendships.

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Praise for Lydia Millet

"[S]harp and implacably funny....Millet's novels draw solace from the idea that we are infinitely bigger than ourselves."
-- Katy Waldman, The New Yorker

"[Millet is] one of the funniest writers of American fiction, a rival of George Saunders, Paul Beatty, Nell Zink, and Donald Antrim."
-- Christian Lorentzen, New York

She's a writer without limits, always surprising, always hilarious."
-- Karen Russell

"Is there a writer more profound and less pretentious than Lydia Millet? In her novels and story collections...Millet deals out existential questions like playing cards, and like any good casino dealer, her hands never shake."
-- NPR

"The American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves."
-- Chicago Tribune

"Millet is one of the most fascinating novelists working."
-- Wall Street Journal Magazine

"Millet's great insight--why her writing matters so much right now--is that looking outside the human is what gives human life its meaning."
-- Christine Smallwood, New York Times Magazine