Is there a writer more profound and less pretentious than Lydia Millet? In her novels and story collections, a dozen in all, Millet deals out existential questions like playing cards, and like any good casino dealer, her hands never shake. Her newest book, Fight No More, could easily be her most philosophically confident and complex work yet ... Even by her own high standard, Millet is exceptional in these moments of possibility. She writes them with equal parts wildness and straightforwardness, certainty and the certainty of impermanence.
Lydia Millet’s new book Fight No More is a curious thing: a collection of linked stories with the genuine thrust of a novel that doesn't decalre itself as such ... The impression the book leaves is that Millet began with the notion of a panorama, a menagerie, or a hub with several spokes, until a set of characters took over her imagination ... In Fight No More the mix of bone and tissue makes for a living thing ... You have the sense that Millet could easily bury us in her smartness but has instead cleaved to the characters she’s created and made her humor generously broad. These are accessible fictions.
Each new story swerves like a breathtaking drive through LA, logical yet surprising ... Fight No More takes the connected story model to a pure and higher form, creating a satisfying web that expands one character, one ZIP code, one housing situation at a time, to 13 tales that are each distinct and whole but form something daring in their entirety.
