Millet spikes this transfixing tale with keen and caustic insights into friendship and love, privilege and obsession, delusion and truth, vulnerable children, aging parents, and imperiled nature, all amidst ambushing moments of wry humor and radiant beauty.
Her prose is sharp and quick, while her eccentric, deeply human characters balance grim humor with keen emotional insight. Themes of loneliness, survivors’ guilt, and chosen family run throughout, enriched by Millet’s understanding of the tiny loyalties, irritations, and intimacies that sustain long friendships. Particularly affecting is Millet’s portrayal of grief as an ongoing reshaping of identity rather than a single transformative event.
Millet insightfully illuminates the ways our mundane lives and usual modes of thinking might be stretched and challenged by a radical twist of fate. Millet continues to weave astute social commentary into sharply observed, character-driven plots.
Down-to-earth ... Driven less by intrigue or suspense than an interest in the stages of grief, Millet’s two-parter succeeds at reminding readers that living in the present is the best tribute to a life cut short. There’s much to admire in this refreshingly unsentimental story of moving on.
