The titular atavists include an underachieving, bewildered young bartender; a middle-aged mother convinced her gentle son-in-law is fixated on geriatric porn; a bodybuilder with an incel's fantasy life; an arrogant academic accused of plagiarism; and an empty-nester dad determined to host refugees in a tiny house in his backyard. As they pick away at the splitting seams in American culture, Millet's characters embody the sense of powerlessness we share in an era of mass overwhelm. A beautician in a waxing salon faces a sudden resurgence of grief in the midst of a bikini Brazilian; a couple sets up a camera to find out who's been slipping homophobic letters into their mailbox; a jilted urban planner stalks a man she met on a dating app.
Capable ... Deftly told ... If the world outside is doomed, there’s great affection in these stories and in finding each other, along with great awareness of what it means to be a neighbor or a regular customer — or even a viewer of someone else’s life on social media.
Most of these stories do not stand on their own — they aren’t meant to — which puts a lot of pressure on their cumulative power to stir in readers both the dread and joy of being alive ... Millet is really toeing the line between piercing satire and cynicism. But what’s wrong with cynicism as a coping strategy for mass extinction and ascendant tyranny? That is the question Millet takes up in one of the more affecting stories in the collection ... If nothing else, Atavists reminds me that we need to try a hell of a lot harder.
