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.
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.
