Atavists
“Featuring four talented narrators, Hillary Huber, Devon Sorvari, Patrick Zeller, and Pete Cross, the stories and characters overlap and interweave. Huber’s four narrations are droll and sardonic, with a sassy, smart teen vocalization in “Artist.” Sorvari’s narrations are leisurely, thoughtful, and clear…Zeller’s narrations are emotive; in “Terrorist,” he emphatically narrates a story of a man with a dog named Bette Midler. Finally, Cross embodies a young man’s perspective in two stories, including “Mixologist,” in which he is a Stanford grad who works at a big box store.”
AudioFile
A fast-moving, heartbreaking collection of linked stories that evokes the joy and alienation between generations and classes in the era of mass overwhelm.
From Lydia Millet-"the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves" (Chicago Tribune)-comes an inventive new collection of short fiction. Atavists follows a group of families, couples, and loners in their collisions, confessions, and conflicts in a post-pandemic America of artificially lush lawns, beauty salons, tech-bro mansions, assisted-living facilities, big-box stores, gastropubs, college campuses, and medieval role-playing festivals.
The various "-ists" who people these linked stories-from futurists to insurrectionists to cosmetologists-include a professor who's morbidly fixated on an old friend's Instagram account; a woman convinced that her bright young son-in-law is watching geriatric porn; a bodybuilder who lives an incel's fantasy life; a couple who surveil the neighbors after finding obscene notes in their mailbox; a pretentious academic accused of plagiarism; and a suburban ex-marathoner dad obsessed with hosting refugees in a tiny house in his backyard.
Praise