Atavists: Stories

By: Lydia Millet

Narrated by: Hillary Huber, Devon Sorvari, Patrick Zeller, Pete Cross

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.

©2025 Lydia Millet (P)2025 Dreamscape Media

The genial Lydia Millet has also Hungarian readers

Imagine that. I am sitting here (Budapest, Hungary, Eastern Europe) listening to ’Atavists’ and realizing we facet he same issues: immature adults, hopeless youth, hostility between classes, genders and generations, virtual dependence, endless loneliness. The only difference? Our writers describe it with depressing malevolence, somehow evil brio, while Lydia Millet displays it with female indulgence and lovely witty tones. If the end of the world is near (it is!) I want her to be in my earphones while the sky falls. Lydia, you are the most warmhearted prophetess of the apocalypse!
Kind regards
Peter