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A review by maedo
Magnificence by Lydia Millet
4.0
The thing that I love most about Lydia Millet is that she not only captures the moment where one's brain goes off the rails into crazy talk born of desperate unhappiness in a way that's familiar, she takes it perhaps even a step further than you'd expect.
There is a scene in Magnificence where its protagonist, Susan -- late to an important appointment, a serial adulterer with a now-dead husband, heiress to a dusty mansion of taxidermied animals -- starts thinking about how she "loves pornography, loves gangsta rap, loves war video games" all of the simulated violence that "stops insane men from committing actual murder." It is hysterical to me, the way Millet dashes off these hyperbolic opinions with nonchalance. (She does so in Ghost Lights too, which you must read before reading this.)
There is a scene in Magnificence where its protagonist, Susan -- late to an important appointment, a serial adulterer with a now-dead husband, heiress to a dusty mansion of taxidermied animals -- starts thinking about how she "loves pornography, loves gangsta rap, loves war video games" all of the simulated violence that "stops insane men from committing actual murder." It is hysterical to me, the way Millet dashes off these hyperbolic opinions with nonchalance. (She does so in Ghost Lights too, which you must read before reading this.)