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A review by catdad77a45
Fight No More: Stories by Lydia Millet
3.0
3.5, rounded down.
Had never read (or indeed, even heard of, despite her many accolades) Millet before tackling this, and now can't quite recall even WHY I added this to my TBR pile, especially as this is essentially a bunch of linked short stories, a format of which I am not especially fond. But the structure is really quite intriguing and if everything doesn't QUITE coalesce (it kind of seems like a 'legit' novel in which some chapters are missing and the chronology is a bit askew), Millet's prose is perfunctory and muscular (oddly, I had to keep reminding myself this was written by a female; it has a latent masculinity, especially in the sex scenes).
There are three main plotlines - one following real estate agent Nina, and her various quirky clients (including a vampire and a demented woman who sees dwarves in her house), one of whom she falls for, only to be devastated (spoiler alert!) by his untimely demise. The second follows another one of those clients, Aleska, an elderly widow who sells her house (via Nina), and moves in with her negligent son, Paul and his new much younger expectant wife, Lora. The final strand follows Lexie, the au pair they hire when the baby comes, who also takes care of Aleska, and has a shady past that includes sexual abuse by her stepfather. The three stories weave in and out amongst each other, and even the other stories that don't seem to initially connect, eventually do.
My main problem is that I couldn't seem to get any momentum going - a book of this length shouldn't have taken me more than two days ... and this took me twice that to get through. I'd still like to give other of Millet's works a try, especially those that ARE novels.
Had never read (or indeed, even heard of, despite her many accolades) Millet before tackling this, and now can't quite recall even WHY I added this to my TBR pile, especially as this is essentially a bunch of linked short stories, a format of which I am not especially fond. But the structure is really quite intriguing and if everything doesn't QUITE coalesce (it kind of seems like a 'legit' novel in which some chapters are missing and the chronology is a bit askew), Millet's prose is perfunctory and muscular (oddly, I had to keep reminding myself this was written by a female; it has a latent masculinity, especially in the sex scenes).
There are three main plotlines - one following real estate agent Nina, and her various quirky clients (including a vampire and a demented woman who sees dwarves in her house), one of whom she falls for, only to be devastated (spoiler alert!) by his untimely demise. The second follows another one of those clients, Aleska, an elderly widow who sells her house (via Nina), and moves in with her negligent son, Paul and his new much younger expectant wife, Lora. The final strand follows Lexie, the au pair they hire when the baby comes, who also takes care of Aleska, and has a shady past that includes sexual abuse by her stepfather. The three stories weave in and out amongst each other, and even the other stories that don't seem to initially connect, eventually do.
My main problem is that I couldn't seem to get any momentum going - a book of this length shouldn't have taken me more than two days ... and this took me twice that to get through. I'd still like to give other of Millet's works a try, especially those that ARE novels.