Ghost Lights: A Novel (Paperback)
"Surreal, darkly hilarious and profound." —San Francisco Chronicle
Ghost Lights stars an IRS bureaucrat named Hal—a man baffled by his wife’s obsession with her missing employer. In a moment of drunken heroism, Hal embarks on a quest to find the man, embroiling himself in a surreal tropical adventure (and an unexpected affair with a beguiling German woman). Ghost Lights is Lydia Millet at her best—beautifully written, engaging, full of insight into the heartbreaking devotion of parenthood and the charismatic oddity of human behavior.
Lydia Millet is the author of A Children's Bible, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top 10 book of 2020, among other works of fiction. She has won awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters and been shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She has a master’s degree in environmental economics and lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Camden, Maine.
[Millet’s] writing is always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an experience that precedes language itself.
— Laura Miller - Salon
Strange, alternately quirky, and profound.
— Josh Emmons - New York Times Book Review
Gorgeous…If literature can under the best circumstances transport, then Millet’s extraordinary vision brings us in on the float.
— Minna Proctor - Bookforum
A yarn about marriage, fatherhood, and idealism, its every page idiosyncratically entertaining, amusing, and insightful. Millet proves she might have Jonathan Franzen beat at expertly mixing the political and domestic.
— Martha Stewart Whole Living
Millet is that rare writer of ideas who can turn a ruminative passage into something deeply personal. She can also be wickedly funny, most often at the expense of the unexamined life.
— Tricia Springstubb - Cleveland Plain Dealer
Richly imagined.
— Vanity Fair
With its linguistic and plot pranks and underlying moral complexity, Ghost Lights recalls the laconic, Lacanian novels of Paul Auster. Like Auster, Millet presents a disoriented postmodern hero who becomes a willing but only marginally competent detective in a mystery that requires a series of absurd divagations leading to a life-changing or life-threatening existential inquiry.
— Carolyn Cooke - San Francisco Chronicle
Millet…skillfully interweaves the personal and the political, making Hal’s journey both specific and universal.
— Christine DeZelar-Tiedman - Library Journal
Thrilling, witty, and philosophical.
— Kimberly Cutter - Marie Claire
Millet is a gifted writer, often dropping droll and sardonic throw-away lines of surprisingly smart humor.
— Kirkus Reviews
— Laura Miller - Salon
Strange, alternately quirky, and profound.
— Josh Emmons - New York Times Book Review
Gorgeous…If literature can under the best circumstances transport, then Millet’s extraordinary vision brings us in on the float.
— Minna Proctor - Bookforum
A yarn about marriage, fatherhood, and idealism, its every page idiosyncratically entertaining, amusing, and insightful. Millet proves she might have Jonathan Franzen beat at expertly mixing the political and domestic.
— Martha Stewart Whole Living
Millet is that rare writer of ideas who can turn a ruminative passage into something deeply personal. She can also be wickedly funny, most often at the expense of the unexamined life.
— Tricia Springstubb - Cleveland Plain Dealer
Richly imagined.
— Vanity Fair
With its linguistic and plot pranks and underlying moral complexity, Ghost Lights recalls the laconic, Lacanian novels of Paul Auster. Like Auster, Millet presents a disoriented postmodern hero who becomes a willing but only marginally competent detective in a mystery that requires a series of absurd divagations leading to a life-changing or life-threatening existential inquiry.
— Carolyn Cooke - San Francisco Chronicle
Millet…skillfully interweaves the personal and the political, making Hal’s journey both specific and universal.
— Christine DeZelar-Tiedman - Library Journal
Thrilling, witty, and philosophical.
— Kimberly Cutter - Marie Claire
Millet is a gifted writer, often dropping droll and sardonic throw-away lines of surprisingly smart humor.
— Kirkus Reviews