A woman embarks on a dazzling new phase in her life after inheriting a sprawling mansion and its vast collection of taxidermy.
Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet is "one of the most acclaimed novelists of her generation" (Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times). Salon praised her for writing that is "always flawlessly beautiful, reaching for an experience that precedes language itself." The Village Voice added, "If Kurt Vonnegut were still alive, he would be extremely jealous."
This stunning new novel presents Susan Lindley, a woman adrift after her husband’s death and the dissolution of her family. Embarking on a new phase in her life after inheriting her uncle’s sprawling mansion and its vast collection of taxidermy, Susan decides to restore the neglected, moth-eaten animal mounts, tending to “the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails.” Meanwhile an equally derelict human menagerie—including an unfaithful husband and a chorus of eccentric old women—joins her in residence.
In a setting both wondrous and absurd, Susan defends her legacy from freeloading relatives and explores the mansion’s unknown spaces. Funny and heartbreaking, Magnificence explores evolution and extinction, children and parenthood, loss and revelation. The result is the rapturous final act to the critically acclaimed cycle of novels that began with How the Dead Dream.
This is Lydia Millet’s third story collection. Her first, Love in Infant Monkeys, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010; her second, Fight No More (2018), won an American Academy of Arts and Sciences short fiction award.
What People are Saying About This
From the Publisher
Earphones Award Winner. "[Xe] Sands presents a complex character whose complaints are balanced by a quirky sense of humor and musings on the meaning of life. Sands's narration is nuanced, entertaining, and thoughtful as Susan emerges from her self-absorption and takes on the role of conservator of the house and its inhabitants." - AudioFile Magazine A Best Fiction Book of 2012. Starred review. "A dazzling prose stylist, Millet elevates her story beyond that tired tale of a grieving widow struggling to move on, instead exploring grief and love as though they were animals to be stuffed, burrowing in deep and scooping out the innermost layers." - Publishers Weekly Starred review. "Millet is extraordinarily agile and powerful here, moving from light to shadow like a stalking lioness as Susan's strange stewardship casts light on extinction and preservation, how we care for others and seek or hide truth, and crimes both intimate and planetary." - Booklist One of the "Most Anticipated: The Great Second-Half 2012 Book Preview" titles. - The Millions "...provocative, evocative...[Millet's] oblique, elliptical style serves her vision well." - The New York Times "...Millet's lush prose has you in her thrall from the start..." - The Boston Globe "Millet's writing is as lush as the house Susan lives in. There's a marvelous musicality to her prose; she's a writer who tackles human emotions with scientific precision and an artist's voice." - Star Tribune "Magnificence, the final book of a trilogy, is more fable than realism, and promises a kind of moral or eerie warning at the end. It is also more of a long short story than a novel, as all of these subplots are funneled into the service of a single, graceful, short-story-like epiphany." - The Globe and Mail
