Great book. I adore Lydia Millett's style. I would say the book's message can be summarized as "See something, say something" and "Do good, be kind".

Loved this novel! Thanks to Annie at the Bookshelf/Thomasville for putting it on my radar. Perfect quiet story - loved.

I read Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet on audio at the end of last year and haven’t been able to bring myself to write about it mainly because it’s a book about a rich white man and his self-created problems and that’s just not a topic that I really care much for these days.

A display of American suburban life in the desert. Centres a male character and his relationship with the family that lives next door. All about the banal everyday and some harder trials. The threat of nature and climate looms in the background. I enjoyed this for the most part but would love to have seen a more fleshed out protagonist.

* I have seen the buzz around Lydia Millet and have been tantalized by the book covers. Unfortunately, for me, the read didn’t come close to the anticipation. I’m not a fan of stylistic sentence fragments, and the short paragraphs bouncing around among scenes and time periods is gimmicky and annoying. I get the artistry of the book and the metaphor at its core. I just found it to be a bit of a snooze. I won’t be back for any more.

This is my favorite book of the year. I loved everything about it: the setting, plot, characters, etc. I found myself rivetted as I read and consumed it in one sitting. This is my first Lydia Millet book; I will definitely be dipping into her back catalogue after this exceptional novel.

this is, to me, a really beautiful character study by an extremely skilled writer - true, not a lot "happens," but there's so much going on, such depth conveyed in each sentence/passage, i was impressed out the gate with this one.

Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet is a quiet novel about a kind, philanthropic billionaire not out to make more billions but to be the best version of himself he can be and help others do the same. We could use more Gil's in the world and I enjoyed being reminded that such creatures still exist.

I received a drc from the publisher via Netgalley.

Lydia Millet writes like no one else. She manages to tell such a compelling story, with deeply engaging characters, while also managing to address the global issue of climate change.

A quiet story with surprising emotional heft, Dinosaurs is about people trying to be good in an increasingly difficult world. I found this slow to start but by the end it felt like a shot of hope that a life can be beautiful and meaningful even in the midst of chaos.

I think I made the wrong choice of listening to this one on audio. In a book carried by its prose where nothing happens, it's tough to keep up on audio. Not what I was expecting overall after A CHILDREN'S BIBLE.

In this character-driven novel, Gil walks from New York to Arizona for a change of pace. Moving into his new home, which is next-door to a glass house, Gil befriends his neighbors. This quiet story is about community and found family and figuring out where you belong.

Dinosaurs is an incredible book about protagonist Gil, who walks from New York to Phoenix after a failed romantic relationship. There could probably be enough material for an entire tome about this journey, but as a sign of Millet’s genius, the walk is only written about in passing. Instead, the heft of the book comes out of a dissection of Gil’s relationships with those around him, most prominently the family of four that lives next door in a large glass house. Without shades or blinds, Gil has a front row seat to the lives of Ardis, Ted, and their two kids Tom and Clem. Slowly at first and then quickly later on, Gil becomes a type of uncle to Tom and a wonderful friend to Ardis and Ted. He volunteers at a local battered women’s shelter and discovers a fascination for bird watching (hence the title of the book, as birds are our closest living ancestors to dinosaurs). This is a beautiful and perfectly crafted story of found family, love, and connection. Out of the solitary journey west, Millet expertly sets the stage to ask larger questions about the role of the individual amidst larger societal issues and constraints.

A fairly slender volume about a man who walks from New York to Arizona to start a new life. He is befriended by the family next door.

Dinosaurs was a fantastic book, exploring themes of starting over, knowing other people, and exploring purpose. I really enjoyed the dynamic between the main character and the others; it helped that the story only had a few characters to really dig into. The landscape of the desert really brought nature into Gil's life, in all its harshness and unforgiving nature. However, Gil also found beauty in it. I really loved how Millet brought Gil to life, and made him a complex character. Even Tom, a child in the book, had a fleshed-out character study. It was fantastic and I can't wait to read more of Millet's writing.

I fell in love with Millet's writing reading A Children's Bible a few years ago, so I was eager to get my hands on Dinosaurs. It did not disappoint.

Gil, our protagonist, is recently separated from his partner and has moved from NYC to Phoenix. He walked the whole way, which for many novels would be the primary plot point. But for Millet, it warrants only a couple of references. Instead, she's interested in Gil's new life in Phoenix. Shortly after his own move, a couple with two kids moves into the glass-walled house next door. What follows is an exploration of Gil's life with this new family, as he struggles to find his place in the world

While A Children's Bible was dystopian, Dinosaurs has a much more hopeful outlook. Gil is the prime example of money doesn't buy happiness (but it does make life a lot easier). He is very wealthy but completely alone in the world, besides a couple of friends he left back in Manhattan. The only relationships he has now are the ones that he forms with the family next door and a handful of other people. The story is a quiet one, with relatively few major incidents. Even the larger plot points feel relatively minor in the grand scheme of the world.

Underlying the book, however, is a steady undercurrent of unease. The Dinosaurs in the title refer to the birds Gil observes behind his house, the names of which give the names to the chapters of the book. One of his friends, an avid bird watcher, constantly brings up the plight of birds due to human interventions, something that Gil sees play out in real-time in his nature walks. Gil's encounters with the birds and desert ecosystem are a nice foil for his rediscovery of relationships with the family next door. Everything in the world is interconnected.

Gil is wealthy, and recovering from a lost love affair when he decides to leave New York and walk to Arizona. In NY he spent his days volunteering with a variety of charitable groups where he makes a few close friends. En route he begins to notice all the different birds and realizes. That birds may be the only descendants of dinosaurs. Arriving in his new home, he begins to settle in, lonely, until a family moves in to the glass house next door. He soon becomes enmeshed in their lives. This is a lovely novel, full of tenderness and community.

While preparing for this review I wondered how many of Millet's books I've read. Dinosaurs makes four. Each one is completely unique, but I absolutely love the voice she brings to each of the varied stories. Like in A Children's Bible, there are some consistent themes in Dinosaurs. It is a much more diffuse story, focused on the real. Families are no longer the strange burdens we need to recreate, but something to seek to create in the first place. Nature has a role here, as do the dangers and pleasures of parenting and seeking community. But somehow this read as so much more hopeful. If dinosaurs can change into birds, can't humans become something better than we were, or live more authentically to ourselves?
Five stars for quiet and understated prose that I couldn't put down.

A charming story. I requested as background reading for a planned review. We gave the book five stars:
https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/6g290112/dinosaurs#reviews

A Children’s Bible was one of my favorite books of 2020, so I was very eager to pick up Dinosaurs. My expectations may have been too high, but this didn’t live up to A Children’s Bible for me.

In Dinosaurs, the protagonist Gil has just walked across the country from New York to Arizona. Wealthy thanks to a hefty inheritance from parents he lost when he was young and reeling from a recent breakup, Gil buys a house in the desert in an attempt to start over. A family moves in next door, and Gil begins to watch their comings and goings through the full wall of glass windows facing his house, before being integrated into their life as a friend, confidant, and default babysitter. (There is apparently nothing creepy about any of this.) The book follows Gil’s relationships, volunteering efforts, and contemplations of the local wildlife.

Dinosaurs is a very gentle, almost soothing novel. There is some drama and tension, but it is muted and subdued, and the storylines play out basically as you would expect; I don’t think anything about the plot surprised me except how predictable it was.

In fairness, though, Dinosaurs doesn’t seem too concerned with plot (and this isn’t a dig!). Instead, the book focuses on small acts of kindness and interpersonal connection as Gil tries to find a purpose and live his values. I did feel drawn to and moved by a number of the characters and I wanted the best for them, but I waited in vain for the book to provide a reason for me to truly care about the existential crisis of a wealthy white guy worried that he’s not doing enough good in the world. It felt like a parable of sorts, but I wasn’t quite sure what Millet was trying to say. I didn’t dislike the reading experience and in fact found the book to be charming and cozy, but it felt lacking after the brilliant urgency of A Children’s Bible. Since I know what Millet is capable of and since several readers I admire have really loved this book, part of me wonders if I’m missing something and I’m tempted to reread it at some point.

Suggested pairing: Richard Powers’ Bewilderment, another climate-focused and message-heavy follow-up to a novel I adored.