Published by W. W. Norton & Company on October 11, 2022

After Lane left Gil, he sold his apartment in New York City, purchased a house in Phoenix that he found online, and walked to Phoenix from New York. The stroll took five months. Years later, when he returned to New York to visit the death bed of his friend Van Alsten, he told Lane about the walk. “You finally did something,” she responded.

The walk was apparently the first and last noteworthy act in Gil’s meek life. He’s a fine person in his own way, but colorless. We learn almost nothing about the walk. If Gil has any other story worth telling, the story is never told.

Gil has the kind of background that might shape an interesting person. His parents were killed by a drunk driver. He later inherited his grandparents’ ill-gotten wealth and wore the money like “a coat of shame.” He might have given the money away but for meeting and falling in love with Lane. When she disappeared from his life, she left behind a note that said, “I met someone.” That all happens before the story begins.

In Phoenix, Gil befriends Tom, the son of his neighbors (Ted and Ardis), because Tom needs a playmate and Gil is available. Gil befriends (but initially refuses to date) a surgeon named Sarah. He befriends a man who is obsessed with birds. None of these friendships have an obvious impact on Gil, who drifts through the novel with the substance of a ghost.

Gil nevertheless finds ways to fill his days. His focus is on being helpful. He volunteers for a battered women’s shelter, where his gender causes him to be viewed with suspicion. He intervenes on Tom’s behalf when Tom is bullied and later offers to help the bully. He helps the drunk driver who killed his parents. He learns that a friend is cheating on another friend but keeps the information to himself. He buys night vision goggles so he can search for someone who is shooting birds at night.

Otherwise, Gil takes note of the world he inhabits without making much effort to interact with it. He notices birds, the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs, and learns how climate change has reduced the number of avian species. Handing out Halloween candy, he feels like a dinosaur himself.

Gil is far from interesting. When Gil wonders how he would behave if he had unrestrained freedom, he thinks he would tear down all the No Parking signs. Gil is unhappy with the direction of the country after Trump’s election and wishes the birds would help. Yes, that’s strange, but it is no less strange that someone with wealth and unlimited time on his hands cannot envision doing anything more revolutionary than removing No Parking signs. Why should a reader care about Gil? I can’t find a reason.

Gil learns another secret at the novel’s end but, like everything Gil learns, he does nothing with it. Gil is among the most passive protagonists I’ve encountered. He does manage a nonviolent confrontation with a sketchy character as the story winds down, but the momentary hint of drama merely highlights the story’s failure to manufacture tension.

The novel’s lesson seems to be that being alone can be good but being with other people is better. How Gil manages to internalize that lesson by drifting into the lives of people with whom he never fully engages is far from clear. Nor is the expression of the lesson particularly meaningful. To assure the reader gets the point — I admit I might otherwise have missed it — Lydia Millet explains that being alone is a “closed loop” but opening the loop brings the world inside you. And we’re all linked to each other by evolution and dinosaurs. And only fear and loneliness prevent us from becoming one with the world. Or something like that. I might have been yawning so much when this anticlimactic explanation arrived that I failed to bring it inside me and become one with the novel. Maybe the final observation, that we all have no beginning and no end, is a little too zen for me.

Lydia Millet’s prose is graceful. Some of her characters skate on the edge of being interesting. Those attributes save the novel from a “not recommended” rating, but Dinosaurs doesn’t earn an enthusiastic recommendation because Millet fails to deliver the wisdom that she must have intended.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

A skilled novelist like Lydia Millet can pull off a novel about an obscenely wealthy 40-something white guy who's not sure what to do with himself after a humbling breakup. He's not sure what to do, period. So he sells his apartment in New York, buys a big house in Phoenix sight-unseen, and walks across the country to arrive at his new digs. When he gets there, he realizes that he literally lives next door to people who live in glass houses, or glass house, singular. Like in a theater, the next-door neighbors perform their day-to-day. Seems like a setup for some salacious high jinks, right? But this book has no such intentions. It's on the short side; it's on the sweet side. Or at least it's on the gentle side, the drama at a minimum. Its strength lies in its building of relationships, its development of character, its emphasis on interconnectedness -- of humans, birds, neighborhoods, ecosystems, the planet -- the difference between feeling distance and feeling connection. 
[Thanks to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy and share my opinion of this book.]

While interesting and heartwarming, I can't imagine I'll be recalling this one in the future. Definitely a good read if you're looking for a palate cleanser after something heavy.

I was first introduced to Millet bu a local bookstore that does a blind date with a book. She quickly became a favorite authors and Dinosaurs didn't disappoint. Thoroughly engaging and wonderful.

Good character study, slow, and quiet but also underwhelming. Overall, I enjoyed and will continue to pick up titles by this author.

I love a slice of life novel, a slow burn character-driven book with empathetic characters and a gentle storyline. This had it all. There’s a climate fiction angle to the book too, and a nod to contemporary politics in the US. Bonus points for a mention of Tremors, a classic movie starring Kevin Bacon I watched recently with one of the kids.

It ticked all my boxes: it was my kind of book. I know it won’t be for everyone - if you’re looking for a plot, look elsewhere, but if you enjoyed books this year like Groundskeeping by Lee Cole, or any of Anne Tyler’s books, I think you’d enjoy this one.

Gil is a wealthy white middle aged man (wait, don’t tune out).. After a sad event in his life, he decides to leave NYC and purchases a house in Arizona online. He decides to walk there, searching for a purpose in his life, and only sees the house upon arrival.

The house next door which his house overlooks has a huge glass window, and so his neighbours are visible to him at all times. Over a period of time, he develops a relationship with the family and their two children, particularly their young son Tom.

There are a proliferation of birds on the property too, and Gil becomes invested in the nature around him. Each chapter is headed up with a different type of bird.

Wonderfully written in plain prose, with occasional sharp turns and snappy vignettes, this book had hidden depths, with warmth, poignancy and humour emanating from the pages. I loved it. I loved Gil, his back story, his relationships. I haven’t read A Children’s Bible yet but I’ll be seeking it and all of Lydia Miller’s work out. 4.5-5/5 ⭐️

Lydia Millet's new work Dinosaurs did not disappoint. It is wildly different than her other work but equally as entertaining. Readers might think they are reading a story about relationships which is true, but this book also subtly tackles climate change and its effects on wildlife and all of the small ways people can impact society and the world they live in.

This language is easy to read and rather lyrical. The subtleties are what make this work so enjoyable and so impressive. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC, I highly recommend this title.

Lydia Millet has cornered the market on writing what appears to be simple stories, but they hide so many weird and wonderful layers with rich and interesting characters. I loved A Children's Bible and I enjoyed Dinosaurs as well. At the heart of this book is the exploration of relationships between people as well as with animals. It's a quiet, character-driven novel that I couldn't put down. A must-read for literary fiction lovers.

Thank you to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for this ARC.

I really enjoy Millet’s writing. Dinosaurs is a rather simple novel focusing on a very wealthy middle -aged man, Gil, who leaves his home in New York, after a long relationship break- up, and walks 2,400 miles to Phoenix, seeking an abrupt change and hoping to add meaning to his life. On the surface, this doesn’t sound terribly interesting. And in fact, when questioned about his long walk Gil describes it as: Same, same, same, same, slightly different; then same, same, same, slightly different. The humor is subtle and so is the authors’ message. “ in the dark, when nothing else was sure, the soaring tree sheltered you. Almost the only thing you had to see before you slept. How you came not from a couple, or a few but from infinity. So you had no beginning. And you would never end.”

This slim novel carries a lot within its pages, and is often a bizarre daydream of a book. It is strange, funny, and very human, watching as Gil, our main character, sticks out so strongly from the world around him.

He spends most of the novel trying, and failing, to understand others, and slowly starts to merge his life with those of his neighbours, and in the meantime, Lydia Millet directs our attention to some of the stranger things going on in the world around them.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Dinosaurs has a plot that moves at a glacial pace, or perhaps the point was to have no plot at all. I couldn't feel any tension in the book, no reason to keep reading. I had no curiousity about what was going to happen next because by the first third of the book I realized that nothing was going to happen.
Most of the reviews are calling Gil the protagonist a rich white guy, and in fact that makes him the person who's been dominating our lives forever. This means that Gil is not interesting or wise or funny. More importantly, I didn't care enough about him to continue reading.

My feelings about Dinosaurs might be a matter of mismatched expectations. The Children's Bible was one of my favorite books of the last few years and my first experience with Lydia Millet, but where that novel is big (in scope, in ideas, in ambition), Dinosaurs is much smaller and much quieter. It follows Gil, a generous millionaire living next door to a family in a glass house, as he wrestles with loss: of his parents, a past relationship, etc. That glass house is a useful metaphor for the novel's preoccupation with knowability, its concern for how much we can understand one another and ourselves. It is not, however, particularly pivotal to the plot, given how quickly Gil becomes integrated into the lives of the folks next door. I expected more voyeurism, but almost all the discoveries Gil makes about his neighbors come through conversation, not watching. That, too, is emblematic of the novel as a whole—Gil's interior and individual journey to understand his experience is mediated by his relationships with other people. I found myself somewhat annoyed by Gil, despite his benevolence. Millet relies on fragments to illustrate his thought process, and while this was effective for creating the sense that Gil is lacking a kind of essential self knowledge or coherent inner narrative, it quickly grew grating. In general, I appreciated having the opportunity to read Dinosaurs but was left with the sense that I'm not Millet's ideal reader. Maybe you'll have a different experience!

Thanks to W.W. Norton and NetGalley for the ARC!

I was a big fan of Lydia Millet’s previous book, The Children’s Bible, so I was excited to get my hands on her new novel, Dinosaurs, which releases today. Dinosaurs was a quiet little book, completely different from The Children’s Bible, but I loved it too!

This book is about Gil, a middle-aged man with inherited wealth. After a difficult break up, Gil decides to walk (yes, walk) from NYC to his new home in Phoenix. In Arizona, Gil befriends his next-door neighbors, a family of four. We see Gil begin new relationships, build community, and try, in his small way, to make a difference in the world.

It may not sound like much, but Gil has earned a place in my heart. As he worked through his grief and forged new connections, I just fell in love with his care and kindness. It’s not a saccharine book at all, and it’s not emotionally manipulative. It’s just a quiet story of a quiet man living a thoughtful, quiet life. And I was here for all of it.

This quirky little book is about fresh starts. After an unexpected breakup with his long term girlfriend, Gil decides to WALK across the country to start his life over. He volunteers, he befriends the family next door, he watches birds. You just can’t help but love him.

Throughout the book there’s a sense of hopefulness and community. It’s a very character driven book, not a lot of action but the characters are great and so interesting. There’s wonderful phrasing, great writing. My literary book loving friends will love this one.

I really enjoyed this story. It was both complex and simple simultaneously--my favorite kind of book. All of the characters were well-drawn in a sort of effortless way. I'll definitely read more by this author.

Happy to include this title in the October instalment of Novel Encounters, my regular column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

I’d read A Children’s Bible which left me confused but I also enjoyed, so I was intrigued by this follow up by the same author. Here we follow a wealthy man of 45 who packs it in from Manhattan and walks to Phoenix. There he becomes ensconced with his neighbors and his surroundings in nature. We flash back and forth seeing pieces of his life. I actually laughed out loud once or twice, reading this and thought the writing was very well done. I don’t think this is a book for everyone as it’s a slow meditative read but if you like well written character driven books this little novel will be worth picking up.

This is a beautifully written novel about goodness and giving-- of time, money, ourselves, all spinning out what seems the idea of "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones." The main character, after completing an epic cross-country walk to move to the Southwest, lives in a house across from just such a glass house and finds his life intertwined with the family there, as well as the people he left behind (or whose lives touched his in the very distant past, including in the death of his parents). There's a lot to love about the characters here and their particular particularities, and the prose is deep and lovely. The plot is slow moving but beside the point. Dinosaurs is a really lovely novel about connection.

I really enjoyed Millet's previous novel, [book:A Children's Bible|55298364], which was a whacked-out and wildly satirical parable about the impending climate apocalypse and horrible millennial parenting. Dinosaurs is a much more muted, controlled, and oddly lightweight piece of fiction.

Gil is a barely-formed white guy in his early forties who's been living off the interest from a huge plutocratic fossil-fuel trust fund, and incongruously gentle, bland, and non-narcissistic. Fleeing a failed long-term relationship, he walks all the way from New York to an upscale gated community in Arizona, where he's bought a castle-like mansion over the Internet.

This is a story where not much happens, as Gil re-establishes his connections to other humans and to the environment around him, becoming an avid desert birdwatcher. He slowly befriends the family across the street who literally live in a glass house, becoming a father figure to Tom, the eight-year-old son, and a confidant to Ardis, the distracted mother. He volunteers at a shelter for abused women, and builds the first stable and trusting adult relationship of his life with Sarah, a local surgeon.

The prose is polished, the dialogue is clever, and the natural descriptions of hummingbirds and cacti, were evocative. But I struggled to establish any level of emotional connection with this.

<Thanks to W.W. Norton and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC of this in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

𝘈 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯’𝘴 𝘉𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 by Lydia Millet was one of my Best Books of 2020, so you know I was excited to read her new novel, 𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗢𝗦𝗔𝗨𝗥𝗦. Let’s just say I was 𝐧𝐨𝐭 disappointed. This is a very different kind of story, but one that shone for its own unique qualities. ⁣⁣
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𝘋𝘪𝘯𝘰𝘴𝘢𝘶𝘳𝘴 is a beautifully simple story of a wealthy man, Gil, who walked from NYC to his new home in Arizona. He wanted the difficult journey to honor his new life, and needed to make himself work for it. Once there, he quickly becomes friends with the family of four living next door. Their modern home has a wall of glass facing his, and even though Gil quickly becomes very close to the whole family, sometimes he sees more than he would like. The relationships he builds in Arizona make him question some of his own life choices, including what it means to be a rich man. Can a rich man also be a good man? His wealth is his burden, yet he wouldn’t want to be without it.⁣⁣
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“...𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘢𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘢𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘵, 𝘴𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦’𝘴 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘥𝘦-𝘰𝘧𝘧, 𝘯𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘢 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘦, 𝘶𝘯𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘶𝘱 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘦, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸? 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯 𝘪𝘵.”⁣⁣
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I know my description doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a quiet, character-driven novel, beautifully written - the hallmark of Lydia Millet. Not a lot happens, but growth on all fronts is immense. That, and the fact that Gil is one of the most likable characters I've ever come across, will having me thinking about this story for a very long time. At a slim 240 pages, I devoured this book as will many others. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25⁣⁣
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Thanks to @w.w.norton for an electronic copy of #DinosaursANovel which publishes on 10/11.