Love in Infant Monkeys

Animals and celebrities share unusual relationships in these hilarious satirical stories by an award-winning contemporary writer.

Lions, Komodo dragons, dogs, monkeys, and pheasants--all have shared spotlights and tabloid headlines with celebrities such as Sharon Stone, Thomas Edison, and David Hasselhoff. Millet hilariously tweaks these unholy communions to run a stake through the heart of our fascination with famous people and pop culture in a wildly inventive collection of stories that "evoke the spectrum of human feeling and also its limits" (Publishers Weekly, Starred Review).

While in so much fiction animals exist as symbols of good and evil or as author stand-ins, they represent nothing but themselves in Millet's ruthlessly lucid prose. Implacable in their actions, the animals in Millet's spiraling fictional riffs and flounces show up their humans as bloated with foolishness yet curiously vulnerable, as in a tour-de-force, Kabbalah-infused interior monologue by Madonna after she shoots a pheasant on her Scottish estate. Millet treads newly imaginative territory with these charismatic tales.

"These incredibly crafted stories, with their rare intelligence, humor, and empathy, describe the furious collision of nature and science, man and animal, everyday citizen and celebrity, fact and fiction. Lydia Millet's writing sparkles with urgent brilliance." --Joe Meno

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Soft Skull
Published: 09/22/2009
ISBN: 9781593762520
Pages: 176
Weight: 0.45lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.50d

Review Citations: Publishers Weekly 08/03/2009 pg. 28
Library Journal 09/01/2009 pg. 110
Booklist 09/15/2009 pg. 31
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2009
New York Times Book Review 10/11/2009 pg. 18
Quill & Quire 12/01/2009 pg. 25