Book notes: Dinosaurs

By Lydia Millet.

This was a gift to my wife from my daughter, and I’m double-dipping.

The book says “Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award”, but THAT IS A LIE! Another one of her books, The Children’s Bible, was a National Book Award finalist in 2020, and a separate work, “Love in Infant Monkeys” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for fiction in 2010. False advertising! Shame!! It worked because this book probably wouldn’t otherwise have been in the running for a mom gift. It got a respectable-but-not-stellar 4 stars on ~700 ratings on Amazon. I’ll keep a closer eye on fact checking these claims in the future!

Scoring:

• Axe for the frozen sea: 7/10.
• Page count: 230, effective page count: 150.

This book had a remarkably effortless start. I started reading and before I knew it I was on page 30. Usually I have to re-read the first page 3 times to get going. Maybe my reading muscles are stronger now? Don’t think so. The author has a very quick pace to her writing style. Do like!

The main character, Gil, is 45, independently wealthy, and coming off a bad breakup with his girlfriend of 15 years. To mix it up he leaves NYC and walks to Phoenix (took 5 months). He moves in next door to a nice family. He volunteers his time, possibly has an affair with the wife next door (not a spoiler: the tension is there from the beginning… their house is all glass on that side and she tells Gil “you can look wherever you want”). Gil is like a “Forest Gump” character, a little naive, trying to do good wherever he goes, putting other people first.

Themes: relationships, affairs, community-building, bullying, birding, poaching, standing up for yourself.

Why is the book named “Dinosaurs”? Birds feature prominently, and the book explain that birds are what are left from the dinosaurs after the big Chicxulub meteor extinction event. Perhaps some of the characters are independent “dinosaurs” and become community “birds” after their major life events?

The ending is tidy, though the last few pages are too flowery for my taste, like the author was in some kind of subconscious zone state of mind.

This book is nice and engaging and a perfectly fine choice, but if you only read ~12-20 books a year there are better options.