Atavists: Stories Audiobook

A fast-moving, heartbreaking collection of linked stories that evokes the joy and alienation between generations and classes in the era of mass overwhelm.

From Lydia Millet—“the American writer with the funniest, wisest grasp on how we fool ourselves” (Chicago Tribune)—comes an inventive new collection of short fiction. Atavists follows a group of families, couples, and loners in their collisions, confessions, and conflicts in a post-pandemic America of artificially lush lawns, beauty salons, tech-bro mansions, assisted-living facilities, big-box stores, gastropubs, college campuses, and medieval role-playing festivals.

The various “-ists” who people these linked stories—from futurists to insurrectionists to cosmetologists—include a professor who’s morbidly fixated on an old friend’s Instagram account; a woman convinced that her bright young son-in-law is watching geriatric porn; a bodybuilder who lives an incel’s fantasy life; a couple who surveil the neighbors after finding obscene notes in their mailbox; a pretentious academic accused of plagiarism; and a suburban ex-marathoner dad obsessed with hosting refugees in a tiny house in his backyard.

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“Featuring four talented narrators, Hillary Huber, Devon Sorvari, Patrick Zeller, and Pete Cross, the stories and characters overlap and interweave. Huber’s four narrations are droll and sardonic, with a sassy, smart teen vocalization in “Artist.” Sorvari’s narrations are leisurely, thoughtful, and clear…Zeller’s narrations are emotive; in “Terrorist,” he emphatically narrates a story of a man with a dog named Bette Midler. Finally, Cross embodies a young man’s perspective in two stories, including “Mixologist,” in which he is a Stanford grad who works at a big box store.”

— AudioFile