On this week’s episode, Lydia Millet joins us to discuss Dinosaurs (W.W. Norton, Oct. 11). Millet is the author of more than a dozen novels and story collections, including 2020’s A Children’s Bible, which was shortlisted for the National Book Award, and Love in Infant Monkeys, a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona, and she is an editor and staff writer at the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson.

Dinosaurs centers on a wealthy man named Gil, who, in the aftermath of a terrible breakup, walks from New York City to Arizona—to move into a mansion he purchased sight unseen. The mansion is located next door to “a mid-century modern masterpiece,” an unoccupied house with a large glass wall that allows Gil to observe nearly the entirety of its open floor plan. Soon, a family moves in—mother, father, daughter, son. Swiftly, they incorporate Gil into their everyday life: he becomes a friend, role model, confidant, and defender.

Here’s a bit from Kirkus’ starred review of Dinosaurs: “How we can nurture ourselves, the people dear to us, and the world around us are key issues in this gentle, meditative novel, told from Gil’s point of view to slowly build a marvelously full, if inadvertent, self-portrait.…His new Arizona friends are also depicted as kind people striving to do right by others. Are they doomed to extinction, like Millet’s eponymous dinosaurs? Will they survive by evolving, as dinosaurs did into birds? These sorts of philosophical questions are raised with a very light touch by Millet, who enfolds thematic and psychological depths in elegant, deceptively simply prose.…Another life-affirming work from a writer who always carves her own literary path.”

Millet and host Megan Labrise discuss the announcement of Annie Ernaux’s Nobel Prize in Literature; what compels Gil's epic voyage in Dinosaurs; the proverb “those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”; whether Millet has a particular fascination with Navy SEALs; whether a good man is hard to find; and much more.

You can listen to new episodes of Fully Booked every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or at kirkusreviews.com/podcast.