Editing Lydia Millet (section)

=== ''My Happy Life'' (2002) ===
Brief but weighty, her third book, ''My Happy Life'' (2002), is a poetic, language-oriented work about a lonely misfit trapped in an abandoned hospital, who writes the poignant story of her life on the walls. It is narrated by, as ''[[The Village Voice]]'' glowing deems her, "an orphan cruelly mistreated by life who nevertheless regards her meager subsistence as a radiant gift." Despite the horrors that amount to her life, she still calls herself happy. Jennifer Reese of ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' commented on Millet's new approach to the treatment of the literary victim, saying "Millet has created a truly wretched victim, but where is the outrage? She has coolly avoided injecting so much as a hint of it into this thin, sharp and frequently funny novel; one of the narrator's salient characteristics is an inability to feel even the mildest indignation. The world she inhabits is a savage place, but everything about it interests her, and paying no attention to herself, she is able to see beauty and wonder everywhere."