Editing Lydia Millet (section)

=== ''Ghost Lights'' (2011) ===
Her 2011 novel, ''Ghost Lights'', made best-of-the-year lists in ''[[The New York Times]]'' and ''[[San Francisco Chronicle]]'' and received strong critical attention. The novel stars an [[Internal Revenue Service]] bureaucrat named Hal — a man baffled by his wife's obsession with her missing employer. In a moment of drunken heroism, Hal embarks on a quest to find the man, embroiling himself in a surreal tropical adventure (and an unexpected affair with a beguiling German woman). ''Ghost Lights'' is beautifully written, engaging, and full of insight into the heartbreaking devotion of parenthood and the charismatic oddity of human behavior. The ''[[Boston Globe]]'' called it "[An] odd and wonderful novel", while the ''Cleveland Plain Dealer'' wrote, "Millet is that rare writer of ideas who can turn a [[Rumination (psychology)|ruminative]] passage into something deeply personal. She can also be wickedly funny, most often at the expense of the unexamined life."

''Ghost Lights'' was the second in an acclaimed cycle of novels that began with ''How the Dead Dream'' in 2008. The third, ''Magnificence'' (2012) completes the cycle.