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Lydia Millet
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=== ''Magnificence'' (2012) === ''Magnificence'' introduced Susan Lindley, a woman adrift after her husband's death and the dissolution of her family. Embarking on a new phase in her life after inheriting her uncle's sprawling mansion and its vast collection of [[taxidermy]], Susan decides to restore the extensive collection of moth-eaten animal mounts, tending to "the fur and feathers, the beaks, the bones and shimmering tails." Meanwhile, an equally derelict human [[menagerie]] – including an unfaithful husband and a chorus of eccentric old women – joins her in residence. In a setting both wondrous and absurd, Susan defends her legacy from freeloading relatives and explores the mansion's unknown spaces. [[Jonathan Lethem]], writing for ''[[The Guardian]]'', called it "elegant, darkly comic…with overtones variously of [[Muriel Spark]], [[Edward Gorey]] and [[J. G. Ballard]], full of contemporary wit and devilish fateful turns for her characters, and then also to knit together into a tapestry of vast implication and ethical urgency, something as large as any writer could attempt: a kind of allegorical [[elegy]] for life on a dying planet. Ours, that is." The book was nominated for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
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