Fair Ones
A Double Novel
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3.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
From the best-selling author of A Children’s Bible, a story of friends, shock, and survival.
Lydia Millet’s dialogue-driven, fast-moving double novel Fair Ones follows two Brooklyn women in their forties reeling from the sudden and baffling death of their friend Claire. Fair, Mara’s account, opens in the wake of initial shock as she and Jen come to grips with the enigma of Claire’s killing. Ones, told from Jen’s point of view, picks up a year later as she and Mara wrestle with new relationships and old secrets.
In this vibrant, funny-sad fiction of companionship and solitude, Millet dazzles with dry wit and sharp prose. The narrators’ inner and outer conversations, and their ongoing entanglement with the memory of Claire, explore the ways we create and define ourselves through others. Fair Ones is a love song to the intricate annoyances of families both chosen and unchosen—and to the banality, bombast, and humble beauties of midlife friendships.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Celebrated novelist Lydia Millet shares a story of loss, friendship, and resilience from two perspectives in this ambitious “double novel.” Mara, Jen, and Claire became best friends in college, then moved to New York City together, and they’re still close in their forties when Claire dies under shocking circumstances. In the wake of her passing, Mara and Jen, both single by choice, struggle with family, relationships, and grief. The first section, told from Mara’s point of view, captures the confusion and shock the women feel in the immediate aftermath of Claire’s death. In the second section, told from Jen’s point of view a year later, Jen wrestles with choices she’s made and secrets she’s kept, and its thoughtful, reflective tone puts the edgy energy of the first section in sharp relief. Together, the two halves of Millet’s novel paint a complex, moving portrait of all three women—and of what Mara and Jen lost when Claire died. It’s a witty and powerfully emotional read with plenty of surprises and a poignant finale.
