Omnivores

by Lydia Millet

In a claustrophobic, surreal California house, teenager Estée Kraft lives with her domineering father, whose obsession with insect taxonomy bleeds into sadism. As his schemes multiply, Estée’s bedridden mother, entranced by the glow of the shopping channel, remains oblivious to the escalating chaos. Estée manages to escape her childhood home only to find new horrors awaiting her in marriage and motherhood. In a climactic twist, her traumas take form in flesh and blood—a legacy of the voracious male appetites that have haunted her life.


With acerbic wit, philosophical depth, and enthralling lyricism, Omnivores cuts to the core of America’s hypocrisies and anxieties, and introduced Lydia Millet as one of the wildest satirists of our time.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, Satire, Magical Realism

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Lydia Millet has written twelve works of fiction. She has won awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her books have been longlisted for the National Book Award, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and named as New York Times Notable Books. Her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She lives outside Tucson, Arizona.

Reviews

[Ethan · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the more eye-opening lessons from my college globalization class was the story of how taxonomy begat capitalism. By encouraging inner-continental exploration, the Linnean system created a legacy of exploitation, eventually leading to the plastic hell of the modern world. This is the setting of Omnivores, in which taxonomy and greed are major themes. This cartoonish novel is both funny and disturbing, bringing to mind such disparate references as L’Eclisse and Dead Alive. This is surely the first time I’ve encountered a piece of media that reminded me of these two (of my favorite) movies. An impressive debut. Shout out to Mike for the recommendation.

[Tye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful. Maybe I'm dumb but this is some of the smartest feminist fiction I've ever read. Oddly, it reminds me of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, though...I heart Lydia Millet. She gets my crush.

[Kitty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Write something that means something next time please thank you goodbye

[Savannah King · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think there is likely a lot of wonderful and thought-provoking feminist critique in this book. That being said, it was a bit too strange for me to be able to engage with that perspective.

The overly excessive amount of harmful, unnecessary, and quite frankly just plain cruel fatphobia in this book really detracted from it. Please find a different way to demonstrate the flaws in a character without using their body as a metaphor for those flaws.

[Lawrence Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

Millet seems to be respected enough in the US but barely known in Europe, including the UK. Don't understand that. Maybe because her novels are very hard to categorise, both in terms of content and style. Not at all hard to read though. If there's a common theme it's that there is something violently, unspeakably wrong with industrial, hyperconsumptive modernity and the way it's mediated to us - but this is obliquely and surreptitiously implied in the narrative not foghorned at you at all (foghorning messages at readers most certainly not my thing).

In terms of content this is Flann O'Brien of The Third Policeman writes a particularly brutal Wily Coyote cartoon and a dash of a female Holden Caulfield all taking place in HP Lovecraft's back yard - all described as if it was humdrum reality. It is ludicrous, hilarious and unsettling. It does have a teenage lady protagonist who you root for, whose sudden exposure to other individuals aged 18 she can only process by means of scientifically cataloguing their behavior as if they were moths, which is one of the (most harmless) things her insane father forced on her. Another is strapping explosives to gerbils and hamsters and hurling them at your enemies when you declare your house an independent republic in the US. Which is absurd yes but hang on - this is actually how weapons ARE tested (thank you Mary Roach). And now you are in the realm of what I think Millet is doing, there is method in this madness, our lived reality, stripped of its polite veneer, actually is this abjectly dreadful.

[mina-mae alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

On the book front 'omnivores reads like a cartoon with soul'. LA Times sure werent wrong about that, this book is hilarious and also very gross, surreal and downright bizarre. At times it made me feel the same sort of ikky uncomfortable i felt watching goosebumps as a kid.

Omnivores is about the entrapment of Estée by men in three parts: father, husband, son. But its 'about' lots of things really. Late stage capitalism critique? Men critique? Whatever, both these things are as absurd as each other.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disturbing! I almost had to stop reading / did stop reading at a particularly disturbing part early on, then picked it up again and glad to have done so. Quirky doesn't even begin to describe it. It's not horror, but there is horror. Very much reminds me of George Saunders. The cover synopsis doesn't do it justice at all.

[Luke Floyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is so strange and really disturbing lowkey… but like very good

[Summer Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raising Gazorpazorp 👶

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even at this early stage in her career, Millet's commitment to screwed up families and outliers is quite vivacious. You're probably better off skipping ahead to OH PURE AND RADIANT HEART and HOW THE DEAD DREAM if you aren't interested in being a Millet completist. But this is a fascinating early volume that sees Millet discovering her interests in science, environment, and human behavior.

[kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

horrible people, horrible things happening, a monster, gross horribleness! even the one character that you're supposed to like is not completely likable. I finished it quickly partly bc i wanted to get it over with but also bc I wanted to know what horribleness would happen next.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was totally wild. Very short, but packed a lot in there. Estée lives through the most hellish childhood, the worst, most captive marriage, and a demonic baby spawn, making it through to the other side. The whole thing felt very Addams Family-esque in a fun way.

Part 1: Estée's father is an insane scientist who does horrible experiments on insects, working his way up to birds and small mammals, ending with human beings. Her mother believes she is paralyzed after having sex with her father for the first time, resulting in Estée and the apparent loss of the use of her limbs. Estée is kept completely captive in the house, banned from school, learning only species, genus, and phylum of all variety of animals and being forced to be her demented father's laboratory assistant.

Part 2: Estée is married off to the boorish, eighties-finance-bro Pete Magnus and finds herself out of one captivity and into another. She is completely guileless, knowing nothing about the real world or the nefarious creatures who inhabit it. Lights are shined on American excess. This part was the weakest. It's been done, of course.

Part 3: Estée becomes pregnant with a demon spawn, believing it to be the son of a shrunken head in Pete's showy tribal artifacts collection. This part was my favorite. The baby is born with a full set of teeth, eats rodents, claws at his fathers face, and leads his daycare classmates in a cult-like uprising against their abusive, disciplinarian teachers. I liked Little Bill, as he was called. He didn't speak in normal sentences, instead aping things he had heard on the news. "'A generation gap in venture capital,' said William matter-of-factly." Or "'Wild bachelor party with seventy-two topless girls,' he mumbled plaintively in her ear." He was like Sunny from Series of Unfortunate Events, where every nonsensical thing he said had an exact analog in more typical speech. Or the baby in The Addams Family Values, sweetly destroying, maiming, and torturing.

One blurb on the back posited that if Flannery O'Connor could come back from the dead, she would have written something like Omnivores. I disagree wholeheartedly with that bizarrely hyperbolic statement. More likely, if Charles Addams came back from the dead, got together with John Waters, and took a creative writing class taught by Ottessa Moshfegh, then that might yield this book.

[Kaela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Um...wtf did I just read??

It was incredibly weird and, at times, also incredibly gross. It was kind of like the scene of a horrific accident, I know I should probably stop looking at it but couldn't turn my head away.
I must admit part of me was compelled to keep going just to see where it was all headed and if the madness had any point to it.
If there was some point underneath all the absurdity, I really didn't understand what it was.
There's a tagline on my copy, 'Omnivores reads like a cartoon with a soul', and all I can think is the quotee must have watched a lot of Ren & Stimpy in their childhood to come up with that - it's the only cartoon twisted enough to come close this novel.
Thankfully for me, it was a short read that only took a few hours to finish...though perhaps I should have stopped looking and saved my brain from it all.
It will definitely be memorable, I'll give it that.

Note, if you're thinking of reading this book, I would warn you that it probably has nearly every trigger warning in it, at least to some degree. So proceed with caution if there's any content you might be sensitive to.

[Grace Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book captured a saturated, slightly uneasy tone throughout all the very unhinged plotlines - akin to Matilda's family. Think Miss Trunchbull. The feeling you may have add while watching her make that kid eat that giant piece of chocolate cake, and sling around that ball and chain or whatever, is very much at the core of this novel. While reading, I was loving it, but also holding the book a little far away from me as I read it. If you're looking for a crazy story happening around a semi-normal main character, this is definitely for you! I loved Millets story telling, and honestly just looking at the cover of this book brings back the exact feeling I had while I was reading it - even months later.

[sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

i genuinely have no idea what to say about this book. the reviews talk about how it's funny or feminist and i did not get either of those at all. this book was just horror to me. it made me wildly uncomfortable the whole way through. started reading it late and night and kept reading "just 1 more chapter" so i could end on a less horrifying note for the night and ended up reading all of part 1 before i could go to bed because it just didn't stop being gruesome and unsettling. i literally don't know if i loved or hated this book. ??????? what the fuck.

[Raz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most unhinged book I have ever read, and I loved every page of it!

It is really dark but at the same time quite charming...like a David Lynch fairytale! I was initially gonna give it 4 stars because I was getting very close to the end of the book and couldn't really see how Lydia Millet was going to give us a satisfactory ending, and then BAM not only was it a perfect ending to the actual plot but I feel like it tied everything together thematically as well.

This is a quick read - I finished it in two settings. Very much recommend though! :)

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t think there’s really a way to describe the prose, but it sure is something. Omnivores is at times chaotic, at times hilarious, at times horrifying. An psychotic tale of uncontrolled appetites that escalates in the strangest ways and at an exponential pace.

Girlfriend found this book in a random ‘free’ box on the street, and I’d have never heard of it otherwise. I am happy fate put it in my path.

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful read; masterfully written with a vocabulary rarely rivaled; as funny as it was creepy. Millet created a terrifying and alluring world for us to inhabit briefly. “Murderous rampage in Toledo.”

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Omnivores is a very creative and interesting book. It reminds me of Vonnegut, but perhaps a little more difficult to unpack. I think it's a great debut novel, and I look forward to seeing what Millet has to offer in her future work.

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a fun read and interesting story. I enjoyed the character of Little Billy, made me laugh. Im not sure about the rating because i really did enjoy this book, but i felt like it lacked something for me personally. Would recommend it!

[Glenn Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a brilliant and unique voice Lydia Millet has. She's 2 from 2 with me now, and I'm very much looking forward to working my way through the rest of her biblio.

[Andrew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful.

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This shit is fucked.

[Aharon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Garden-variety post-something fever dream, from the school of Dad's Nuke (but 30+ years later).

[mait | coffee_mait · Rating 3 out of 5]

lmao what the fuck

[Jared Busch · Rating 5 out of 5]

The funniest early-Coen Brothers movie never filmed.

[Timbo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surreal and darkly funny.

[Adriannne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved Millet's weird magical writing. The beginning of the book was my favorite, I was less interested as the book strayed away from the real. But the very end of the book was really beautiful.

[Ria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, quick read. Loved the absolutely unhinged third act.

[Kat Goss · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took me on such a journey. A thoroughly juicy and enjoyable read. The kind I might reach for annually.