Writers Respond: Lydia Millet on My Happy Life

Lydia Millet, winner of the PEN-USA Award for Fiction, is the author of the novels Omnivores; George Bush, Dark Prince of Love; Everyone's Pretty; Oh Pure and Radiant Heart; How the Dead Dream; and, the novel we're here to talk about today, My Happy Life. Ms. Millet was gracious enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer the following three questions I've been dying to ask since I finished this incredible novel.

1.

MOLLY GAUDRY: What can you tell us about the voice of this narrator? How did you find it, craft it, develop it?

LYDIA MILLET: I wanted to write in a first-person voice utterly unlike myself, so I wrote away from me. In the direction of a utopian and also half-blind personality and one I could love.

2.

MG: Is the torture instrument real? What is it?

LM: There were various instruments, as I recall, modeled on old-fashioned torture devices and also sex toys. If you can quote me the one you mean maybe I can be more specific. Memory fades.

MG: p.61, "And soon [Mr. D.] brought a tool into the room. It was of old and strange design, sharp in places and black and very heavy. He said it was authentic and historical, and could be in a very fine museum indeed." And on p.77, "And I would gaze absently at the chair in the corner with sailboats and tillers on the upholstery where, if you looked closely at the backs of the wooden legs a few inches from the floor, you would be able to see thin, deep lines etched horizontally. These were places where wires had rubbed and dug into the wood while they were looped around my ankles."

LM: I think I pictured the tool on p.61 as a kind of mace, although I also recollect a kind of iron maiden type deal, possibly elsewhere in the book. As to p.77, unrelated tool use, I believe.

3.

MG: In your mind, what happens to this narrator in the time and space after the novel ends?

LM: She doesn't live in my mind after the novel ends. She's the last page forever. Though I do wish I could believe in an afterlife.

For more information, please visit Lydia Millet's website. For an excerpt from My Happy Life, click here.