Lydia Millet Explains the Double Structure Behind ‘Fair Ones’

Lydia Millet has built a career on strange territory, and Fair Ones is her latest proof. The novel arrives as a double act: two books, two narrators, one grief. Mara tells the story of the moment Claire is murdered, while Jen picks up the thread a year later. The result is a portrait of friendship that follows the natural shape of loss.

Millet spoke with Jane Ciabattari about the book, its structure, and why she keeps finding herself back in New York City.

Claire’s Death Sets the Story in Motion

The novel opens at a wake in a restaurant bar, where Mara and Jen are mourning Claire’s sudden death. Claire was a high school guidance counselor, shot by a thirteen-year-old boy at a bus stop in what appears to be a random act of violence. The three friends — Mara, Jen, and Claire — were as bonded as family. Now one is gone, and the others are “stricken,” as Millet writes.

Mara’s Fair begins shortly after the murder. Jen’s Ones picks up a year later, from her point of view. The shift in perspective is the novel’s engine. Millet explains that the form evolved from a simple question: could she write something realist, dialogue-driven, and social without losing interest?

“I was thinking of close friends, their interdependency, how we mimic each other without even meaning to, how we osmose over time,” she says. “This was two books in one like two people side by side, going forward, distinct but overlapping.”

The Wake Scene and the Party That Follows

The opening scene is crowded. Claire’s friends from work show up, along with her parents and brother Caleb, flown in from Dubuque. Claire’s ex-boyfriend Jase arrives with a new girlfriend twenty years younger and her rude BFF. Jen urges Mara to revisit the drugs of her younger years, and the pair join Jase and the “White Rabbit” crew for more cocaine and a party at his loft in TriBeCa.

It reads like a scene in a play, or a film. Millet says certain books with party scenes stayed with her, naming Robert Coover, Donald Antrim, and Virginia Woolf. Movie party scenes are powerful too, she adds, though she goes to so few actual parties these days that she might as well throw them in books.

Jon Hamm’s Cameo and the Setting

The setting is mostly New York City. Millet says it means social life, sped-up time, pedestrianism, and Europeanism. That contrasts with her usual stomping grounds: the Sonoran Desert outside Tucson, where she lives, and her work at the Center for Biological Diversity.

One cameo stands out. Jon Hamm, the star of Mad Men, appears as himself in a cameo in the hot tub on Jase’s roof. Millet says fictional hot tubs are Hamm’s natural habitat.

“It turns out Jon Hamm’s played himself multiple times, but I didn’t really know it when I was writing this book,” she says. “I knew he’d done the ‘Between Two Ferns’ level of self-parody, but not major motion picture self-parody. So I was scooped on the Jon Hamm appearing as Jon Hamm front.”

She likes him. And his name. And he reminds her of her brother.

Jase’s Asshole Behavior and the Ending

Jase is a finance bro who runs the country, according to Millet. His signature behaviors include being an asshole, which she says did not take a great leap of imagination.

The ending of Jen’s story arrived unexpectedly, Millet says. It’s a version of an ending she had for a while but softened.

“Endings are always the most euphoric parts of a novel to write,” she says. “Beginnings can feel energetic and chipper and game, kind of, but endings are fireflies in the dark.”

Why the Title Works

The title Fair Ones carries weight. Millet likes that the word has so many meanings: purely beautiful, decidedly mediocre, or perfectly just.

What Comes Next

Millet has published widely. Her 2025 story collection Atavists includes a story where Shelly’s mother suggests taking a progressive agenda with her talent agency clients. Shelly pushes back: “Mom. Noam Chomsky’s a dinosaur. And not even a ferocious T.rex, either. More of a brontosaurus. A lumbering plant-eater.”

Her 2022 novel Dinosaurs reflects her fascination with long extinct creatures. Fair Ones shifts from climate change to gun violence, and it draws on an earlier chapter of her life in New York City rather than her current home in the desert.

The novel is a talk experiment, not a thought experiment. Millet wanted to see if she could write something realist, dialogue-heavy, and social without losing her own interest.

The novel’s structure rewards patience. Mara’s shock gives way to Jen’s reflection, and the two threads weave together across the span of a year. Millet’s willingness to let the story unfold naturally, rather than force a resolution, is what makes Fair Ones stand out.

The interview reveals Millet’s playful experimentation with form, her deft handling of grief across two narratives, and her willingness to poke fun at finance bros and celebrity cameos alike.

Source material: “Lydia Millet on Writing a Double Novel of Grief and Loss,” Literary Hub.

book review · grief · literature · Lydia Millet · New York City · novel