Publishers Weekly
★ 02/26/2024
Novelist Millet (Dinosaurs), also a creative director at the Center for Biological Diversity, ruminates in this profoundly affecting meditation on what it means to live through climate change. The narrative flows as if by instinct, moving from personal anecdotes to condemnations of corporate pollution to elegiac examinations of the havoc wrought by humans on the natural world, the organizing logic arising tacitly through suggestion and juxtaposition. In that vein, Millet’s admission of how she used to believe systemic explanations constituted attempts to evade personal responsibility leads into a discussion of how the mid-1970s “Crying Indian” anti-litter campaign redirected culpability from the companies selling single-use plastic products to consumers. Contemplations of mortality recur throughout, as when Millet writes “I fear that my children one day... will be forced to endure the vanishing of much more than we ever did” and discusses how the last Tasmanian tiger died in 1936 after “she was locked out of the warm part of her enclosure overnight in a cold snap and froze.” In scintillating prose, Millet makes a passionate case that humans must own up to their responsibilities to each other and the natural world (“Our coexistence has been, since forever, the backdrop of being. A dappled, shifting impression like the patterns of sun and shadows that fall across beds and ceilings and walls”). Mournful and piercingly beautiful, this will stick with readers long after they finish the last page. (Apr.)
Jonathan Lethem
"Lydia Millet’s novels have always worked on me like a drug; her tenderly sardonic voice and the command of her uncanny narrative velocity keep me turning pages like burning through a bag of chips without stopping to lick the salt off my fingers. We Loved It All will break your heart."
Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
"An altogether unique book that allows you to watch a gorgeous mind at work. There is, quite apart from the magic of her writing, not a single page where you won’t learn something new. We Loved It All will leave you breathless."
Literary Hub - Eliza Smith
"Millet's awe of nature is catching, even as it lives alongside the grief of our everyday destructions."
Terry Tempest Williams
"We have all been the beneficiary of Lydia Millet’s eloquence and imagination through fiction. But now she gives us a different kind of story. A story of stunning attention, truths, and urgency, We Loved It All is an ode to the creatures we live among: finned, feathered, furred, scaled, and rooted…This is a rigorous, evocative, brilliant bow to life, even as the world burns. Please read this transformative anti-memoir that shows us a way forward."
Caitlin Gibson
"A profoundly evocative ode to life itself, in all its strange and wondrous and imperiled forms."
Booklist (starred review) - Donna Seaman
"In her first work of nonfiction, [Millet] steps into the light, sharing personal stories and her informed observations of the extinction crisis...[We Loved It All is] a recalibrating mix of memoir, facts, critique, and passages of elegiac beauty."
Time - Annabel Gutterman
"[Lydia Millet is] as honest in her reflections on love, motherhood, and ambition as she is in capturing the terrifying realities of climate change. [We Loved It All] is a love letter to the earth and all who inhabit it, punctuated by sharp and lyrical prose."
Dan Flores
"I love reading Lydia Millet, delight in the pithy observations of her all-seeing eye, and suspect her many admirers will be smitten with this deep-time story of our immersion in Earth’s wild creatures and our hapless modern attempts to escape nature."
Literary Hub - Amy Brady
"In turns heartbreaking and inspiring, We Loved It All reminds us to hold every being dear at a time when we all need love more than ever."
Elizabeth Kolbert
"Lydia Millet's We Loved It All is at once lyrical and densely packed, intimate and all-encompassing. It beautifully captures the current moment, in all its terrors and possibilities."
Scientific American - Megan Mayhew-Bergman
"We Loved It All casts a moving spell… [it is] emphatically beautiful at the line level and deeply insightful at an ecological level."
APRIL 2024 - AudioFile
Xe Sands narrates this meditative collection of essays on life and preserving our threatened planet. Provocative yet tender, each free- flowing essay provides a glimpse of Millet's interconnected world. Personal anecdotes are juxtaposed with deep pondering about humanity's role in climate change. Expertly pairing animal facts with thoughtful observations of the human world, Millet gently breezes over challenging topics such as religion, motherhood, colonization, and capitalism. Sands's calm, empathetic narration fits the quiet, introspective tone of the essays. Guiding listeners to personal contemplation, Sands's voice is soothing and slightly melodic. As though speaking directly to the listener, Sands captures Millet's unique approach to raising climate awareness. C.R. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2024-01-13
The acclaimed novelist’s first work of nonfiction examines the interconnected web of creatures on planet Earth.
In the modern era, despite increasing species endangerment and extinction, we continue to extract resources, hastening the destruction of the natural world. As Millet writes in one memorable passage, “Our way of life is not a triumph anymore but a mass suicide.” In the past 50 years, wildlife populations have declined by an average of 69%; in the biodiverse regions of Central and South America, that number is near 94%. Using the terms species aloneness or species loneliness, the author examines “a dawning era in which the solitude we already know—as individuals of a deeply social species who are more and more shut off from our own physical communities—will be echoed by a greater silence gathering around.” In the wake of such immense animal loss, how do we define ourselves in the sudden quiet? Millet suggests looking to children’s respect and empathy for animals. By adulthood, we tend to define ourselves not as part of the animal kingdom, but by our “humanness,” creating a divide where there could be a bridge. In lucid prose, the author illustrates the stories of several fascinating species, bringing us into their wondrous worlds. She also writes about the people in her life with similar insight and livelihood—her parents and children appear among other notable figures. While individual elements are compelling and well rendered, the occasionally jumbled structure restricts opportunity for narrative absorption. Readers may wish for deeper treatments of emergent themes of animal welfare and conservation. Still, the author offers a well-written, poignant lament for the greater animal kingdom to which we owe not just our survival as a species but our joy and companionship.
A philosophically tinted testament to the challenge of loving animals in an epoch defined by extinction.
