Lydia Millet is a writer who defies classification. She writes YA novels, animal-human relationship short stories, tightly-structured literary novels, and laugh-out-loud comedies. She’s a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. Really, she’s a writer who does it all. From other writers, Mermaids in Paradise, a novel which, ironically, satires the need for classification, might be viewed as an odd creation, but for Millet, it seems like a necessary addition to her catalogue.

Although the fantastical setting and wild happenings might make you think of Mermaids of Paradise as a lightweight kind of book, it is not. In fact, it’s the opposite. Millet’s novel is a multi-layered comedy that happens to be among the year’s most provocative works of fiction.