Lydia Millet's prize-winning work includes literary, political and picaresque novels, YA fantasies, stories and essays. She extends her reach with Mermaids in Paradise, a sparkling comedy of a California couple's journey from marriage to honeymoon to murder mystery to eco-warrior showdown. It reads as if Maria Semple's Bernadette wound up on Gilligan's Island, with a Lord of the Flies misanthropic bent.
Narrator Deb is a sensible, quick-witted woman with an MBA in finance. Her fiancé, Chip, is a good-hearted guy with a taste for video games and mud marathons. Her best friend, Gina, is the cynic, throwing the bachelorette party at a zombie-themed rave and disparaging any honeymoon that treads in the "vast featureless space" of Middle America or takes place on a cruise ship. Chip and Deb land at a resort in the British Virgin Islands, where the always-friendly Chip collects a coterie of new friends that includes a marine biologist, a toe fetishist, a coarse-mouthed retired Navy SEAL, a Japanese TV personality and a paranoid hippie vegetarian.
When the biologist stumbles upon a school of honest-to-God mermaids during a reef dive, Deb and Chip's honeymoon turns into a scientific adventure. They're eager to videotape the mermaids, authenticate the discovery and build a sanctuary--until the biologist is murdered, the resort's owners try to corral the mermaids for a commercial viewing venture, creationists campaign to eradicate these creatures who are "not the work of the Lord... [but] are filth and abomination," the former SEAL foments confrontation, and local militia arrives to referee the melee.
Millet is clever and funny, and she knows the idiosyncrasies of her characters. She even intersperses her tale with typical vacation-like Instagram snapshots of the novel's turning points. Mermaids in Paradise is a smart, good-time mash-up of the undersides of romance, mystery, religious zealotry and eco-tourism. -- Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.