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Mary Miller seizes the mantle of southern literature with this wry tale of middle age and the unexpected turns a life can take.
Like her predecessors Ann Beattie and Raymond Carver, Mary Miller brings an essential voice to her generation. Building on her critically acclaimed novel, The Last Days of California, and her biting collection, Always Happy Hour, Miller slyly transports readers to her unapologetic corner of the South―this time, Biloxi, Mississippi, home to sixty-three-year-old Louis McDonald Jr. His wife of thirty-seven years left him, his father has passed―and he has impulsively retired from his job in anticipation of an inheritance check that may not come. In the meantime, he watches reality television, sips beer, and avoids his ex-wife and daughter. One day, he stops at a house advertising free dogs and meets overweight mixed-breed Layla. Unexpectedly, Louis takes her, and, newly invigorated, begins investigating local dog parks and buying extra bologna.
Mining the absurdities of life with her signature "droll minimalist's-eye view of America" (Joyce Carol Oates), Mary Miller's Biloxi affirms her place in contemporary literature.
"Miller's deliciously engaging, gently quirky, surprisingly hopeful novel seals her spot in the pantheon of Southern fiction writers." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Miller, an absolute master of minutiae, relates Louis' innermost self with poignancy and humor that never sacrifice an ounce of realism." - Booklist (starred review)
"In Louis, Miller captures the insecurities of an imperfect man beyond his prime as he tries to find his purpose in the world, and the result is a charming and terrific novel." - Publishers Weekly
"Miller (Last Days of California) casts light on crushing loneliness in the form of a lost sixtysomething man at the heart of a sweet dog-saves-man story filled with plenty of surprises to keep one turning the pages." - Library Journal
"This is a story about second chances, the art of settling, and settling down. Mary Miller knows how to tell a simple story in a spectacular way. She is funny and peculiar and mysterious and wise." - Helen Ellis, author of Southern Lady Code and American Housewife
"If Lorrie Moore's wicked sense of humor and Ernest Hemingway's minimalism had a love-child that love-child would be Mary Miller's Biloxi. Get ready to fall in love with cantankerous Louis McDonald Jr, a singular character as surprised by life as he is surprising. This book is a winner." - Hannah Pittard, author of Visible Empire
"Mary Miller's new novel is a marvel, a deliberate, careful rendering of the slipping-away life of a sixty year old man who discovers, after more than his share of loneliness, desire and calamity, that there is always, after all, the wonder of hope." - Frederick Barthelme
"I've always been a huge fan of Mary Miller's work...A beautiful book from one of southern literature's most important young authors." - Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon and I Want To Show You More
This information about Biloxi was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Dolores Ulmer
Mary Miller grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the author of two collections of short stories, Big World (Short Flight/Long Drive Books, 2009), and Always Happy Hour (Liveright/Norton, 2017), as well as a novel, The Last Days of California (Liveright/Norton, 2014).
Her stories have appeared in the Oxford American, New Stories from the South, McSweeney's Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Mississippi Review, and many others. She is a former James A. Michener Fellow in Fiction at the University of Texas and John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss. She currently lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and is on faculty at the low-residency MFA program at Mississippi University for Women.
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