All manner of voracious American appetitesfor sex, power, and possessionsare darkly lampooned in this strange, often very funny debut.If Flannery OConnor came back from the dead and abandoned her fixation with Southern religion, she might be proud to write something like Lydia Millets astonishing first novel,Lydia Millets debut novel, first published in 1996, is an explosive satire that scorches our cultures monstrous men and institutions.