3.0
How the Dead Dream
By Lydia MilletPublisher Description
A young Los Angeles real estate developer consumed by power and political ambitions finds his orderly, upwardly mobile life thrown into chaos by the sudden appearance of his nutty mother, who's been deserted by T.'s now out–of–the–closet father
After his mother's suicide attempt and two other deaths, T. finds himself increasingly estranged from his latest project: a retirement community in the middle of the California desert. As he juggles family, business, and social responsibilities, T. begins to nurture a curious obsession with vanishing species. Soon he's living a double life, building sprawling subdivisions by day and breaking into zoos at night to be near the animals. A series of calamities forces T. to a tropical island, where he takes a Conrad–esque journey up a river into the remote jungle. Millet's devastating wit, psychological acuity, and remarkable empathy for flawed humankind contend with her vision of a world slowly murdering itself.
After his mother's suicide attempt and two other deaths, T. finds himself increasingly estranged from his latest project: a retirement community in the middle of the California desert. As he juggles family, business, and social responsibilities, T. begins to nurture a curious obsession with vanishing species. Soon he's living a double life, building sprawling subdivisions by day and breaking into zoos at night to be near the animals. A series of calamities forces T. to a tropical island, where he takes a Conrad–esque journey up a river into the remote jungle. Millet's devastating wit, psychological acuity, and remarkable empathy for flawed humankind contend with her vision of a world slowly murdering itself.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities13 Reviews
3.0
Kenn
Created 5 months agoShare
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Jess
Created 8 months agoShare
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sophie
Created about 1 year agoShare
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SilverJennyDollar
Created over 1 year agoShare
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““When a thing became scarce, that was when it was finally also seen to be sublime and lovely”
I admit I was skeptical when I found out I would be following a capital-obsessed day trader and real estate mogul in this novel, but dammit, I came to like him. It's always a little bit of wishful thinking to believe that people can change so dramatically, learn empathy, but Millet made it feel realistic. What starts as a realization that hurting the planet and the animals that inhabit it is simply bad for humans and their business turns into a full-on obsession with animals, especially endangered and near-extinct ones. This is definitely a book of ideas (about capitalism, environmentalism, narcissism, what separates humans from other animals), but it's the characters that really got to me. I do wonder, since this was written in 2003 -- before the 2008 crash, before Trumpism -- if she would have given a character like this so much credit in present day. It's a very hopeful story about someone who is possibly a sociopath having the capacity to change. I want to believe it can happen, and I did remind myself that this is a very young man we are dealing with. So I was happy to continue on the journey with T. If there is any minor quibble, it's with the girlfriend character, who had no character development at all. Maybe some of her backstory will be filled in with the other two books in this trilogy. Very excited to start book 2, but this novel can also stand on its own.”
Villagebooksmith
Created almost 10 years agoShare
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“I went back and forth between thinking "do I like this? I think I like this. Nah I don't think I do. Oh maybe I do, I don't know." Some review on the cover compared the author to Kurt Vonnegut which excited me but I was pretty let down. I really like the basic idea of this story, the writing on the other hand was a little much for me. I felt like it was pushing too hard when it could've just flowed. Some chapters were difficult to finish even though I did want to know what happened. The characters didn't have a whole lot to them which really didn't make me care what happened to them.”
About Lydia Millet
Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen novels and story collections, often about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her story collection Fight No More received an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019, and her collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. She also writes essays, opinion pieces and other ephemera and has worked as an editor and staff writer at the Center for Biological Diversity since 1999. She lives in the desert outside Tucson with her children and boyfriend.
Other books by Lydia Millet
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