How the Dead Dream

As a wealthy, young real-estate developer in Los Angeles, T. lives an isolated life. He has always kept his distance from people - from his doting mother to his crass fraternity brothers - but remains unaware of his loneliness until one night, while driving to Las Vegas, he hits a coyote on the highway.

The experience unnerves him and inspires a transformation that leads him to question his business pursuits for the first time in his life, to take a chance at falling in love, and to begin breaking into zoos across the country, where he finds solace in the presence of animals on the brink of extinction.

A beautiful, heart-wrenching tale, How the Dead Dream is also a riveting commentary on individualism and community in the modern social landscape and how the lives of people and animals are deeply entwined. Judged by many - including the Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post Book World - to be Lydia Millet's best work to date, it is, as Time Out New York perfectly states, "This beautiful writer's most ambitious novel yet, a captivating balancing act between full-bodied satire and bighearted insight."

©2009 Lydia Millet (P)2021 Dreamscape Media, LLC

Disappointing story

I love Millet’s writing and usually adore her stories but this one seemed meandering and tedious. I didn’t feel much sympathy for or connection with the protagonist.