Lydia Millet’s sixth novel, How the Dead Dream, opens
with an unforgettable image: A young boy named T. is so entranced by
money that he purses coins in his mouth, as if to absorb the currency’s
mysterious power. His parents are naturally concerned: “Such a dirty
habit,” his mother says. T. says he’ll quit for the right price, and an
impasse is reached. Crossing the living room one day during his
mother’s book club meeting, T. is stopped and fawned over by one of the
ladies. Admonished to reply, T., “with a few gagging head pokes like a
cat vomiting, opened his mouth and rained a wet spew of coins into his
cupped hands.” His parents relent and open a savings account in the
boy’s name.
How the Dead Dream is T.’s story, and Millet crafts a
character completely whole, complex, and intriguing. As T. matures, his
love of money expands with a capitalistic piety that rivals his
mother’s Catholicism. T. teaches himself not only how to turn one
dollar into three, but how to study and manipulate people to procure
the only thing he values: more money.
Millet’s mastery is that we never grow to hate T. the way we’d hate
most characters (or people) who share his values. Neither do we
particularly like him; Millet writes with a curious detachment, as if
T. were a specimen under a microscope that could read his thoughts and
motivations. We don’t suspect him of any maliciousness—only an
imbalanced obsession with wealth. And then in adulthood, long after his
first million and in subtle and surprising ways, T. slowly grows a
heart. But this is no simplistic tale of redemption: He remains aloof
and self-contained, and his newfound compassion triggers sarcasm and
threats of violence against perceived offenders.
Ever detached from humans, and jarred from normalcy by tragedy, T.
becomes obsessed with extinction, and sneaks into zoos at night so he
can sleep with the animals. The idea doesn’t work any better in the
book than it sounds here—How the Dead Dream feels split
down the middle: pre- and post-zoological obsession. Millet’s style
becomes more philosophical (and skimmable) as the story shifts, and one
suddenly wonders what happened to the great story they had been
reading. The disappointing second act doesn’t sink the book entirely;
it’s just too bad Millet didn’t wrap it up around page 135 and call it
a terrific novella.