Here’s a prediction. At the end of 2008, Lydia Millet’s novel How the Dead Dream will be a top many year-end “best of” lists.  Count on it.  It is an offbeat novel that is incredibly well written.  Run, don’t walk, to your closest independent book store.

T., as a little boy had an obsession. He loved money.

His first idol was Andrew Jackson. He knew the vertical dart between the brows, the jutting chin, the narrow mouth; he knew the windblown coif that perched atop the great man’s forehead like a bird’s nest on a lonesome crag. Jackson’s face was fixed in a somewhat neutral expression and T. spent long hours trying to decide if it suggested idle speculation or a slight annoyance.

It’s a short trip from a childhood affair with money to spending college years biding your time, making contacts, and studying business. T. succeeds by holding himself separate from his peers in almost monastic discipline in order to achieve his goals. Graduation leads naturally to incredible success in real estate. If that was all there was to the story, the novel would be a simple satire of the shallowness of the pursuit of money. Part of the genius of this novel is the way the author keeps the reader off balance.

Eventually, several things occur that highlight how empty T.’s life has actually been: he has a chance encounter in the desert with a coyote, he has a real relationship with a woman, his parents’ sudden divorce upsets his carefully curated life, and he gets a dog. Then things get weird.

T. begins to obsessively study rare and animals and breaks into zoos to spend time alone with endangered species. He reflects on the experience of being among the last of your kind, locked in a cage 1000’s of miles from your home, and separated from the few remaining others like yourself.  He joins these animals, sharing in their loneliness from the corners of their cages.  Meanwhile, T.’s real estate empire clears fragile desert land and constructs a resort on a pristine island.

The novel is never heavy handed in exploring its themes nor does it provide any homilies. Instead the novel explores the complexity of our place in the world.  Human presence in the world is both powerfully destructive and delicately ephemeral.  Nature is fragile and nature endures.  Relationships provide comfort and security, and they leave a path of destruction in their wake.  While funny in parts, How the Dead Dream is also a powerful and serious book.  I highly recommend it.

Several people have told me that Millet’s previous book, Oh Pure and Radiant Heart is even better than How the Dead Dream. I’m adding it to the stack.