T. is a young Los Angeles real estate developer consumed by power and political ambitions. His orderly, upwardly mobile life is 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.

The lives of the wealthy and powerful, as described by biographers, are more often than not confined to great deeds and equally great follies. Autobiographical accounts from this world exhort ordinary people to emulate their characteristics and replicate their successes. Meanwhile, novelists, generally a left-leaning bunch, tend to view the workings of power with suspicion, if not outright scorn, and thus fictional portraits of the über-capitalists among us are frequently limited to villainous caricature.
Those who wish to contemplate what makes such men tick are much indebted then, to Lydia Millet, an unabashedly political writer who has developed a curiosity about the inner lives of powerful men that feels fresh and nearly subversive. Her sixth novel, How the Dead Dream, follows a young real estate developer who replaces his lifelong love of money with an equally gripping obsession with endangered animals.

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