Um, yeah. I finished Lydia Millet's How the Dead Dream this weekend and I have to say: holy hell. What a fantastic, revelatory book. There is so much to say and I'm so, so insanely behind. I will return with a more considered take on the book later this week.
However. If, for whatever bizarre reason, you've been on the fence about reading this book, I urge you to go get it at once and read it so we can discuss it. Really. It is powerful in the most perfect way. It has shades of Tom McCarthy's Remainder but then becomes something else. It has shades of This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes but then becomes so much more. I finished the book and then danced around the living room. This is what writing can do when done well.
I loved reading it as a reader, but I suspect part of my passion for this book lies in how I read it as a writer. Millet managed to do something I've been attempting to do for a while now, but without success. More on that later. Also: I work with animals on a daily basis and some of her insights were so spot-on and so gorgeous, I gasped. Bravo, I say. Bravo.
This is very, very good stuff and I wish that every piece of fiction could deliver in this way, could matter in this way.