With the amount of screen time we have been logging throughout the pandemic, many people are turning to books that they can read in one big burst of energy. Tablo Tales is a new literary imprint that focuses on short books written by great female writers from around the world. One such author is Claire Messud, whose latest triumph is A DREAM LIFE.

Meet the Armstrong family. In the early 1970s, these well-to-do Americans must relocate to Australia, as foreign a place and as far away from their native New York as seemingly possible. Thanks to the upper-echelon doings of Mr. Armstrong, a captain of American industry, they find themselves in a grand, gigantic castle of a manor right off Sydney Harbor. As soon as they move in, their life changes drastically. With two young daughters thrilled by the indoor playrooms and outdoor grounds to run amongst, Alice resolves to be the perfect mother and wife and accept her new standing and home with a sophisticated joy.

"This arresting novella imagines that the dream life of most is the dream life of only those who can balance themselves on the rocky course of the lies required to live in such a way."

It’s a strange new world, of course, filled with servants and other established fixtures of high-class living to which Alice is unaccustomed in a big way. But she tries to understand the formal dinners and the management of the huge household, allowing very particular caterers to help her throw lavish parties for her husband’s new business associates. She is disgusted by his love of this new life, the fancy food, and the daunting tasks of hiring and firing a parade of eccentrics to whom she must entrust social duties and eventually her children.

And this is where it gets nuts. The control Alice held over her daughters and household in New York are lost completely when the family hires a nanny. While auditioning a strange and quiet couple and a bubbly single woman whom the children love, Alice starts to understand that there is a determined amount of deceit and trickery going on behind the scenes. When she chooses the excitable lady as their nanny, their world is shot in the heart and dies a slow death as her kids eventually recite to her a litany of horrifyingly debased situations in which they have found themselves. They are young and think everything is a game, but Alice knows better and tries to yank back control of her family in spits and spurts. She reckons with how supposed social graces are used to wall off and eventually hide and forgive the most disgusting behavior.

A DREAM LIFE feels like an afternoon fever dream, which those who have suffered through COVID may recognize. And the social structures that fall prey to a slowly thinning veil feel like an emotionally tense situation that perhaps mirrors some of our own isolation and trust issues arising from the pandemic. This arresting novella imagines that the dream life of most is the dream life of only those who can balance themselves on the rocky course of the lies required to live in such a way.