Argues that Malouf's story collection is an exploration fo the perplexities of individual perception, consciousness, and conscience rather than of other kinds of burdens of social, communal life, suggesting a 'testing stage of imaginative transition through which Malouf is presently working' (752). Dream Stuff 'challenges us most of all to confront a perception that now seems central to Malouf's work, a kind of gentle yet implacable skepticism about the reality of the social world' (757).