Although told as a linear narrative, the novel employs surrealism and contains multiple plot lines, including the love stories of two couples, talking mice, and a man who ages years in a week.

Stanley Chapman's translation is titled Froth on the Daydream (Rapp & Carroll, 1967),[1] John Sturrock's is called Mood Indigo (Grove Press, 1968),[2] and Brian Harper's is named Foam of the Daze (TamTam Books, 2012).

In a surreal world where animals and inanimate objects reflect the emotions of humans, Colin is a wealthy young man with a resourceful and stylish valet, Nicholas, and a loyal best friend, Chick.

During the honeymoon, Chloe falls ill with a mysterious disease that primarily consists of coughing and chest pain, and she and Colin are forced to end their trip early.

The expense of the treatment is large and Colin soon exhausts his funds, compelling him to undertake low-paying jobs in an effort to accumulate more money for Chloe's remedy.

Alyssum, who is resentful of Chick's neglect of her in favor of his burgeoning collection, attempts to save him financially and renew his interest in her by persuading Heartre to stop publishing books, whom she kills when he refuses.

Ultimately, Colin struggles to provide flowers for Chloe to no avail, and his grief at her death is so strong that his pet mouse commits suicide to escape the gloom.

His desperation to keep his wife alive and his grief and depression after her death symbolize the emotional and psychological anguish faced by individuals who know or have lost someone to terminal illness.

[7] His subsequent neglect of Alyssum and the rapid depletion of his funds on Heartre's works both reflect common characteristics shared among the majority of drug addicts.

"[10] In another positive review for the Los Angeles Times, James Sallis stated, "This [Froth on the Daydream] is a great novel...beneath are a host of ambiguities, digressions, levels of meaning.

She also observed that the "puns and word games (unfortunately badly translated) shade into black humor which at the novel's end becomes a Kafkaesque surrealism that we find frightening rather than funny" and dismissed Colin and Chloe's romance as "simple to the point of banality."