Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Dreamers
    Unavailable
    The Dreamers
    Unavailable
    The Dreamers
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Dreamers

    Written by Karen Thompson Walker

    Narrated by Erin Hunter

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this audiobook

    ‘Riveting, profoundly moving’ Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven 
    ‘Beautiful and devastating’ Red
    ‘Thought-provoking and profound’ Cosmopolitan

    Imagine a world where sleep could trap you, for days, for weeks, for months…

    She sleeps through sunrise. She sleeps through sunset.
    And yet, in those first few hours, the doctors can find nothing else wrong. She looks like an ordinary girl sleeping ordinary sleep.

    Karen Thompson Walker's second novel tells the mesmerising story of a town transformed by a mystery illness that locks people in perpetual sleep and triggers extraordinary, life-altering dreams.

    One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her room and falls asleep. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital.

    When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster.

    Written in luminous prose, The Dreamers is a breathtaking and beautiful novel, startling and provocative, about the possibilities contained within a human life if only we are awakened to them.

    Praise for The Age of Miracles:
    'What a remarkable, beautifully wrought novel' Curtis Sittenfeld
    ‘A beautifully observed coming-of-age tale… nimble, delicate and emotionally sophisticated’ Observer
    ‘Hauntingly believable… an impressive and quietly terrifying book’ Sunday Times
    'A stunner from the first page… I loved this novel and can't wait to see what this remarkable writer will do next' Justin Cronin
     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio UK
    Release dateFeb 7, 2019
    ISBN9781471179662
    Unavailable
    The Dreamers
    Author

    Karen Thompson Walker

    Karen Thompson Walker is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program. A former book editor, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work. Born and raised in San Diego, California, she now lives in Brooklyn with her husband. 

    Related to The Dreamers

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Girls On The Playground

      Feb 18, 2021

      Girls On The Playground
      15 min read

    • Article

      Intelligent Creatures

      Jul 6, 2023

      Intelligent Creatures
      19 min read

    • Article

      This Back Is a Familiar Back

      May 1, 2023

      This Back Is a Familiar Back
      8 min read

    • Article

      Mammy Dearest

      Mar 20, 2022

      Noelle McCarthy, the broadcaster, podcaster and journalist, has two obsessions: her mother and Dracula. She has written a memoir, Grand: Becoming my mother’s daughter, in which both characters flounce across the pages, one with fangs wearing a cape,

      8 min read

    • Article

      The Women

      Jul 29, 2021

      The Women
      2 min read

    • Article

      How Postcards From My Mother Helped Me Survive Childhood

      Mar 3, 2017

      For years, my mother wrote to me every day. I’d been sent away to boarding school and for the first weeks was forbidden to call home­. I was eleven. This was just before mobile phones came beeping and clicking into the lives of everyday people. I di

      4 min read

    • Article

      O Fortuna, Velut Luna

      Sep 15, 2018

      What is Miss Treece’s trouble, according to a popular notion? The man A has failed to show up. Arousing herself at the restaurant, she fixes her lipstick when her solo supper concludes and takes herself down the stairs situated behind the bar. There,

      3 min read

    • Article

      Carrot Legs

      Sep 12, 2019

      Carrot Legs
      20 min read

    • Article

      Mother Tongue

      Feb 24, 2021

      Mother Tongue
      12 min read

    • Article

      Dust To Dust

      May 7, 2020

      Dust To Dust
      8 min read

    • Article

      These Bad Things

      Dec 23, 2019

      These Bad Things
      9 min read

    • Article

      Like Ripe Fruit

      Nov 5, 2020

      Like Ripe Fruit
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Nanny

      Dec 15, 2019

      There isn’t much in the house,” Mary said. “I’m sorry.” Kayla looked around, shrugged. “I’m not even that hungry.” Mary set the table, bright Fiestaware on place mats alongside fringed cloth napkins. They ate microwave pizzas. “Gotta have something a

      21 min read

    • Article

      Come Stay

      Jan 16, 2024

      Come Stay
      23 min read

    • Article

      A Symposium on Childhood

      Sep 1, 2021

      A Symposium on Childhood
      25 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Nov 1, 2020

      We went to visit our brother.They had a special, blue roomfor the purpose of waiting.A counselor came over andcalled my sweater “too provocative.”Nora started laughingand then I started laughingand then our brother came outand told us about the squir

      4 min read

    • Article

      Little House

      Jun 5, 2023

      On Monday nights our mother made popcorn and served it to us in mugs with milk poured over. My younger sister and I carried our mugs into the family room and ate the popcorn with spoons, like cereal. We were five and seven. Until we were allowed to s

      21 min read

    • Article

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • Article

      Hauntings

      Jul 5, 2023

      Hauntings
      11 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Dreamers

    3.5/5

    451 ratings39 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      I listened to the end, but didn't love it. It moved very slowly but I think that was intentional.
    • 3/5
      As a lover of Jung, Hillman and all things dream related, I was excited and perhaps a little misled by the book's description. I hoped for something mystical and out of the ordinary, however the writing is good and kept me engaged and interested to find out what would happen but I didn't feel any love for any of the characters or the story itself and was left a little cold. I do think this is a book other's might appreciate more.
    • 2/5
      A highly original concept which is undermined by repetitious prose, and a heavy handed attempted reflection of parenthood. The fascinating premise of a sleeping sickness is overshadowed by the majority of the protagonists being used to deliver overly similar descriptions of life with a newborn or toddler. Other characters, while occasionally interesting, are fairly unlikeable.
      The themes of dreams, potential other realities, and familial love could have been explored in far more depth, alongside a more interesting investigative element into how dear/quarantine makes us act. It is not unsatisfying for there to be no distinct explanation of the cause or origins of the virus, but some more depictions of scientific work could have broken up the slow pace. Also, an 18 year old getting pregnant without her knowledge and probably having to leave college and her first inklings of independence to go back to her fundamentalist southern Christian family is just a depressing subplot.
    • 3/5
      I love how Walker takes on interesting concepts that affect larger populations, and weaves personal stories into the larger epidemic. Her first book blew me away, and I still recommend it and give it as gifts. I really liked this one as well, maybe not as much, but it was still a great concept that was just realistic enough to be unsettling.
    • 4/5
      this year I made a list of books I think are up my alley, a 5⭐ prediction list.
      the dreamers was on the list.
      I liked it a lot, but tbh I thought it was going to be something else, more about the dreams and the dreamers and less about the mayhem surrounding the sickness spreading which was like 75% of the book.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book, and brilliantly read! Everything is in this novel: Science, Suspence, emotions, and close to our current actuality on its own way... i don't tell more... because I didn't know what was the story about before starting. I thought it was a book about self improvement or something like this telling to keep going with dreams, but wasn't that at all... and I don't regret at all ! awesome novel!
    • 4/5
      In a small college town, a college student falls asleep...and no one can wake her. More students fall into the deep sleep characterized by unusually high levels of brain activity. As the disease spreads through the college and then the town, fear spreads as well. The town is quarantined and no one knows what to do. The story is less about the condition and more about how the various characters react. Eventually, the dreamers begin to awaken and many are disoriented and confused between their dream lives and their reality. An interesting read.
    • 4/5
      4,1 stars

      This wasn't what I expected, but still good. Going in to this, I thought this would be about the dreaming (as in the people afflicted with it), but this was more about the survival of the rest of the people, as well as the aftermath. So don't go into this waiting for too many answers about the cause or effect of the dreaming.

      What came as a surprise to me was how emotional certain sections made me feel. Especially Nathaniel's storyline, but there were others as well. This book is very difficult for me to review, because the way it affected me is difficult to put into words. It's about life, and death, and reality, and the unfairness of life and death. It's also about humanity, and decisions, and how many shades of gray fit between white and black.

      I feel like this is a book that would benefit from a slow read, because while it's pretty plot driven, there's quite a lot of food for thought in it.
    • 5/5
      WOW! It’s been a while since a book has left me so in awe. I’m a little sad that I’m done reading this book, and have already added it to my Amazon list for a future purchase. I can’t wait to read it again and loan it to others. I was a huge fan of Stephen King’s “Under the Dome”, and this book reminded me so much of that tome. I was also a big fan of the author’s first novel “The Age of Miracles”, and this book reminded me so much of that one. Perhaps the author is creating her own little universe/series?A mysterious sleeping sickness falls over the California college town of Santa Lora, and we see the events unfold from different residents. A college student where the virus first strikes, a married couple with a baby, a professor, two sisters, and an outsider are just a few of the stories we are told. There are even chapters where the events are discredited and doubted, as (sadly) is the case these days in regards to the news. I really enjoyed that part of the plot and felt it lent even more validity to this story. Unlike most stories, the events in this book, fanciful as they may at first sound, are presented in a way that were believable to me.
    • 4/5
      I’m finding this a hard review to put into words. Reminiscent of a Stephen King book at times, especially The Dome, this was enjoyable without too much craziness.
      Definitely some sadness involved but not too overwhelming. This is an interesting concept to consider.
    • 4/5
      The Short of It:This book originally came out in January 2019, way before our own pandemic hit and yet, the pandemic detailed in this story could have been taken right out of the headlines of today, minus the sleeping illness, of course.The Rest of It:The story takes place in the fictional town of Santa Lora, California. Santa Lora is a sleepy little college town (pun intended). Many of its residents work at the local university or at the very least know someone who goes there. In the dorms one day, Mei notices that her roommate is still sleeping although morning has come and gone. Her attempts to wake her are futile. The girl will not wake.In another part of town, people are falling asleep where they are whether that is in the middle of a jog or walking the family dog. As more and more victims are discovered, the government is called in along with several medical professionals to determine what is actually happening. Is it psychological? Is the water contaminated?As the story unfolds and the situation becomes more dire, Walker introduces us to the survivors as well as those who will eventually succumb to the sickness. What does it all mean? Why do some wake and others don’t and why are they different after surviving?So much of this story resonates with me, given the pandemic that we are currently living with. The way the sickness spreads, the lack of understanding in the early days of the sickness, the conspiracy theories hinting at government control. The true winner here is the way Walker plays with dreams and memory. Some of the survivors remember vivid dreams that they had while sleeping. Some feel they are premonitions of the future, others believe they are memories from the past. What’s real anyway?There are a lot of characters but they are all so distinct and their situations unique enough where I never felt confused over who was who or what was going on. It’s very well done. I cared enough about each of them to worry about their survival and that says a lot.If you can tolerate a book about a pandemic, and I must say a sleeping sickness sounds a lot better than what we are dealing with now, then pick it up. Someone on FB said that when they read fiction now, they feel uncomfortable when reading about gatherings without masks and the like since they are so conditioned now to meet safely. Well, you won’t have that issue here because masks are the norm in this story.For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter.
    • 3/5
      At first I was really excited to start this book, as it had a pandemic vibe that went along so well with what we are experiencing now. The author was very good at bringing me into this dreamers reality of the sickness, very quickly at the beginning ... but I feel like there wasn’t any real story plot to follow. I was expecting tension, confusion, some major issue that everyone had to find relief from. The ending was not enough for me, as I was hoping for there to be some better explanation of what everyone’s dreams really meant in the grand scheme of things.
    • 5/5
      The story weaves itself in the well known concept of a sudden mass breakout and the reactions that follow...but this takes a slightly different twist. Of all the things science has provided answers for and medical science has gathered and published papers on, perhaps what happens when we sleep may still have unanswered questions. We understand how the process takes place but the things called "dreams/nightmares that our minds and brains provide are still less really understood. Some researchers say that our dreams are more or less meaningless...a "kitchen junk drawer"...the brain’s "information dump" at the end of the day. These dreams that have taken on epidemic qualities are something else entirely and are more dangerous and more powerful than the anyone could have ever imagined. They are the result of a chronic wide spreading pandemic that starts in the fictional college town of Santa Lora, California, then quickly spreads causing the sleeper to slip into an eventually fatal unconscientious. The inter connectedness that is so essential to being part of a community is also what makes the townspeople fatally vulnerable. One thing does creep in however...chaos. And then....some of the sleeping start to awaken. The relief of being conscious is however short-lived as their lives have been irrevocably altered. They are confused and they also must confront their incredible, horrifying visions. They find themselves caught in a dilemma as they discover that the dreams and reality cannot be separated. With clinical precision and psychological depth the author delivers a vivid all too real picture similar of our real ongoing national anxiety.
    • 4/5
      4.5 I was pre-disposed to this book because I loved Walker's first novel The Age of Miracles. She has a knack for skating the edge of science-fiction - these interesting changes in our world that could possibly happen. Here it is an illness that takes over a fictional small CA college town, Santa Lora. It start on the campus with one girl who leaves a party early and doesn't wake up the next morning. She is unconsciously sleeping and cannot be roused. From patient zero it spreads epidemically through the school and the town over the course of a month or so. The omniscient narrator parcels out information about things happening simultaneously and we are introduced to a handful of characters that we get to know and come to care about: Mei, the sick girl's roommate, Matt another freshman on the floor, Sarah and Libby, 2 elementary school girls whose Dad, a survivalist and maintenance worker at the college has been prepping for something like this his whole adult life, their neighbors Ben and Annie who are 2 young professors with a newborn, Grace and a web of others with tenuous connections to this core group. Some of them succumb to the illness, some don't; some recover, some don't. But the reactions to the epidemic: the panic and fear and heroism are the real parts of the story, more than the characters and the illness itself. "Worry is a kind of creativity. Fear is an act of imagination." There is no great revelation about what caused it or why it eventually ends, but the point is more how people behave in response to it. Ultimately the dreamers - those who wake up, have an altered understanding of time. Past, present, and future have become muddled by the sleeping brain's ability to conceive of more than one time and place occurring at the same time. One review said the book is "overflowing with humanity" and that is the brilliance of Walker's writing - her observations about people and the ways we construct our lives and how that gets challenged in change. The narrator comments on "how disease sometimes exposes what is otherwise hidden. How carelessly it reveals a person's private self" and in the face of tragedy "how expert we are in looking away from what we'd rather not see." Finally, when it is all over: "All of us move through our hours as if blindfolded, never knowing what will happen next." A great reminder in a poetic wrapper that nothing is guaranteed to us despite our planning, prepping, striving, saving. This book will wash over you and linger. Let it.
    • 3/5
      After several years of not doing any pleasure reading, I am getting back into figuring out my preferences. This book helped me learn that I value character development more than I previously thought... A wide cast of characters is in play in this story, and I wish I could've learned more about all of them (but especially Libby and Sara). I loved the premise of the plot and the eerie comparisons to our current COVID-19 atmosphere that Thompson Walker couldn't have predicted, but I did not love how abruptly the story ended and how many loose ends remained. Not a bad book by any means, but not a new favorite for me.
    • 4/5
      I read this book during the COVID-19 pandemic. I found that the author captured the realities of an unknown viral infection very well: the isolation, strain on health care resources, conspiracy theories, media interest, stockpiling and the concerns of family members. What seemed different from the current pandemic is that, in the novel, the victims are asleep. Not dying. No need for invasive medical intervention. There is not really a sense of urgency in this story. In addition to examining how a community copes with an epidemic, the novel also addresses the theme of time and suggests that dreams may form a kind of alternative dimension. The victims of the virus are all dreaming. One dreams of a future that is different from her actual life, but one that feels more real to her in many ways. One dreams of the present and a possible way to wake the sleepers. One dreams of a past she couldn't have remembered given her age. One dreams of his actual past. And one dreams of an alternative present. An interesting story with characters I really felt for.
    • 4/5
      "The Dreamers" tells the story of how an epidemic spreads: one case becomes two, becomes four, etc. Because this is so real in that epidemics do spread and blossom out of control so easily, this is a frightening book. In recent years, in fact, we had had a few scares where epidemic and pandemic were feared, and every year we suffer outbreaks of various infectious influenzas, some more virulent than others.
      The realism of this book makes it scary and a suspenseful read. The flu invented for this story is plausible. The efforts of people to deal with it are totally believable. A flu outbreak of the type this book describes would probably cause some concern and fear in a community or family, and that fear would grow as the outbreak worsened, just as it does in this book. The fear, panic and unreasonable reactions that occurred when AIDS was first identified exemplified how communities react to things they don't comprehend.
      The book does tell a good story and is a frightening and compelling read. I wanted to see what happened next every time I turned a page, and just kept turning them. I am glad I read it.
      The fact that the dreamers in the story who survived their illness each had unique kinds of experiences and dreams during their affliction adds to the credibility of the storyline. Many people have vivid and detailed dreams of past experiences long submerged in their subconscious. Many had bewildering and confusing dreams which are unintelligible and confusing to the, Many people can recall nothing their dreams. I am not sure, however, that dreaming of thing which have not yet occurred is very common, but I still found it easy to accept in this novel because it tightened the mysterious and foreboding nature of the illness the author envisioned.
      I often give up on novels or movies when too many events that simply are not plausible or that conflict with previous parts of the story occur, but that sort of think does not occur in this novel, raising it above so may others I have read. I was at first bothered by the fact that the town in the story was about 70 miles from Los Angeles yet later in the novel experienced snowfall, but I recently lived for many years 70 miles from Los Angeles but high up in the mountains and it is snowing there right now as I write this. So even that detail fit together and did not detract from the storyline or disrupt credibility. A lot of other authors have not done so well when telling their stories.
      I usually don't succeed in finding the latest and most interesting books to read in the years they are first published, but I was successful with this book. Because it is so new, I read it without succumbing to other people's perceptions and judgments, even though I did come to it based on a recommendation. I hope I can identify other good novels when they are first on the shelf. Somehow, that seems to make them more special.
    • 5/5
      Another dystopian fairytale from Karen Thompson Walker, made spookier while reading during lockdown because of the Coronavirus pandemic! Her description of the human fear and panic which spreads when a mysterious virus causes the people of a small town to fall into dreaming comas reads almost like a current news update: In Los Angeles, seventy miles away, the stores have run out of masks; people are stockpiling food in case the sickness spreads.'The first stage of sleep is the lightest, the brief letting go, like the skipping of a stone across water. This is the nodding of a head in a theater. This is the dropping of a book in bed.'In Santa Lora, California, a young girl falls asleep in her dorm room and never wakes up, She isn't dead, but her breathing is shallow and even while appearing to dream, she remains unresponsive. Soon other students on campus are taken away with the same mysterious condition. Then doctors and nurses, family members, complete strangers who only came into brief contact with the sick, are stricken, and Santa Lora is cordoned off by the authorities. No one can leave, including a young family with their new baby and two girls living next door with their paranoid father, and no relatives of the sick can enter to care for their loved ones. Only a few remain strangely immune, including a girl who was sharing a room with the first victim, and nobody knows where the virus has come from or what can stop the spread.This was a very swift and enjoyable read, made more engrossing by current events. I love Karen Thompson Walker's writing style anyway, but the virus described here, and the very natural response of those caught up in the epidemic, is brought vividly to life by the author's wonderful attention to detail. I could have done with less gushing about a parent's love for their children - the author had a baby while writing, and I could tell - but overall I was instantly captivated. Similar to the first half of Stephen King's The Stand, which I'm also re-reading, but less gory and written with a far lighter touch.A great read to pass the time during lockdown!
    • 5/5
      When I really, really like a book, I find that I have a very hard time reviewing it or even talking about it. This is completely true of The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker.

      Walker’s books both have a very detached feeling to them. Even in the midst of a crisis, lives continue, slowly and quietly.

      The Dreamers feels like we’re being read a story, more than we’re actually reading a story ourselves. We never truly feel what the characters feel, or connect with them in any real way. We’re outsiders, watching this story play out as if we’re in a dream ourselves.

      (Spoiler) Rebecca’s story struck me the most, especially at the end. I believed that her life with her son was as real as she did, and the loss that she felt upon learning that he had never truly existed was tangible and heartbreaking.
    • 3/5
      The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker is a dystopian sci-fi novel that takes place in a small town in California. (Is it still dystopian/apocalyptic if it's contained in one area?) The book begins with a young girl in college who is a bit of a misfit on her dorm floor. She doesn't even have much of a relationship with her roommate...and then that roommate doesn't wake up the next morning. This is the start of a sleeping sickness that spreads throughout the city radiating out from the college campus. Written with multiple narrative lines and only a few likable characters this probably isn't the one for you if you're looking for a more straightforward contemporary fiction. This book explores what happens when a biological contagion that is not fully understood (and clearly not prepared for) rapidly spreads and the ensuing chaos. I'm talking about governmental influence, hazmat suits, and lock-down quarantine with all the requisite fear and panic, ya'll. This is disaster relief (contemporary fiction style) meets sci-fi (those afflicted are experiencing REM i.e. dreaming...and it might be precognition). This was a fast paced book (I zipped right through it) which I enjoyed for the most part but I was left feeling like there were a lot of loose ends that the author didn't adequately tie off. So this was ultimately a middle of the road read for me. 5/10
    • 1/5
      In a small college town in Southern California, people begin falling asleep and not waking. As more and more people fall victim to the virus, the town is quarantined. The book follows a number of people as those around them fall asleep.This book was extremely detached. None of the characters seemed real. Their emotions seemed muted and dulled. All of this made the book hard to read and boring. Unfortunately, this one was a bust.
    • 4/5
      Interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying, book about what happens to a small California town when a new virus begin to infect the town's population. I say "unsatisfying" because the book doesn't really answer some of the questions it raises about the virus and its effects - you might not feel the same way because open-ended books don't frustrate you, so don't let me scare you away.Thompson does a good job in focusing on a finite set of characters who mostly ultimately fail to fight off exposure to the virus, and ultimately, the book is more about these characters and how they react to their situation than it is about the virus itself.
    • 4/5
      Station Eleven, Severance, Bird Box, and so many others have recently tackled the idea of an epidemic that cripples society. Dreamers does the same thing, but on a smaller more intimate scale. A sleeping disease is spreading through a small town and as more victims succumb, the remaining survivors live in a state of fear. The writing is lyrical and fittingly dream-like. It follows a few different groups, including a married couple with an infant, college students at the heart of the outbreak, and a survivalist and his two daughters. Each has a very different experience, though moments of fear or hope are universal. BOTTOM LINE: Beautiful, but not at all what I was expecting. Though the fear of what's happening is real, it never has the same sense of urgency. The book intentionally meanders through the crisis, reporting what happens, but focusing more on the emotions of the people in the midst of the drama. “It doesn’t need to be said, how efficiently an infant proves the relentlessness of time.”“This is how the sickness travels fast, through all the same channels as do fondness, and friendship, and love."
    • 4/5
      I am the perfect type of reader for this book. I really loved the mystery and unexplained nature of the story, I loved the many different perspectives, and I really loved how all the characters were connected or crossed paths throughout the novel. Super unique plot and I loved it!
    • 3/5
      A special thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group—Random House for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.A college freshman stumbles back to her dorm room and falls asleep. She sleeps all morning and into the next evening. Her roommate, Mei, tries to wake her without success; paramedics can't rouse her, nor the doctors at the hospital. Then another girl falls asleep, and then another.The college is put on lockdown quarantining the students. Panic sets in as the once sleepy town descends into chaos. Those that are infected are experiencing a higher-than-normal level of brain activity and are intensely dreaming, but what are they dreaming about?Thompson Walker uses third person perspective and divides the book into small, digestible chapters. This is not particularly effective, in fact there is a disconnect—it is as if the narrator is completely detached. Because of this format, the characters are not fully developed and I didn't feel an affinity towards any of them—I wanted to, especially Mei.Written in luminous, hypnotic prose, The Dreamers is a beautiful, sweeping novel yet I was left feeling frustrated because nothing actually happens. That, coupled with the fact that there are several loose ends, left me thinking about this book long after I finished it. I'm rather perplexed to be honest, and not in a good thought-provoking way, but questioning what I just actually read.
    • 3/5
      Set in southern California, The Dreamers is about people in a college town who mysteriously are struck with an illness that puts them to sleep indefinitely.
    • 4/5
      I will probably forever associate author Karen Thompson Walker with the number “one million.” It's a fairly big number and it's also quite a lot for the author to live up to. If you didn't know, Walker's debut novel, The Age of Miracles, was the subject of a bidding war that garnered an advance of over one millions dollars. This is a substantial amount of money for any novelist who is not a household name, but particularly for one who is a debut novelist. Surely, there was pressure on Walker to deliver a million dollar book with The Age of Miracles—do you think it's made that back yet?—but there also must be continued pressure to deliver on subsequent efforts.My feelings toward The Dreamers isn't all that different from The Age of Miracles, to be honest. Karen Thompson Walker is quite the writer actually. She has a way with language. It is simple, yet lulling. Poetic, but generally not cloying (except for most mentions of “the fetus”). The result is a book that can almost lull you asleep. For some readers, that's a bad thing. For others, it's a plus. Yet it surprises me that such a language-centric author would pull in such a huge advance.So there's language, but there's also plot. With both of Walker's books, there's a really great idea at the core. The story could really drive the language, but I don't know that it does. In both novels, the pace sometimes slows considerably. I'm okay with these things, but I still don't know how she received such a—Okay, so like I said, I cannot disassociate Walker with that number. Maybe someday I will, but I doubt it. Putting all that aside, my feelings are this: Entering either of these novels, I immediately was pulled in, by the brilliance of the language and the plot; the longer the story goes, however, the less gripping the plot becomes, the more the prose takes over; in the end, I can say that I enjoyed the novel, but I cannot say that I particularly loved the story, though elements, specific scenes, continue to haunt my memory. The Age of Miracles and The Dreamers were both elusive stories, but difficult to shake completely—much like a dream. the Dreamers: an apt title for Walker's sophomore effort.
    • 5/5
      In a small college town in California, a girl falls asleep after a night of drinking and can't be wakened. Then another and another and each day it seems, more students are falling asleep. There is an attempt to contain the disease first to the dormitory, then to the campus through quarantine but soon it spreads to the town as doctors, nurses, even entire families fall asleep. And as they sleep, they dream.The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker is a beautifully written tale with, at times, an almost dreamlike quality. It is also a real page-turner. The prose is economical yet it is also evocative. With the use of short paragraphs and sentences, Walker keeps the story moving at an even pace. There are a lot of characters but each is unique enough that it easy to keep their storylines separate. The story deals with some very important issues like loneliness and loss, grief, memory, our innate need to connect with others that too often is coloured by our own hopes and dreams - yet there is often a sense of playfulness in Walker's use of words and phrases. The story does not end on a simple note, there is a kind of sadness in it, but it seemed, at least to me, the right ending. Overall, a beautiful and beautifully compelling novel and I can't recommend it highly enough. Thanks to Netgalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review
    • 4/5
      4-1/2 starsI would give it 5 stars except, even though the ending/endings were fine and the resolutions all made sense, somehow the last chapters didn’t quite live up to the rest of the book for me. Parts did but the whole didn’t. There was no letdown for me though. I really , really liked this book. And in a way much of what ended up happening was perfect, or at least brilliantly conceived. As I read I was curious about what would happen and how it could end and honestly I can’t think of any better done resolutions, at least not in most cases. It’s a solid 4-1/2 stars though.It was a page-turner! It grabbed me from the start with its story and characters and the writing style. I’m glad I was able to read it quickly because I was able to get a brand new pristine copy from the library, but the queue list is long so the book wasn’t renewable. It was riveting; I read it in 5 days and I never wanted to put it down.It was mesmerizing. It read almost like a thriller.There were mutliple sets of characters. When I was first reading I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep them straight but it didn’t end up being a problem at all. I enjoyed being with the characters I was with but was also always eager to get back to the other characters. I loved so many of the characters.I loved the sentences, bits, sections, and snippets here and there from history and science and psychology and literature. They were interesting and touching and felt profound. Profound or not? Maybe it reaches for more than it is, but it was somehow beautiful and it worked for me. It made me think about issues around connection, loneliness, belonging, love, ethics & morality, dreams, time, life.I felt angry at one character Matthew but am I really??? Maybe not? But sad. Very sad for many but especially for Mei – I had to look up at the start how to pronounce her name. I’m so glad I didn’t let this one languish on my to read shelf.
    • 5/5
      Book Review #TheDreamersKaren Thompson Walker "Hysteria-that's the real disease of this era." SummaryIn the small college town of Santa Lora, California, a party girl passes out in her dorm. Her roommate, Mei, can't wake her. This girl is the first. More students on the same floor are next. And it continues out as things always do. Several story lines spin throughout: the teens Mei and Matthew, the young girls Sara and Libby with their unhinged father, the young couple, Ben and Annie, and baby Grace, the biology professor, Nathaniel, and his invalid partner, Henry, the psychiatrist, Catherine, quarantined in the hospital, a sleeping student, Rebecca, plus numerous doctors, nurses, neighbors. Lives crossing and uncrossing. All are touched by the sleep in some way. This town is trapped as the nation watches. What are these people dreaming? According to doctors, it's something never seen before. What will happen if they wake up? If they don't?My ThoughtsThis narrative feels hazy and pleasant, like I might drift off reading. Each story line brings it's own urgency, tragedies and triumphs. Who will sleep next? There is tension in the air. Do you help others or save yourself? The world is terrible and bleak. Most sleepers keep sleeping. Some wake speaking premonitions they believe are true. Someone wakes convinced every dream was the future, "the feeling that these dreams are somehow glimpses of days yet to come". But, these events already happened in the past. Nothing can change this person's mind. Still more swear they dreamed the future in past events. Why? Where were these people? What's real? Are we a dream? This is a story about the big questions and the small moments."Time: that's what the dream is really about."The defining moment for me is a character waking seeming to have lived a long life in sleep, but waking, it vanished. The loss of that life is extremely profound. I felt it so deeply it surprised me. The loss became a living thing. I had no breath. I wanted this character to sleep again in the life lost. This book knocked me off my feet and I loved it! So unique and haunting. Thanks to #NetGalley for an #arc in exchange for an honest review.