The Dreamers popped up on Net Galley and although I hadn’t heard much about it before, the blurb drew me in and I quickly requested a copy. The folks over there thankfully approved me in exchange for this honest review, and I dived right in.

The Dreamers follows a handful of characters in a small Californian college town a little way outside of LA. It starts with a college student, who her friends are unable to wake up. It spreads to her classmates on her dorm floor, her professors, their families, neighbours, anyone and everyone gets the Sleeping Sickness. Soon the whole town in subject to speculation about this disease, and the whole world is watching them. No one is allowed in, and no one is allowed out. But how does it end?

Here’s the official blurb from Goodreads:

In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep—and doesn’t wake up. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. As the number of cases multiplies, classes are canceled, and stores begin to run out of supplies. A quarantine is established. The National Guard is summoned.

Mei, an outsider in the cliquish hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrust together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate. Two visiting professors try to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. A father succumbs to the illness, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves. And at the hospital, a new life grows within a college girl, unbeknownst to her—even as she sleeps. A psychiatrist, summoned from Los Angeles, attempts to make sense of the illness as it spreads through the town. Those infected are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, more than has ever been recorded. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

From the very first sentence, I knew this book was going to be something special. The prose are so breathtaking, so fluid and mesmerizing, not only do they fully draw you into the story, but they keep you there, enchanted, until nothing else matters but this story. I absolutely adored the narrative, but also the point of view. The story focuses on certain characters, yes, from Mei and Matthew, to Sara and Libby and their father, Ben and Annie and Grace, but it’s almost as if the narrator is telling you about these people as an afterthought, a by product of the tale of the Sleeping Sickness. It’s not a particularly character driven book – there are too many that it focuses on to be able to do that in depth – but it’s also not distant from the characters you do encounter. You’re drawn into their lives, but it’s like you’re kept a distance somehow, watching through the windows. I don’t mean that to sound negative – I don’t have one negative thing to say about this book – and it didn’t wasn’t impersonal. That’s just how I felt. Carried along on a stream of consciousness, looking in from the outside, circling the town and hearing everyone’s stories together.

In a way, the story telling felt similar to Blindness by Jose Saramago – in fact there’s even a quote from Blindness at the beginning of the book – but it also could be likened to Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. A very different end of the world type book – much calmer, quiet. And while I class Station Eleven as one of my favourite books of all time, I couldn’t get through Blindness. It’s been half read on my kindle for over a year now and I can’t bring myself to go back to it. The writing style of The Dreamers is so much easier, more tranquil. It guides you through the story on the wisp of a cloud.

Everything about this book was just right – the pacing, the amount of backstory you got about characters, the length, even the chapter lengths. I have no complaints whatsoever. Whenever I wasn’t reading it, I was desperate to get back to reading it. But when I was reading it, I was hoping it would never. I almost want to read it again straight away, but I am definitely eager to get my hands on a copy of the authors debut novel The Age of Miracles.

Overall, 5 stars. And definitely an author to look out for.

This was one of those books i seemed to fall into straight away - I was completely transfixed by this concept having never read or seen anything like it before.
Individuals in this town fall into deep and uncompromising sleep seemingly indefinitely a la Sleeping beauty, in doing so they are subject to wild and vivid dreams that appear to be their reality.

The writing of this story is mesmerizing and gives a very dreamlike quality to this book that i was very much a fan of. Its fairly slow paced which unusually adds to the story so worth sticking with until the end.

Definitely worth a read.

The pace is a lot slower than what you would expect for a dystopian/apocalyptic novel. The story itself has a quiet dreamlike quality to it, as if the reader is removed or isolated from the story. It fit well with the overall theme.

The story is told from a few perspectives:

Mei is the room mate of patient zero and is put under quarantine with her fellow dorm mates.

Sarah and Libby’s father is a doomsday prepper, with 50 gallons of water, food, ammunition and gas masks he is dying to use. He is ready for any eventuality except getting sick himself.

Their neighbours, with a new born baby is frantic to get away before they also succumb to this mysterious illness.

Catherine, an out of town psychiatric specialist tries to puzzle out this medical anomaly.

This was a great premise and I did not mind the slower pace however as the story mostly focused on the characters reactions to the situation rather than the sleeping phenomena, very little answers are given about the mysterious sickness or what the victims themselves experienced.

Because of this the story felt a little incomplete to me.

It could also be that I was not really in the mood for a slower paced book that contributed to my slight dissatisfaction.

The Dreamers is an oddly mesmerising book. A dark fairytale, where the residents of a college town fall prey to a dreaming enchantment like a modern Sleeping Beauty. Every dream is different. Some see the past, some a possible future. All seem as real as the world outside the dreamer.

In “Marginalia” E. A. Poe wrote:

“It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.”

The concept of Walker's book, the dreaming aspect, is extremely interesting; our brains take in so much of our surroundings, so much information and experiences, while the perception remains wildly uniquem, it differs from one human being to another, thus, Walker's idea of a sleeping virus is fascinating because it can impact each individual differently. The writing flows well, the cast of characters is wide and the journey of the boundaries between reality and dreams easily categorises this book not only as dystopian but as an exploration of the unknown as well, with emotional extensions.

A college town in California is hit a by a sleeping virus. It starts in a dorm with a girl who does not wake up, she is taken away but then it becomes apparent that the sickness is spreading and the dorm is put into quarantine.

The cast of characters grows from Mei and Matthew, two college students, to the father who has been preparing for a world disaster for some time, the new parents, a college professor, a foetus and a doctor. Each character gives an insight into the state of the town, the country and into the character of the virus.

Those hit with the illness have vivid dreams; are these dreams of the future, memories or just wishful thinking?

I particularly enjoyed the blossoming relationship between Mei and Matthew, with the twist in the tale as Matthew acts according to his beliefs on the value of life.

A thought provoking, great read! It is one of those books that I will remember, think about for a long time to come and definitely recommend!

The Dreamers

My thanks to Simon & Schuster for an ARC of this novel via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was attracted to this book by the reference in the blurb to Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go. In both cases, these are books I love and I have read all the novels these two authors have published. So, The Dreamers has a high bar to jump over!

I can see the comparison with Emily St. John Mandel’s book even if it is slightly forced. Both books deal with an outbreak of a virus. Station Eleven is far more complex as it skips backwards and forwards in time over the central, global event to gradually tell the story. The Dreamers is far more linear, straightforward and localised in structure. I can’t really see the connection with Ishiguro’s book.

A young girl stumbles in her dorm room late at night and falls asleep in her clothes. That’s perhaps not completely unusual, but the fact that she doesn’t wake up is. Then others start to fall asleep as the mystery illness spreads through the community. We follow the lives of several people as they navigate through this crisis. There is the doomsayer single parent with two daughters who has stockpiled against every eventuality except his own demise. There is the married couple with a new baby that they just want to sleep until suddenly that is the last thing they want. There is a young student with a hidden reason for wanting to help the victims. There is a psychiatric nurse trapped by being at the hospital when the quarantine starts and separated from her young daughter.

In fact, it felt to me that there were too many of these individual threads and I think it would have worked better with fewer lives to track and more story about each. The other consequence of so many story lines is that we run out of book before we get to explore what was actually going on in the minds of the individuals who contract the disease. Early on we learn that their brains are hyperactive when scanned, deep in a vivid dream state. But that topic is not really explored until a sudden rush towards the end and this leaves the book feeling slightly incomplete. It is, after all, called The Dreamers and it feels towards the end that a better title would be The Sleepers because the dreams don’t play much of a part.

There are interesting sections that link with ideas that the current Man Booker long list has been exploring: the outbreak is localised and it is not long before the conspiracy theorists get on to it and the hoax rumours begin to fly. This is another area that could have been developed further, I think.

Overall, this is a very readable book that starts to think about the difference between dreams and reality. This isn’t a new topic, but the story is well told. For me, it is frustrating that so long is spent on the outbreak and so little time is spent on its consequences or on the reaction of the broader community.

A great book. It grabbed and sucked me in as soon as the first sentence was read. It did have echoes of Wyndham and others but stood up brilliantly for me as a unique premise. The words remained with me as I went about my day. I found myself pondering what it would be like to “fall asleep” for so long and have amazing, weird dreams. Premonitions perhaps? I’d like to think so. The narrative flowed beautifully, the sense of unease increased slowly giving me a lot of “oh no”! moments.

I enjoyed it immensely and I can see this as a film.

The Dreamers by Katherine Thompson Walker

Published by Scribner


Official blurb :

The eagerly awaited new novel from the author of The Age of Miracles.

Imagine a world where sleep could trap you, for days, for weeks, months... A world where you could even die of sleep rather than in your sleep.

Karen Thompson Walker's second novel is the stunning story of a Californian town's epidemic of perpetual sleep.

My opinion:

This is set in a fictional town of Santa Lora in California at the local College. Kara falls asleep but then doesn’t wake and is taken to hospital.....then others at the college start to sleep. The doctors complete tests and scans and can find nothing, only they are asleep and dreaming. Hundreds in the town then do the same and it’s put down to a virus. The hospitals are full, with patients in library’s and community spaces and the military control a quarantine.
Katherine Thompson Walker, writes of those left awake, their struggles in the chaos, as more and more succumb to the sleep.
I felt the characters were well written, especially Mei and Ben...made me weep at times.

This is a tale of the perception of reality, time and dreams, not in a scientific way, but a human feeling. If after experiencing a lifetime in a dream, would you want to wake up to reality and experience that loss?....I wonder!

I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review

Told from multiple perspectives, The Dreamers explores the outbreak of a rapid-spread sleeping epidemic - starting with a single female student at college, soon entire families are dropping suddenly into a sleep from which they can't be woken. No one can see an end to the epidemic or a cure, and resources for supporting an entire afflicted town are dwindling...

Character-driven rather than action-focused, the book was completely compelling, atmospheric and, ultimately, haunting. Karen Thompson Walker draws you into a world that is terrifying in its realistic handling of her characterisations and the epidemic response. At times the book has a neutral, observational tone of voice, lending to its realism and heightening the characters' fears as people continue to fall ill. I was completely hooked not just to see how the book ended, but how the characters continued to develop and cope with their ordeals.

This is an ethereal story that feels somehow like it could really happen... Brilliant concept, brilliantly followed through.

If you enjoyed 'Station Eleven', you'll love this too!

Really lyrical writing and lovely phrasing. A delight to read, and a fascinating concept with human characters - never quite resolved, leaving the reader wondering 'what if'

Now there's a guarantee I am giving to you: If you liked Station Eleven you will love this book.

I have never heard of Karen Thompson Walker before, but felt intrigued by the book description on NetGalley. I am so glad I have read this book. It is one of the fabulous finds, a book you pick by instinct and left you amazed.

I can summarise this as a borderline science fiction character drama- just like Station Eleven it swirls around lives of a bunch of people after a catastrophe- although in this book it's not a world-wide event, but a small town disaster, Walker masterfully delivering the intense feel of a lock down. There is sadness in this book but it's not cringe, beautiful as if a form of art.

Set in fictional university town Santa Lora in California, the book starts when some college girls fall asleep and fail to wake up. They dream. But no one knows what's causing this. Story moves between different point of views, Sara and Libby with their paranoid dad, a young married couple, Ben and Annie with their new born baby girl Grace, two castaway college students, Mei and Matthew, and a man named Nathaniel. I found almost all character's point of views really enjoyable and loved the way the story was delivered. The last chapter is one to remember.

I personally think the situation of a virus spread was handled excellently- no exaggeration, o unnecessary drama, as if a dish with all proper ingredients and a spot on pinch of spices. If you like psychological books with touch of sci-fi I will highly recommend.
5 stars and will definitely read Walker again.

A very similar storyline to Stephen King’s Sleeping Beauties that I was afraid it would be a poor shadow but no this, though similar, was an excellent novel in its own right and perhaps more poignant then SK’s. the characters were beautifully drawn and I felt for them completely.

A sound four star read.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy. This was beautifully written, ethereal, weird and captivating. Love that it was told from multiple perspectives and I raced through it as I cared about the characters and was intrigued about the mystery of the illness.

When a strange illness takes over a town, one by one, people begin to succumb to the mysterious symptoms.

I LOVED this book. I read it in one go and was completely absorbed - I loved the premise, the writing, the characters, everything about it. As I followed the story of individuals, I found myself floating along with the vague sense of panic that grips the town - it felt real. Walker's descriptions are eerie and powerful, unsettling somehow, as if we're in the town, yet disconnected at the same time.

I loved how this novel tells a dystopian story, yet it doesn't feel far-fetched or impossible. The people feel real, their reactions feel real, the reaction of the authorities and the surrounding country isn't impossible, and I think that is what makes it so unsettling. It's set in our times, and I was left thinking that each twist in the story was plausible, yet in some way removed.

This book is fantastic. Thoroughly recommended!

I hadn't realised this was by the same author as the Age of Miracles. I would have been even more keen to read had I known.
This,like the last, felt refreshing,a new idea.
Admittedly we've probably all read about a mystery virus and isolation for it...
But the idea of a sleeping sickness really intrigued me... with few signs it was coming and for a good part of the book,less signs it was leaving.
Throw into that ,people of different ages and backgrounds and how they'd all survive,in a town on lock down.
I raced through it.
It almost felt like a bonus to then have some people wake and talk of disorientation and the dreams they had and what effect they were to have on them.
I'll be telling people to buy this one for sure.

I really enjoyed this book and Karen Thompson Walker is a great writer. If there was a half star I would have rated it 3.5. It tells the story of a town in which residents, mysteriously start falling asleep. It becomes an epidemic, and the situation is declared a national crisis.

My main issue was with the structure. It took too long to get to the meat of the story, and then the ending felt rushed. There were quite a few questions left unanswered, and whilst I suspect that was the author’s intention, for me this felt disappointing. Still a good read though.

A small college town in California is hit with a sleeping sickness that starts in a college girls dorm room. The sickness spreads eventaully throughout the town as we follow the lives of a range of residents: thecollege outsider Mei, Mathhew an idealistic maverick student, Rebecca a religious student enjoying sone new found freedom, a young couple of lecturers new to town and with a new baby, their strange neighbour who is a widower and survivalist with two daughters and an older gay couple . We follow their lives through some flashbacks, the present and the dreams they have when they sleep. Are they echoes of the past, glimpses of the future or an alternative lived reality?

I enjoyed this book, it was really well written and held all the threads together. well for the most part I felt that the gay couple were a bit underwritten and also that Mei, who I was rooting for from the first page got a bit lost in the narrative towards the end. Catherine, the psychologist's story was also under developed. but these are minor quibbles. The prose flows gently almost as somnolent at times as that of the sleepers and their dreams. It was a great bedtime read. I'll definitely be checking out this writers other books.

A small Californian town is under threat when a mysterious virus starts spreading from the local college; people fall asleep and can't be woken. Karen Thompson Walker handles the material very efficiently, building up an atmosphere of disbelief that escalates gradually until the town is cut off from the outside world by a 'cordon sanitaire'. No one is allowed in; no one can leave. The disease affects everyone, from the smallest new-born baby to the elderly and confused living in a nursing home. There are echoes of Camus' The Plague and of Rip Van Winkle, laced with theories about sleep and dreaming from ancient Greece via Freud to the latest findings of neuroscientists. All against a quietly smouldering background of global warming: the lake is drying up, trees are slowly dying and the whole area is at the risk of devastating forest fires.
The sense that this illness affects all is echoed by the way the story is told from several viewpoints with no one central character: a young fresher who doesn't fit in; two young sisters with an eccentric father; a professor grieving for his partner and a young couple patching together their marriage with a new baby amongst others.
The Dreamers is a subtle story where reality and dreaming become mixed, and the decisions we take in how to live our lives are put under the microscope. A quietly devastating page-turner.

It is not often that the premise of the book is so completely captured within the content. But this is one of those times. Walker writes like a waking dream; a muted, seen through clouded glass distancing throughout the novel. And it works perfectly. As we read about the sleeping sickness travelling through the community, we feel the slow, sucking sleep of the dreamers. We feel the paranoia and tension - but through a glass darkly, so to speak. And it evokes such a sense of veiled horror at the inevitability of sleep - which is probably the cleverest part of the novel. We all must sleep. Every one of us. Not only that, but we must sleep at least once every couple of days. To have something so essential turned into a potential enemy is a potent thing.
I'd say Walker evokes some of the classic distancing of Atwood at times, where we feel this could be happening right now, or in the future, or maybe it happened long ago and this is just the record of it, and it works to good effect in The Dreamers.
I would recommend this book to readers that like Atwood, or readers that enjoy the feeling of being pulled hazily through a story, without a sharp and defined beginning middle and end.

I love literary fiction with a speculative twist (I don't think anybody is surprised to hear that) and I heard absolutely amazing things about this book before starting it. The book does a wonderful way of depicting a potential world-ending plague without the bells and whistles of post-apocalyptic fiction. Set in a fictional college town in California where one after the other people start falling asleep and not waking up again, this book has a fairy-talesque mood that I just adored.

For me the book worked best in the overarching moments, when the narrative flits between different people and never comes close enough to add humanity to them. I found the prose in those sections stunning and the distance created worked really well for me. Here it read more like a parable than a classical science fiction book and I just loved this a whole lot. I adored how the authors opened up the closed narrative to give glimpses of the outside world and her depiction of the greater world's reaction to the unknown illness was believable.

Karen Thompson Walker emphasizes the relationship between parents and their children, which I obviously enjoyed, but my favourite relationship was that between two sisters who were left alone after their doomsday-prepper father succumbs to the illness. Sibling relationships are a particular weakness of mine and those two sisters felt very real. I do think that the book was not always successful when changing gear from the birds-eye perspective to a more closely observed narrative style, but I enjoyed the reading experience immensely nonetheless.

The Dreamers was a lyrical, beautifully immersive novel, taking the premise of an unknown virus spreading throughout an unsuspecting small town and within that exploring intriguing themes of time and memory.

It starts at a college, a girl goes to sleep and simply does not wake up. Like domino’s more fall, slowly spreading outwards – scientists, Doctors, specialists, arriving in droves but nobody knows what this sickness is or how to cure it. The one certain thing is that all these sleepers are busy dreaming…

Through the eyes of various town inhabitants, we watch this strange and unpredictable illness occur, see the town cut off, feel the low key panic, the helplessness and the worry. As the outside world watches, time is an elusive thing for these few, as it is it seems for those struck by the virus. It is a clever narrative, a fully formed character drama – the emphasis being very much on the human condition, how we distinguish dreams from reality, if indeed we can at all…and how we cope with untenable situations where resolution seems impossible.

I loved this because it ignored the usual trope of people fighting over scraps, hurting each other, but showed how we both isolate ourselves and come together in times of trauma. The differing personalities we meet give a snapshot of time, an enclosed event where only those in it can know it. The author gives outcomes but allows the reader to consider the possibilities – It is melancholy and thought provoking.

I loved it. A little dark delight.

Recommended.

Haunting and lyrical. Very rare is a good book surrounding an outbreak that doesn’t focus on the actual science behind it, but this one did I just fine.

A highly contagious virus is taking out the community of Santa Lora. First to succumb are students at the local college, all falling into a deep dreamy sleep from which they cannot be woken.

Even with the college grounds in quarantine, inevitably the virus escapes into the wider community.

A wealth of characters tie the reader into the story: Ben, his wife Annie and their new baby Grace; Mei and Matthew – students, still awake, and trying their best to help others; Nathaniel and his two daughters who’ve already prepared for an apocalyptic scenario with a stockpile of goods in their basement.

Loved this read – I cared deeply about all the characters, and enjoyed the philosophical slant to the narrative – exploring dreaming and the unconscious. Definitely an author to pick up again.

"O Sleep, come for me, I will go quietly,
where the roof doesn’t leak in my heart.

O Sleep, come for me, I’m a boat, sprung a leak,
I’ll hide and you’ll seek a new start for me.
Til dawn, I’ll be too gone to care how grey the day is.
The dreams that it chases away, they stay asleep.

O Sleep, come for me, I will come willingly,
like a leaf from a tree in October..."
- Lisa Hannigan, O Sleep

The Dreamers is the sophomore effort from Karen Thompson Walker, author of the novel The Age of Miracles. The story opens with Mei, a student in a university in the small fictional town of Santa Lora, California, who discovers that her roommate has fallen into a deep sleep that she cannot be woken from. At the hospital, it is revealed that this bout of deep sleep is a sickness - a contagious virus - that renders its victims comatose (in the sleep-sense) for weeks or months on end. The sickness soon spreads throughout the university grounds before spilling over into the local neighborhoods and small town, affecting a host of characters: more of Mei's classmates and more university students; two local children, Sara and Libby, and their father; Ben and Annie, a young married couple, and their three-week-old daughter, Grace; Nathaniel, a university faculty member. We don't know how its victims are chosen, but the sickness seems to affect people of all ages and all walks of life, ensnaring them in a perpetual sleep that triggers life-altering dreams. And that's what is so interesting here: these victims, in their sleep, display an unusual amount of brain activity and they dream. They dream about the past, about the present and, interestingly, about the future. Each state of dreaming is unique to the dreamer, just as the virus affects each victim in a different way.

I think this is a very well written and constructed novel. The author handles this small-town catastrophe very well. As panic beings to build in Santa Lora, a quarantine is established. Classes are cancelled, the number of cases increases and food supplies run low. But nothing here is overdone. Just like the dreamers themselves, there is a quiet and a gentleness to this virus, and a subtlety to how Thompson Walker portrays this. There is a normality to the chaos, which we are regularly reminded of, and that maintains the humanness here. Parents must care for their children, pet owners must feed their pets and teenagers still fall in love. Life goes on all around Santa Lora, just as life goes on for the victims who dream, in whatever form that may be.

There is certainly a dystopian, apocalyptic feel to this novel but I would class it more as character-driven science-fiction story with fairytale elements. The prose and the story are hypnotic and the book is filled with wonderfully emotive passages that make this a truly memorable read. I particularly loved the sections where Ben is left to look after his newborn daughter when his wife falls asleep. The constant attachment he is forced to endure with his dependent and vulnerable baby is both a blessing and a struggle, and it was heart-wrenching to watch him try to cope alone with both the huge grief he was experiencing and the mundane activities of the everyday - the new baby sleep schedule, the feeding, the changing. It really struck a cord with me. And I find that typical, now, of Thompson Walker's work: she is a beautiful writer, one that has the ability to evoke true emotion in her balance of the weird and the normal.

The Dreamers is a stunning novel; a mesmerising story about life and love, dreams and reality, and the nature of consciousness. I highly recommend it. Four and a half stars.

Thank you for an advance ARC in return for an honest review.
The Dreamers follows a small US town, struck down with a highly infections sleeping sickness. There is only one road into the town, and only one road and as the sickness spreads through the town the authorities put the town in quarantine, and sends in the Military.
This is a very quiet, calm novel, almost as dreamy as The Dreamers in the title. The narrative is told from different perspectives, who interact with each other such is the smallness of the story. The characters are beautifully drawn out, and the pace is perfect. I really enjoyed this and was particularly saddened that not all the main characters made it to the end of the novel.

Definitely recommends, and will be looking up Karen Thompson Walker’s previous novels.

Easy four stars.

I'm obsessed with this book. Knew I would be by that blurb! And The Dreamers did not disappoint, the writing style is brilliant and the story is mesmerizing and terrifying.