The Dreamers, Karen Thompson Walker
The Dreamers, Karen Thompson Walker
22 Rating(s)
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

The Dreamers

Author: Karen Thompson Walker

Narrator: Cassandra Campbell

Unabridged: 10 hr 29 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/15/2019


Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • An ordinary town is transformed by a mysterious illness that triggers perpetual sleep in this mesmerizing novel from the bestselling author of The Age of Miracles.

“Stunning.”—Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven • “A startling, beautiful portrait of a community in peril.”—Entertainment Weekly
 
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Glamour • Real Simple • Good Housekeeping

One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student 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, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as 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.

Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what?

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 Dreamers

“Walker’s roving fictive eye by turns probes characters’ innermost feelings and zooms out to coolly parse topics like reality versus delusion. . . . [It has] the perfect ambiguous frame for a tense and layered plot.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

“[Walker’s] gripping, provocative novel should come with a warning: may cause insomnia.”—People (Book of the Week)

“Powerful and moving . . . written with symphonic sweep.”—The New York Times Book Review

“2019’s first must-read novel . . . Alternately terrifying and moving . . . The Dreamers is overflowing with humanity.”—Jezebel

“This is an exquisite work of intimacy. Walker’s sentences are smooth, emotionally arresting—of a true, ethereal beauty. . . . This book achieves [a] dazzling, aching humanity.”—Entertainment Weekly

About 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. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lala on January 29, 2019

This was magic. Highly recommend, but for a very specific audience. If you enjoy having tons of characters (that you don't necessarily get time to connect with or "like") and appreciate a vague, mysterious tone through to the end...get to it. 4.5 stars.......more

Goodreads review by Emily May on January 23, 2019

These days, science doesn’t take much interest in dreams. 2½ stars. I'm rating this purely based on my personal enjoyment and connection with the narrative. Some people are going to love this book. I read Walker's The Age of Miracles more than six years ago, didn't love it, but wanted to give her......more

Goodreads review by Angela M on January 12, 2019

This narrative style! From the first paragraph I knew I was going to be so pulled into this story, whatever it was going to be, by the writing. There is something about it, the way Karen Thompson Walker tells this story. It’s third person narrative and I felt removed as if I was watching this on fil......more

Goodreads review by Holly on February 02, 2019

An epidemic of perpetual sleep strikes a small town. Many are "trapped" not by a captor, but by their own slumber. I was captivated immediately from page one. Afrightfulopening made me ever so curious to read on... This author's writing style was mesmerizing and magical. I was absorbed in......more

Goodreads review by Charlotte on August 27, 2019

3.5 ⭐️ “We sleep in order to forget.” Sadly I didn’t love this as much as everyone else seems to. It looked like it would be right up my street – a strange illness overcomes a small town in California and people are falling asleep, not waking up for anything. But unfortunately I was still left disappo......more


Quotes

The Dreamers is harrowing, riveting, profoundly moving, and beautifully written. In a word, this book is stunning.”—Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

“Walker offers a novel bursting with ideas, probing the scary and tantalizing possibilities at the edges of our existence.”USA Today

“In The Dreamers, Karen Thompson Walker’s second novel, dreams are . . . both more dangerous and more powerful than the Greeks could have ever imagined. . . . Walker uses evocative language to describe the almost bewitching nature of contagion.”The Washington Post

“Walker writes beautifully about the things that define how a society either endures or collapses in crisis, a theme that may never have been more timely than it is now.”—Minneapolis StarTribune

“[An] imaginative, disturbing, and ultimately spellbinding narrative, which asks provocative questions about our concepts of time and connection, and the bounds of possibility for life on earth.”Vogue

“You’ll be mesmerized by this well-constructed, vividly drawn exploration of the concept of dreams versus reality.”Marie Claire 

“With mellifluous prose, Walker traces victims’ experiences (awake and asleep), along with how their family members, friends, and doctors respond to the crisis.”Real Simple 

The Dreamers is a beautifully written novel that is powerful, thoughtful, and entirely original.”PopSugar

“Richly imaginative and quietly devastating . . . Walker jolts the narrative with surprising twists, ensuring it keeps its energy until the end. This is a skillful, complex, and thoroughly satisfying novel about a community in peril.”Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Frighteningly powerful, beautiful, and uncanny, The Dreamers is a love story and also a horror story—a symphonic achievement, alternating intimate moments with a panoramic capture of a crisis in progress.”—Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove