Beautifully writing and terrifyingly strange, this novel builds an excellent narrative whereby each character is presented brilliantly and the story itself is wildly imaginative. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to read it

Beautifully written, intriguing concept. It begins with a quote from Jose Saramago's Blindness, which is one of my favourite novels, and the parallels are strong. In Saramago's novel, a country is struck by a mysterious blindness which undoes much of society. In Karen Thompson Walker's novel there is also a mysterious illness, where people fall inexplicably asleep and cannot be wakened.

It's a dreamy novel, which of course totally suits the material and the title. The dreaminess goes further than just the concept and plot unfoldings, though. And this brings me to the aspect I enjoyed most - the author's poetic mind. She is wonderful company, leading you effortlessly through parallels and comparisons, putting ideas together so that you see the world in a new, enriched way. You could say she's metaphysically agile. Here's an example:

' "The incubation period could be long," she says, as if their bodies are instruments for the measurement of time, which, in a way, they are.'

Isn't that wonderful, playful, clever? There are numerous examples of this device and as the story goes on, she uses it to deliver her story's climax. I won't say how because you must experience it, but it's a joy. She is also masterful at burrowing inside the deep truth of emotions - most notably with the couple who have a newborn child. No writer on earth has ever made me feel the wonder of this, and in an unsentimental way, but Walker has.

However, I was often disappointed with the storytelling. There seemed to be too many characters. Some of the character groups were remarkable - the students, the family with the newborn. Others did not hold my interest so much, and I wonder if this is because they did not bring out so much of the author's own interest. Also, in general, much of the action was repetitive and it could have done with a thorough story edit.

But this is definitely a writer I'll watch, because her prose instrument is fine indeed.

This was a really engrossing story about a sleeping sickness and how people react to it. Told in a reportage fashion, there was an objective distance to the action that I really appreciated which allowed for some soul searching regarding how I would react in a similar situation. The narrative really focuses on specific characters and how they deal with things all while simply tracking and documenting the events. The book doesn't try to explain what is happening and the ending is very open, which I really liked but may be an irritation to some readers. Overall, this was a beautiful story told with lyrical prose that I really enjoyed.
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

The Dreamers is a book about a town that becomes linked to a tragedy. When girls from the town’s college start falling asleep and not waking, it seems like it is a strange event, but more and more people become infected as this sleeping illness looks to be highly contagious. The infection doesn’t discriminate between age, race or sex. Soon the whole town is on lockdown and there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.

The book is told from multiple points of view so that we can see the situation from many perspectives. We get to see Mei who shared a room with one of the first victims and is seen as an outsider by those around her. We also meet Sara, a twelve-year-old who lives with her younger sister and her survivalist Dad. Their story is quite intriguing as Sara takes the lessons she has learnt from her father and puts them to use. Sara’s neighbours, Ben and Annie have a newborn baby to take care of, but they also have their own issues to deal with before the infection spreads. There is also Nathaniel, a professor at the college who misses his partner Henry who lives in a care home. Each of these characters stories is affecting and engaging as you wait to find out what their fates will be.

The Dreamers is a very matter of fact book, it is hard to see where the story is going and how it will end. There are a lot of individual stories that impact on the harsh realities of being quarantined. The book also hints at deeper issues as what will happen if/when the dreamers wake up. Will they remember what happened, did they all dream the same thing? There are no real reasons or explanations given as to what caused the dreamers to dream. It was interesting to see the connections between some of the characters and how they dealt with the impacts of the quarantine, waiting to find out if they also would one day not wake up. There is a lot of trauma in this story, the writing draws you in, but there also feels like a dispassionate detachment between the author and the story in places.

Yes, yes, yes.

Everything I was expecting and more. This thought provoking novel spins many threads, allowing each character their own hefty tale. I really enjoyed the pacing of this book and how the individual lives of the characters were subtly interlinked, yet stand out still.

One to devour slowly, stopping to admire the stunning prose. Highly recommend.

The Dreamers is a lyrical, imaginative novel. A sleepy Californian college town is put under quarantine when residents suddenly fall asleep and not wake up. I was enthralled by the writing and the imagery.

I really enjoyed The Dreamers - this felt like a very fresh and realistic exploration of a potential disastrous event. The novel is brilliantly written between several viewpoints from within the town and really shows how scary and alienating the experience of your town being completely quarantined would be.

For me, the reason this isn't a 5 star read is because I would have liked for some of those viewpoints to have included people outside of the town - a researcher on the medical outbreak, a politician, a worried parent - which I feel would have added that extra level of worry and understanding of isolation to the novel as a whole.

However, the exploration of love, of a catastrophic event affecting a community and the ties that hold them together is fantastic - I really want to read the author's debut novel now. The personal level of detail and the brilliant way different experiences of the crisis are shown was mesmerising to read and the deaths of those that didn't survive really got to me - beautifully written!

A sort of plague, the illness which gives rise to the story is without the suffering and the horror of influenza or ebola. Its victims simply fall asleep. Without medical intervention the sleep will drift into death, but the reaction of the authorities is to contain it first and come to the aid of its victims second. The community struck down are mainly students, young, attractive and vulnerable. This adds to the appropriately dreamlike lack of horror. The story is provided by the heroic actions of a young couple caught up in it but, because they are unaffected stay to give almost heroic aid to the victims. That the main protagonist is strange and his actions deeply counter intuitive gives it a dimension beyond just an interesting series of events. He has a choice of rescuing his girlfriend or the youngest life in danger. That he chooses the child is a choice which at first seems outrageous and inhuman but provokes an internal debate which I find myself returning to long after reading the book. Beautifully written and thoughtful.

The Dreamers is about a college town in Southern California where a mysterious, deep slumber seems to take students and the public alike, who have strange and alluring dreams and can't be awakened. I loved the premise of this book and it really reminded me of Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, where an unknown condition hits the people of the town that baffles experts and causes widespread fear and panic. I really liked Karen Thompson Walker's writing style, sometimes going in close to see what certain the characters are doing and feeling, sometimes pulling back to show the bigger picture, with events as they happen and sometimes skipping ahead to the situation as it was. I really enjoyed this book and I hope to read others that Walker has written in the future.

I am now a huge fan of Karen Thompson Walker! I have read two of her books in as many weeks and loved them both.
Walkers second novel, The Dreamers follows a small American town that gets struck down with a sleeping illness with incredibly vivid dreams. with the lines between real and not blurred The Dreamers follows multiple POVs and their encounters with the illness. KTW writing is so beautiful and get very matter of fact. With just enough focus on the characters to care deeply for them and yet enough plot to keep the story moving along. I found this to be my perfect balance between plot and characters.
The is a must read for any fans of KTW's debut book The Age of Miracles.

I know people rave about this book, but it wasn't for me. Yes, it's beautifully written, but nothing really happens. People fall asleep. Some wake up. That's it.

I guess I was just expecting more.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC without obligation.

It starts when a student falls asleep and can’t be woken. This is followed by another, and then another. An epidemic of seemingly perpetual sleep engulfs the college town of Santa lore, California.
With fears of the ‘virus’ spreading, the whole town is quarantined. With not enough doctors, or people to cope with the affected, and no answer to what is causing this, a solution looks bleak.
The only thing for sure is that the sleepers are dreaming.

I had high hopes for this one due to it being highly recommended and had seen many excellent reviews. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite meet my expectations.

For me the quality of the characters are essential. There’s plenty of them in The Dreamers, perhaps too many. None of them are given enough time to have any substance and fail to be interesting. If there is a main character, it was Mei, the roommate of the first ‘dreamer.’ Her character never progressed and I cared little to what would happen to her. The characters I connected to the most were Ben and Allie, who were struggling to come to terms with their relationship, and their newborn child. The fear they shared with their child contracting the ‘illness’ was conveyed extremely well, and is perhaps the ultimate fear of all new parents.

All the characters were underused and under developed, despite ample opportunities, such as the two sisters left on their own with a bunker full of goodies. I really wished that the different levels of ‘dreamers’ were explored more, especially the ‘sleepwalkers.’

I found the pace of the book extremely slow and nearly DNF halfway through, but the book did manage to pick up at this point. The book is beautifully written and floats along, all dreamlike and ethereal, which is fitting, however it just felt slow and hazy and bogged the reader down. It felt to me that I was reading the same page/chapter and no real progress was being made.

I did like the Rebecca storyline. As the book progresses and Rebecca sleeps and dreams, it unfolds that Rebecca is pregnant. As this plays out this thread becomes particularly emotional and eventually heartbreaking.

I think this book could have been a whole lot more. It had me waiting for something to happen and left me wanting. The writing was just too distant to keep me engaged and interested. A frustrating read.

I absolutely adored this. It was the perfect mix of fiction and science fiction to suit my mood. I devoured it in one sitting.

I must admit that when the students of a college town began to one by one fall asleep and not waken up I didn’t really connect to them or the story but as more and more followed suit it was the ones that were left behind that I became interested in. It soon became clear that what ever was happening was quite isolated to this town so it was quarantined with only a specialised team having access to recover the bodies of the sleepers. What they discovered was high levels of brain activity while the sleepers slept and the other thing was no matter how they tried they couldn’t waken these people.
Soon only key players in the story were left but it was like a game of roulette as to who would be the next victim. It really kicked in the further into the book I got. I don’t want to say too much about the story and its outcome. Once the core characters were left I enjoyed the story much more. It is though a story that shows how resilient people are, even children, there is a sort of survival mode that kicks in when it is needed. Kids aren’t as helpless as we think they are.
Once I had my key players in the story their individual characters shone through, be it for personal survival or at the opposite end of the scale to help others and abandoned pets! The character that affected me the most was Rebecca, I can’t even imagine the loss that she felt. A super story that left me with a real unsettling feeling, a credit to the author.
I wish to thank NetGalley and the publisher for an e-copy of this book which I have honestly reviewed.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Simon and Schuster, and the author Karen Thompson Walker.
My overarching opinion of this book is that it was only ‘ok’, however, I can definitely appreciate how many other readers may enjoy it considerably more.
I felt that the story and characters weren’t as strong as they had the potential to be, and as a reader, you always seemed to be waiting for an event or denouement that never really arrives.
In summary, an easy read with a good premise, but a little frustrating at times, leaving you feeling a little bit unfulfilled.
3 stars.

When a college student falls asleep after a night out and can’t be woken her friends are worried and upset. Then another girl falls asleep, and then a boy won’t wake up and then every morning brings another student or two who cannot be roused. This sleeping sickness starts off small then extends into the town affecting people walking their dogs, people out for a run, people driving cars and those going about their everyday business. The hospital is quarantined, the national guard is called in and this small town is taken over by this mysterious and odd illness which causes rich and vivid dreams.

I love reading books like this. I like the oddness and exploring how our normality can be shattered apart in moments. I was intrigued by the premise of The Dreamers and really enjoyed the way it was written, which is quite beautiful, and I thought that the observations of human life were exceptional but, it didn’t quite hit the spot for me. That’s not to say I disliked it, I didn’t (I’ve given it 4 stars), but there was a 5 star read just out of grasp.

There are many, many characters which meant that I struggled to get any real connection with them. The thing is there are some brilliant people; the lonely and isolated college student who doesn’t quite fit in, the new parents whose marriage is under extreme strain and the survivalist father whose basement is filled with gallons of water and tinned food for exactly this kind of catastrophic event. The premise of the book is terrifying, with people being taken away by officials in hazmat suits to an undisclosed location. I just didn’t feel any emotion for the people left behind, looking at the space where their loved one once stood which was a real shame.

This is a dystopian fiction book where nothing seems to happen, which isn’t a criticism at all as I quite liked the meandering prose and other worldly quality of the writing. It seems fitting that a book about sleep and the dreams of those afflicted would have a dreamlike quality to it. It did feel like I was in some other realm at times and it was quite beautiful and ethereal to read.

Even the moments of ‘action’ were elegantly described giving an overall feeling of helplessness about the situation. The premise is terrifying and the sense of fear is brilliantly portrayed and it builds and builds to create a tension that seeps from the pages. It is beautifully written and I highlighted tonnes of passages and sentences which I found eloquent and moving and there is real skill in these pages.

Overall though, I do think that the book misses the mark a little (for me). It is still a great read which throws up interesting questions and would make a great book club book as I think it would provoke some interesting debate and intriguing conversations.

This is exactly my type of book ... mysterious, dystopian and unsettling. It only really failed on one major front for me and that was that it didn't ever really explain what had happened. And not in a, "Oh well that's interesting, it's left it open to interpretation and lots of possibilities", but in an "OH FOR GOD'S SAKE, I INVESTED A LOT OF TIME IN THIS BOOK AND YOU'RE NOT GOING TO EXPLAIN ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED?!" So, yes, I finished it feeling a mite frustrated.

That's a shame, because on the whole its a really well written and unnerving book. It's a great premise (although I doubt it's one that hasn't been done before) - people start to fall asleep....and just don't wake up. What I really liked about this is how the tension slowly crept in, more and more people started falling asleep and the paranoia, unease and panic amongst the community is palpable. It was also really fascinating to consider how the rest of the world reacts when something so horrific happens to one community and the lengths that they will go to, in order to contain a contagious virus.

The author really took the idea and ran with it too. She makes you consider things that you might not have imagined with a virus like this. Like, what happens to the sleepwalkers? What about those that fall asleep at home and aren't discovered? How do you care for someone that can't wake up - and then how do you care for thousands of people that can't wake up? How would you protect your children from this outbreak?

We live this story through several characters, some of which you really begin to invest in. Only to have the rug pulled out from under your feet as - and this is no great spoiler - not all of them make it. That I have no big issue with, killing off characters is a great way to enrage a reader into loving your story even more, however in this story characters are dismissed without so much as a by your leave. Here one minute and gone the next, without acknowledging the huge part they have played in the story up till then or allowing the reader a moment to grieve. Having said that, I loved the dreamy 3rd person prose used to narrate the story, which did leave you feeling slightly apart from the action - like a distant and impassioned onlooker.

I really wanted to love this and for 3/4 of the book I did. But there were just too many questions left unanswered for me to get a real sense of satisfaction. However its incredibly well written, thought provoking and with some fantastic character studies. If you don't like your stories as neatly finished as me, you're bound to love it more.

The Dreamers has joined a wave of recent dystopian fiction books, exploring how a mysterious illness brings a small town to a standstill. A narcoleptic type condition begins to effect a huge swathe of the population, leaving people in a perpetual sleep state, with no clue to how to stop it or understanding in what they are dreaming about.

It is both terrifying, and yet engaging - egging on the reader to ask questions. However, I do feel that the novel had some plot holes, and many unanswered questions. There also seemed to be a lack of character development due to the numerous amount involved - but the concept is interesting.

I am always intrigued by plots centred on sleep and dreaming. Whilst research has gone into mapping brain waves and patterns whilst people sleep and dream, and scientific understanding is increasing, there will always be a gap between the logical explanations and the reality of the feeling we dreamers have in the moment; the feeling that this is real, this is happening, even when it cannot be possible.

The Dreamers explores our concept of sleep, and does touch upon the effect of the dreams, but for the most part the author’s focus remains on the exterior: those who are awake while others sleep.

The story follows a handful of ‘woke’ (in the literal rather than modern sense) individuals across a neighbourhood as the whole town slowly succumbs to a strange sleeping disease which causes people to fall dreaming where they stand and – in some cases – never wake up.

We see college students, new parents, children and elderly lovers struggle to come to grips with this unknown epidemic and the physical and emotional effects it leaves in its wake.

The tone of the story throughout remains emotionally detached, almost as if we reading a factual account of events rather than fiction, and the result is an eerie isolation from events and characters that mirrors the state of the characters themselves: cut off from society, with no knowledge or understanding of what is occurring and no one to guide or give answers.

The reader needn’t expect answers either. Karen Thompson Walker presents here a vignette of these strange events and the travails of the survivors, but offers no neat conclusion to wrap the whole incident up. You are left with the strange echoing feeling that this has happened before and will happen again, and we are no closer to an understanding of how or why.

If you enjoy stories about human instincts and survival in apocalyptic-style scenarios then you will enjoy this story about sleep, waking and what is real.



In 1935, two children went to bed in a Dust Bowl cabin and did not wake for nine days. Some similar contagion once crept through a Mexican village – El Niente, they called it: “the Nothing.” And three thousand years before that, a Greek poet described a string of strange deaths in a village near the sea: they died, he wrote, as if overcome by sleep – or, according to a second translation: as if drowned in a dream.

This time, it starts at the college.

– Karen Thompson Walker, The Dreamers

Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog

The premise of this book intrigued me immediately, and I was not disappointed. Karen Thompson Walker’s writing flows perfectly and kept me engrossed throughout.

There are a number of characters we met in the book, jumping between them as they try to deal with the situation. Thompson Walker does a great job of making sure you know enough about each character to care about all of them which is rare with such an ensemble.

My only (minor) issue is that the story ends rather abruptly, and leaves us with a number of questions.