Karen Thompson Walker creates stories where an impossible event takes place, yet she paces it out so slowly and thoughtfully, it seems like the most natural thing in the world. In The Age of Miracles, the rotation of the sun slows until a single day lasts weeks; in The Dreamers, the population of a town is affected by a virus that causes people to fall into a deep sleep. At first a student in a dorm falls asleep, then, quickly others. The dorm is placed under quarantine, and then the town is placed under cordon sanitaire, a French term I was happy to learn, dating from medieval times and referring to a physical or guarded barrier that separates an infected area.

The doctors and scientists who study the sleeping townspeople and college students soon discover that they are dreaming:
The true contents of the dreams go unrecorded, of course, but in some patients, the accompanying brain waves are captured with electrodes and projected on screens, like silhouettes of the hereafter. [...] There is more activity in these minds than has ever been recorded in any human brain - awake or asleep.
Walker's narrative voice in The Dreamers feels like an all-seeing eye that peels back the ceiling of first this house and then another, revealing the contents like a dollhouse, or a scene in a Wes Anderson movie. For example, some patients are kept in the college library, for lack of space.
In the Classics section, a visitor could read about the oracles of ancient Greece and Rome , how the people of those eras believed that dreams could sometimes reveal the future.
One floor down, in the Psychology section, one might eventually discover that Carl Jung, at a certain point in his life, became convinced that he had dreamed of his wife many years before he met her.
On another part of that same floor, in Philosophy, one could entertain the theory that if you could truly understand the complexity of reality, you could accurately predict the future, since every moment of the future is set in motion by the events of the past - the whole system simply too complex for the human mind to model.
She taps into the sense of environmental unease that permeates our society, and, in this case, literal isolation of people who are living in what feels like a complex and dangerous time, always on the brink of natural or man-made disaster. The Dreamers shares themes with another book I've read recently, Nick Drnaso's graphic novel, Sabrina. In each, internet fear-mongering runs rampant, with ignorant trolls both blaming and diverting. Conspiracy theories run rampant, claiming that what we, the reader, know to be true, never actually happened.

How people react to disaster is a common theme in Walker's books. Two sisters find fortitude in each other while their dad sleeps; a young man from the college imagines himself a savior while he endangers those closest to him. Most people close ranks, concentrating only on themselves or their families. The virus further isolates people who are already isolated.

Ultimately, this book caused me to think about dreaming and consciousness in a different way. I love any book that sends me on a search - to learn more about a word or an event. Walker's clear love of language and desire to understand human reactions to extreme situations permeates The Dreamers with an infectious (why am I the way that I am?) curiosity.

i don't know how to rate this one! it was definitely captivating, and i was so curious to know what was going on.. it was definitely creepy and kind of terrifying in a 'if this really happened' kind of way.. but i was pretty unimpressed by the ending and super annoyed by one of the characters and what he did. i get that he was making his point from earlier in the book, but i kind of wanted to push him in front of a bus.

The basic premise of the book is people in a small college town in California are falling asleep and nothing can be done to wake them up. No one, not even medical experts, know what is causing this deep sleep, but cases are multiplying by the day. The book follows a wide range of characters from college students to a group of sisters to a young couple trying to shield their newborn from the eerie epidemic.

This is my first Karen Thompson Walker book and her writing, the structure, and the flow was. We float from character to character effortlessly, almost echoing the sleep some of the characters find themselves in. Without spoiling the book, I found the ending to be thoughtful and ominous, although somewhat abrupt and it left me wanting more. But maybe that’s the point...like when you wake up from a dream

What a beautifully, sad and heartfelt book. I instantly was entranced by the story from the beginning and loved the concept. It has the fear of something real and the wonder of the unknown which are the dreamers. The book moves from different story lines and points of view and as the reader I became so invested in each of them. I loved all the characters and their challenges. My heart was warmed and broken in just a few chapters and I highly recommend. If there was anything I would have to critique it would be I wanted more. I wanted more about how it happened, why it happened, what did the dreams mean, and I guess just the science behind it all. But regardless this was a phenomenal book and I thank the publisher for giving me the opportunity to review. #netgalley #thedreamers

The Dreamers is an odd story. It could almost be a novel about the path of infection and its impact on society, but it stops short from becoming a medical drama. It could be a story about survivors, but it never quite reaches that path. Instead, I guess I would describe it best as a story about isolation and its many guises. There is very little action within the novel; the disease involves people sleeping after all. There is also very little dialogue. We experience the beginning, middle, and end of the disease's reign mainly through the minds of various characters and only sometimes an unknown observer. This lack of direct character interaction lends itself well to the theme of isolation, as does the sleeping disease. After all, sleep is the one activity we do alone and can only ever do alone. Unfortunately, this lack of pretty much anything means The Dreamers is not my type of novel. I want something into which I can escape, and The Dreamers does not allow me to do that. I prefer my novels to entertain as well as engage the mind, and The Dreamers is not entertaining. Instead, it is the thinking reader's type of novel, the type of literary fiction that certain types of readers will love to dissect sentence by sentence. I will leave them to it.

An interesting concept that didn’t quite land. A sleeping sickness quickly spreads through a college town. No one knows how it spreads or where it originated. The writing is beautiful but the ending leaves much to be desired. I was left with more questions than answers.

“They died, he wrote, as if overcome by sleep - or, according to a second translation: as if drowned in a dream.”

Walker's narrative style is an engaging one, easy to fall in to, easy to stay with. The premise, a sleeping disease strikes a remote Southern California town, beginning at a college of co-eds. What transpires shows us the personal depths people go to when faced with the possibility of being exposed to an unknown virus and how many different avenues and actions are taken. The book explores the fracturing and making of relationships and bonds in and out of consciousness. It also opens our eyes to varied possibilities of reality in literal and perceptual ways. The Dreamers will make you think. but it keeps the emotional connection at arms length throughout the unfolding story... a bit devoid of feeling, cold.

3.5 stars

Genre: Literary Speculative Fiction
Publisher: Random House
Pub. Date: January 15, 2019

Mini Review

This hard to put down, apocalyptic thriller reads like a science-fiction fairy tale. In Karen Thompson Walker’s first novel, “The Age of Miracles” she tapped into our fears about the melting of the Polar Regions. Once again, global warming is a component in her newest novel, “The Dreamers.” There is a drought in a small college town in California. The book’s fictional college sits by a lake that’s evaporating. It is at the college that a few students fall into a mysterious illness that puts them into a sleep that they cannot be aroused from. They are the first dreamers—victims of a sleeping sickness epidemic that is contagious. Before the college is quarantined, a few dreamers (as they have come to be called) become hundreds. All need medical attention to stay alive as they sleep. Soon the entire town is quarantined and panic sets in causing a chain reaction of distrust similar to the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Some town residents rise to the occasion and attempt to aid the sick, while others take the attitude of saving themselves at all costs to remain uninfected.

Walker’s hypnotic tale is reminiscent of a Stanley Kubrick movie: Intelligent, strange, terrifying. What might be the most interesting parts of the novel is when the author brings the reader inside the minds of those sleeping. They experience heightened dreams that tap into unused powers of the human brain that only scientists suspect might be there. The author has clearly done her research homework. The novel is peppered with statements from the British neurologist, naturalist, and historian of science, Oliver Sacks. All in all, hidden inside this page-turner, Walker asks provocative questions: What is the nature of consciousness? What is the nature of a health epidemic caused by global warming? Why are some ordinary people inclined to help, while others will not? “Dreamers” may not answer these questions but it does leave the reader thinking. The highest form of praise an author can receive.

“The Dreamers” by Karen Thompson Walker is set in the college town of Santa Lora. One by one these students are infected by a sleeping sickness with extremely strange and vivid dreams.
The writing is very good and thought provoking. I almost felt in a dream state just reading it.

Thanks to Net Galley for the ARC.

For once, I think the the comparisons to Station Eleven were warranted. This dystopian novel is anxiety-producing and poignant, but in unexpected ways.

I received an advanced copy of this book from Penguin Random House via NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.



A mesmerizing character-driven novel about a small town struck by a mysterious disease which put people to sleep.

The Dreamers is one of those provocative books that depicts humans’ responses to tragedies while putting their morals and values to the test. This gives a realistic view of how people respond to a catastrophe. Told in a third person narrative, it has an ethereal quality, as if you were watching from a distance, but you still feel the emotions expressed in each word. Moreover, this novel combines scientific and fantasy elements.

I like how this novel doesn’t focus only on one character, but rather on multiple characters. It allows readers to see a wider picture of how an extreme situation affects people. I enjoyed to see and get perspectives and stories of each character.

Although I didn’t connect to any characters, it didn’t affect my reading experience. In fact, their stories pulled me into the story more. One character did catch my attention. Matthew, who is called weird by his colleagues, is a paragon of an ambiguous character. His actions made me think whether they’re chivalrous or just plain cold-blooded.

Some elements in this story don’t make sense nor explain. I can honestly say I am left with more questions than answers. But maybe, just like dreams, the author wants the readers to make their own conclusions or interpretations. It is a nice experience comprehending little mysteries in life in our own ways.

Overall, The Dreamers is a beautiful, yet perplexing novel. I recommend it to everyone who likes a psychological book with sci-fi elements.

4/5 stars!

One night in a college town, a young women falls into her door room and falls into a deep sleep and never wakes up. As another falls asleep and then another people start to panic and wonder if there is a mystery virus making it's way through the town. Taken to the hospital, these sleepers show heightened brain activity. Are they sleeping? Or is there something else going on here?

*I received an advanced reader's copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

There is a lot to like and enjoy in the new book by Karen Thompson Walker. First and foremost, it has a great pedigree because it immediately recalled another excellent book, Station Eleven.
The residents of a university town in California start to mysteriously fall asleep, for no visible or medical reason. Soon it becomes apparent that this is an epidemic.
This sets up nicely as we follow various characters and how they are affected by this illness. Some storylines are more urgent than others, particularly the events surrounding a baby and its parents. The
Dreamers is a book that may not answer all the questions posed by it. It leaves us thinking about family, disease, and how we cope with the unknown. I highly recommend Dreamers.

In a world where sleep may be never-ending, what manner of dreams may come?

That’s the foundational question posed by Karen Thompson Walker’s literary sci-fi novel “The Dreamers” … but it’s a question with many answers. Through an inexplicable epidemic, Walker offers up an illustration of how tenuous our grasp on a collective reality truly is. We all see the world differently whether we’re awake or asleep - and it doesn’t take much to make everything change.

It all begins in a room in a dormitory of a small, isolated California college. A young woman drowsily returns to her room after a late-night romp with one of her fellow first-years. She climbs into bed, too tired to even shed her shoes … and she doesn’t wake up. Despite the efforts of her timid roommate Mei and the rest of the floor, she will not be roused.

It’s a strange case, mystifying everyone. But when a second girl cannot be awakened, and a third, things begin to spiral; authorities soon have the dorm on lockdown in an effort at quarantine. But even in a small town like Santa Lora, there are too many vectors – and this ailment, whatever it is, is effortlessly contagious.

Chaos ensues as more and more people succumb to sleep, the illness spreading with astonishing speed. And while authorities struggle to deal with the sleepers, those who are still awake must find their own way through.

There are the two little girls left confused and afraid by the words and actions of their paranoid survivalist father. There’s the young couple, new to both Santa Lora and to parenthood, trapped by both the outbreak and their own unhealed hurts. The doctor specializing in psychiatric disorders, who comes to help investigate, only to wind up stuck in the exposure zone and the college professor whose longtime partner is one of the few examples of the disease’s positive possibilities.

And Mei, set loose into a wider world from which she has long been largely isolated alongside Matthew, a dormmate who manages to be both idealistic and cynical in that unique way only new college students can.

All of them trapped at the epicenter of an inexplicable disease, one for which no doctor is prepared. All of them left to deal with the crumbling of civility, their lives upended by hastily-erected barricades and suddenly omnipresent soldiers; roads humming with military Humvees and skies buzzing with helicopters. All of them hoping not to be next to fall asleep, hoping that somehow, someone will save them from the encroachment of never-ending dreams.

Because make no mistake – the constant twitching of eyelids and other indicators show that the afflicted are indeed dreaming. They are dreaming harder and longer than any human was ever meant to dream - and not all dreams are created equal.

“The Dreamers” is a lovely and weird book. The best science fiction finds ways to address significant themes through the freedom granted by its tropes. Walker proves particularly adept, unpacking complex ideas about relationship dynamics – parental, filial and romantic alike – through the frighteningly fast spread of the sleep sickness and the resulting slow-motion crumbling of Santa Rosa’s social structures.

Walker’s stylistic choices allow us multiple viewpoints into the burgeoning chaos brought forth by the descent into extended slumber; short chapters careen from perspective to perspective, allowing us our own frenetic glimpses of fear, determination and despair. We see the consequences as more and more people tumble into slumber, leaving an ever-dwindling number of people on the outside desperately searching for meaning – and answers.

There’s a haunting quality to “The Dreamers.” The gentility of its prose grants the element of surprise to narrative twists and emotional power; Walker eases you into moments that elevate your level of engagement slowly, subtly. Nothing is telegraphed, yet everything flows seamlessly. Even with the constantly-shifting POV, everything unfolds with a deft smoothness.

Compelling characters, genuine emotional stakes, thoughtful themes and a central premise rich with potential – “The Dreamers” checks all the boxes. Walker has written a hell of a book, one whose propulsive narrative sense marries nicely with the relative understatement of its themes. When your book digs into ideas without ever superseding story, you’ve got something special.

You’ve got “The Dreamers.”

Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles is a book that hit me like a ton of bricks and has stayed with me for years (since 2012!); when I saw that her newest book, The Dreamers, was available for request on Netgalley I jumped on it.

A mysterious virus is snaking it’s way through Santa Lora, a sleepy college town deep in California. It’s starts with one student, makes its way to get another, and soon the entire town is blanketed in sleep, dreaming but not waking. Very few will be left awake, and the town is under full quarantine. Who will survive and who will not? What is happening deep down at the cellular level to cause this disease — and what are the dreamers dreaming?

I wish that my blurb on this book could be a fraction as eloquent as Walker is in her prose. She is one of the most languid and beautiful novelists of our day. She writes with such a deep understanding of her characters yet provides us this knowledge at a remove; it’s as if she’s our higher power telling us the story of our ancient civilization. It’s a folklore that will be come to know by all who dwell here. It’s incredible, her ability to move me as a reader while still feeling like a universal storyteller.

Walker focuses on Mei, a young woman who feels like an outcast in her college dorm. Her roommate is the first to experience infection and pass away. Walker has written Mei to be the most empathetic of characters, one that is easy to relate to even though in the surface it seems we have nothing in common. Mei, who is asked to endorse more than any 19 year-old does. She is in the eye of the hurricane and when it fans out, she is the moral compass in the storm. She, along with Sarah and Libby, the two young daughters of janitor at the college, anchored this story for me more than any other characters. The couple with the baby felt too close to home for me, as it made my gut ache. Walker has a way of doing that. The story is important, but the characters’ journeys are the lifeblood.

When the first student doesn’t wake up after a long party night, nobody is really scared, it’s just something that happens. But when more and more people in the small Southern Californian college town just fall sound asleep, fear starts to grow. What is happening in town? Is this an infection and what does the sleep do to the people? Students, professors, nurses, doctors, average people – they all can catch the mysterious virus which seems to cause wild dreams and a comatose state. Public life slowly comes to a standstill and the town is put under quarantine, it has become too dangerous to go there because nobody knows what kind of new biological threat they are dealing with. Who will win: the virus or the human race?

Sometimes there are books that you suddenly see everywhere and everybody seems to talk about them. When I first came across “The Dreamers”, I was convinced that this was nothing for me, I prefer realistic stories and nothing too fancy and out of the ordinary. But the hype about it rose my curiosity and thus, I wanted to know what is behind it all. Well, to sum it up: a notable novel which is skilfully written and got me hooked immediately.

What I appreciated especially were two things. First of all, the dramaturgy of the plot. The mysterious virus just infects students and then slowly spreads and the number of characters that we got to know is progressively affected and falls asleep. As the number of victims rises, the life in the small town is reduced more and more to a minimum. It is obvious that there must be some kind of final fight in which either side gains the upper hand and the other succumbs – yet, Karen Thompson Walker finds a different solution which I liked a lot since it perfectly mirrors life’s ambiguity.

The second aspect was even more impressive. I fell for the author’s laconic style of writing. It is down to earth, concise and everything but playfully metaphorical. It reflects the characters’ mood of having to survive under the extreme circumstances: Just go on, do what is necessary, keep your head high and make yourself useful. That’s just how it is, so what? No need to fantasize about an alternative world, we just have this situation and need to cope with it.

To sum it up: just like the sleep overcomes the characters, this novel could spellbind me.

The story of a mysterious sleeping virus that spreads through a college town in California. This is a beautifully written novel, with a hypnotic, dreamy prose. Nonetheless, I was frequently frustrated with the flow and the introduction of new plot threads with no resolutions.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for providing an advanced digital copy in return for an honest, unbiased review.

Even though author Emily St. John Mandel has provided a recommendation on the cover of The Dreamers, prompting comparisons to her bestselling Station Eleven (one of my all-time faves), I do not think the two are very similar; instead, this novel reminds me of another of my favorites, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis by Keija Parssinen (review here), and I felt equally disturbed and enchanted by this story and its characters.

"They are connected like this: two people in peril every day. Here he is beside her. Here is his hand, laced in hers at the end of the day. Here is his hip pressed into hers in the night. What does it matter what they call it?"

More than a simple doomsday tale, reminiscent of the 1995 film Outbreak, author Thompson Walker creates a story that is much more relatable and thought-provoking, thanks to to depth of its characters and the interconnectedness of their individual stories.

My experience of reading this novel is very similar to that of an interval workout: the pace is urgent, but sustainable; I push hard, my heart rate rises, and then I get a few minutes to recover. By varying the circumstances of each individual character - their position/station in life, age and experience, relationships - there is a natural progression to the narrative; the tension and discomfort are always present, but there are moments for reflection and even gratitude.

"This is the opening of a jar. Months of restraint give way: it turns out that all the things they haven’t said - whether from kindness or fear or something else - are still sitting there, just waiting to jump from their throats."

I don’t often read novels of this type or description so, when I do, I have high expectations; Karen Thompson Walker handles our fears and worst-case scenarios with care and this is a fantastic, pulsating, plot-driven novel with a beautifully emotional cast. This is my first novel of hers and now I’d like to read her debut, The Age of Miracles.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House for an Adavaced Reader’s Copy of this novel. I really wanted to read this book because the author’s first book was so good. This story is about a sleeping sickness that takes over this small town and how different members of the community deals with this outbreak. In the past couple of years I have read several books in the same vane, but Walker seems to do this best. The multiple POV’s kept me engaged along with mostly short chapters. I did not want to put this down. It was worth all the hype that has been out there.

What a gorgeously written book! So many profound thoughts from the author and so many thoughts are swirling through my brain.
It's a book about relationships, about survival, about making sense of the world when it doesn't make sense. It's about choices and life and death and everything in between.
I wanted to gulp the book down because I wanted to know what was going to happen, but I wanted to savor it because it was so lyrical and deliberate.
The author's writing style is lovely. I liked her first book, but didn't really love it because the premise was too similar to something else I had read. The Dreamers is unique and fantastic in its own right.
Highly recommended! I am stingy with my 5s and this one definitely deserves it.