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The Dreamers - Karen Thompson Walker
The Dreamers
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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... show more
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
 
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.
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9780812984668
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Pages no: 336
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
Lora Hates Spam
Lora Hates Spam rated it
2.0 The Dreamers
by Karen Thompson Walker I've been caught out once again by a book written in present tense. Why, oh why is this a thing? The story is about a strange virus that makes people fall asleep and not wake up, but remain dreaming. It was an interesting premise, but because present tense is so difficul...
Portable Magic
Portable Magic rated it
3.0 The Dreamers ★★★☆☆
The story of a "sleeping sickness" virus that sweeps through a small, isolated college town. It was recommended in an NPR article on epidemic/plague fiction as reflective of our current situation: In parallel with today's pandemic, the characters in Walker's novel confront a shortage of face mas...
Reading For The Heck Of It
Reading For The Heck Of It rated it
3.0 Afraid to sleep
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 ...
Words of a Bibliophile
Words of a Bibliophile rated it
4.0 The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
Dreams fascinate me, and sometimes they scare me. I've had dreams that feel so real that when I wake up, it takes a split second for me to realize that the real world is this one instead of the one in my dream. Or is it? Some dreams are so bizarre and frightening that I wake up feeling thankful that...
Girl Well Read
Girl Well Read rated it
3.0 The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker
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; para...
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