The Dreamers

A Novel

By: Karen Thompson Walker

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

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)

©2019 Karen Thompson Walker (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“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)

So slow.

So slow and boring. There’s no climax and I thought it would never end. Almost depressing story.

Whole new concept after Covid 19

As I listened to this book, I assumed it was surely written within the past couple of years, perhaps during lockdowns and quarantines. To realize it was written in a pre Covid world is wild. The author had so many of the details of what would happen, what people would do and say, just so spot on. The story was beautifully told, the words almost a melody of telling a tale just a bit of too much of modern day fairy tale, as I’m sure it seemed when released in 2018. Beautiful tales of sadness, of hope, of fear, of survival, of confusion, of love. There were so many elements of the emotional interactions of the people that were so accurate, so human, in their flaws and their highlights. People are not shown as all good or all bad, all hero or all villain, all brave or all cowardly. They all existed in between the ends of such spectrums, as is true in real life. While you are left with questions at the end, I feel that it was wrapped up just right, the questions left unanswered for the reader as they are also left unanswered for the characters.

a good summer read with drama, suspense

Great narration of a tale of a deadly breakout in a small California college town. Vivid characters who have you praying for their survival.

Narrator is hit and miss with voices

The narrator does fantastic with the female voices. But the male voices sound far too stern during portions in which there is just casual discussion happening.

The story is good, but perhaps not great.

loved this book during 'stay at home' orders

Somehow this story was very comforting during our current pandemic. I wish it was 5 times longer!

It kept me listening

This book keeps your interest to follow each storyline. Well written and executed excellent listening.

Couldn’t put it down

Couldn’t put this book down. I listened to the whole thing in 6 days. It gave me Station Eleven vibes.

So so so good

I’m not into sci-fi usually. I’m definitely never into virus infection focused sci-fi, but I absolutely loved this book! It feels almost like a fairy tale in how it is written & Cassandra Campbell is the perfect style of narrator for a book like this. The author does a brilliant job of mixing humor with serious things happening in the next breath. It felt very realistic because of how well she mixed the mundane with the unknown virus plot- no one lost their humanity. 5/5, can’t recommend it enough.

I wanted to love this but...

I don’t know. She’s a beautiful writer & I love her sci fi gumption— I whipped through this book— but it didn’t stay with me like her first one did. Maybe because the story is told from
Multiple characters POV, maybe because it felt less realistic. Also— the title of the book is off. The Santa Ana Sleep or whatever the town was called would have been better. Same with her first novel, which I loved, but can’t remember the basic & forgettable title.

Different focus

I loved the idea of this book but if more of the book focused on the experience of the dreams vs the spread of the virus would have been much better.