My first read of 2021, The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker, was oddly fitting given the global pandemic we're facing. I had some previous knowledge about the book going in, but wasn't prepared for the eery similarities between the events in the story and the ongoing crisis we're all facing right now.
When a mysterious sleeping sickness appears in the small town of Santa Lora, the community is thrown into a state of fear and chaos. The outbreak begins at a local college, where a freshman slumps into her bed after a night out, and drifts off into a sleep from which she never wakes. In the beginning, no one knows what to believe when they hear the reports of students being carted out of dorms on stretchers, plagued by an unknown illness. The community thinks maybe it's an exaggeration, or maybe it won't reach them in the comfort of their own homes. The only information infectious disease experts are able to work out is that the sleepers are dreaming, and their brain function is higher than ever recorded. As all hell breaks loose in the California town, we hear the course of the epidemic from multiple perspectives; each character with their own theories and emotional turmoil in response to the unknown. I think speculative fiction is a genre I need to explore more. This book hits a bit close to home at the moment, but I was fully invested in the story of this fictional virus. The strength of this narrative comes from the structure of being told from multiple perspectives, which is generally hit or miss for me. The story follows an academic couple with a newborn baby, a single father with two daughters left to fend for themselves after he falls ill, two college students thrown together with opposing views of the world, an aging college professor, and a psychiatrist quarantined miles away from her young daughter. I enjoyed the glimpses into the personal lives of each character and how their stories overlapped subtly on a larger scale. Being able to see what's going on inside everyone's heads made it easy to form an emotional connection, and I started wondering what I would do if I were in the situations they were faced with. Mysterious illnesses aren't a new trope in fiction, but there's something especially freaky about falling asleep and never waking up, or even falling asleep for a prolonged amount of time. It doesn't sound threatening at first, but to me the thought became terrifying. When some of the dreamers begin to wake up there are more questions raised than answered, especially when a select few are convinced their dreams are premonitions of the future. This revelation causes some characters to question what is reality and what they've only dreamed (it's a bit of a mind fuck at times). Where this hit close to home was the slow burn of fear as news trickles in about the dreamers, and it very much mirrored what we saw happening across the world last spring: hoarding supplies, self-isolation, and placing personal needs over the needs of others. Walker did a great job showing how an epidemic affects people in big and small ways, especially psychologically and emotionally. If you're not a fan of unresolved endings, then The Dreamers might not be for you, because by the end there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Nothing is wrapped up in a neat little bow, and there's never an explanation of how the virus swept across the town or why it induced a deep sleep. In this way I think the story mirrors our reality, because there is so much we will never know or understand about how and why things happen, both in our own lives and in the world as a whole. We never really get to know what happens to everyone when the the sickness seems to vanish, but maybe the ambiguity of the ending is simply a reflection of the way life is sometimes. I highly recommend this book for anyone a little afraid to dive into classic science fiction, mystery lovers, and those who like pondering big questions about the universe. The Dreamers earns a well-deserved 5/5 stars from me!
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