Review of My Favorite book of the year: Karen Thompson Walker's The Dreamers

A big thank you to NetGalley for the ARC I was given in exchange for a fair and honest review!

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker is one of the most beautifully written books I’ve read in 2018. Centering on several different people who are experiencing different levels of interaction with a new virus that causes the infected to sleep without waking, this book was full of potential before I even cracked the spine. After all, it tackles a combination of things that most humans don’t completely understand, epidemics and sleep, both of which are fraught with anxiety. It then takes those seeds of anxiety and spins them to really delve into our psyches: what if I fall asleep and don’t wake up? Could I succumb to an illness even while relatively healthy? What dangers are lurking that I haven’t even accounted for?

While there were many characters who were central in this text—primarily the sleeping Rebecca and her unborn child, Henry and Nathaniel, Libby and Sara, Mei and Matthew, and Annie, Ben, and Grace, the stories of Libby and Sara and Mei and Matthew were the storylines that most spoke to me. It wasn’t that the others were bad—they definitely weren’t and contained some truly beautiful passages about time and love—it’s just that the two pairs I most enjoyed were the two pairs who most encompassed the double meaning of the name of the book. On the surface, the title refers to the rapid eye movement that the sleepers display when they have the illness and the heightened vividness of their dreams. I think, though, those that are awake are all the more dreamers as they demonstrate the way, even during times of crisis, people are servants to their dreams and desires. Mei and Matthew both dream of being more than they were born to be, of finding a deeper sense of meaning and purpose, and, in addition to all the things adolescent girls may typically dream of, Libby and Sara dream of a family life that they’ve never had. 

As I continued reading The Dreamers, I was really impressed by the way Walker took what is kind of a played out questions--how do we know what's real and what's a dream--and put an authentic, human spin on it by showing her audience how little it matters which is which. Reality, after all, is just what we perceive as real in any given moment and sometimes, maybe even many times, "dream" can end up being much more real than our realities.

5/5: This is an absolute must read.