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The Dreamers

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The Dreamers

By: Karen Thompson Walker
Narrated by: Erin Hunter
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About this listen

 ‘Riveting, profoundly moving’ Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven
‘Beautiful and devastating’ Red
‘Thought-provoking and profound’ Cosmopolitan

Imagine a world where sleep could trap you, for days, for weeks, for months…

She sleeps through sunrise. She sleeps through sunset.
And yet, in those first few hours, the doctors can find nothing else wrong. She looks like an ordinary girl sleeping ordinary sleep.

Karen Thompson Walker's second novel tells the mesmerising story of a town transformed by a mystery illness that locks people in perpetual sleep and triggers extraordinary, life-altering dreams.

One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her room and falls asleep. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital.

When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, 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.

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 Age of Miracles:
'What a remarkable, beautifully wrought novel' Curtis Sittenfeld
‘A beautifully observed coming-of-age tale… nimble, delicate and emotionally sophisticated’ Observer
‘Hauntingly believable… an impressive and quietly terrifying book’ Sunday Times
'A stunner from the first page… I loved this novel and can't wait to see what this remarkable writer will do next' Justin Cronin
 Contemporary Fiction Genre Fiction Fiction

Critic reviews

‘A beautifully observed coming-of-age tale in the great American tradition ... nimble, delicate and emotionally sophisticated’
‘Hauntingly believable ... an impressive and quietly terrifying book’
'Karen Thompson Walker's debut novel is a stunner from the first page - an end-of-the-world, coming-of-age tale of quiet majesty. I loved this novel and can't wait to see what this remarkable writer will do next' (Justin Cronin, author of The Passage, on The Age of Miracles)
'What a remarkable, beautifully wrought novel' (Curtis Sittenfeld on The Age of Miracles)
'Brought to mind Alice Sebbold's The Lovely Bones'
All stars
Most relevant
Amazingly accurate for pre-COVID publishing!
Frighteningly clever foresight and accuracy in how something unseen was dealt with even down to nurses ears being sore because of the mask straps! Very good work!

Amazingly accurate for pre-COVID publishing!

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Beautifully written story from various characters perspectives. Amazing to have been written before the pandemic however there were a number of similarities.

Beautifully written

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A weak, uneventful story with no action or conclusion.. waited for something to happen but it never did - just the same occurrence in different towns

Weak story with no action

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