Dreaming In The Midst of Apocalypse: Karen Thompson Walker's The Dreamers

I received an advanced copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. So here it is for The
Dreamers, which was released this week.

Frankly this was going to be a hard sell for me. The blurbs compared it to the huge hit, Station Eleven, which I admired but did not love and I have grown weary of the post-apocalyptic genre. It has been overdone and as many have noted the fantastical separation we once had reading these books is no longer there, with reality quickly aligning with the nightmares authors once created out of thin air.

For the most part, The Dreamers is a unique take. Instead of a collapsing world, Walker focuses on a small Californian town overcome by a mysterious disease that leaves its victims alive but asleep, prisoners to dreams that may be premonitions or just longings for past experiences long buried in the subconsciousness. Walker takes around the town, introducing us to college students at the epicentre of the outbreak, various families broken up by the illness, senior lovers hoping to be taken to the same dreamland after the ravages of senility have taken their toll.

Much of the time I was somewhat bored by Walker's plot. It did not meander or get bogged down by too ornate language, it pushed forward at a nice pace, keeping the various plotlines fresh in the mind of the reader. But frankly, most of the characters were quite boring, too quaint, too normal, with all shady elements of the past unexplored. As Dwight Garner's NY Times review notes, all the characters are "exceedingly nice" and none say or do anything particularly interesting. While sharing Station Eleven's desire to explore the unexplored elements of human experience in moments of societal collapse, the agents of that exploration that Walker relies on hold none of the sharpness or dark malevolence that Emily St. John Mandel managed to imbue her characters.

However, something beautiful comes about toward the end of the book as the world of dreams and their meanings begin to surface. Walker's prose rises to another level and the questions she asks about how our dreams convey or filter how we understand our experiences, especially those moments of crises, is truly beautiful. It turned a mediocre reading experience to one where I had to go back to read passages, mesmerized by the writing and the dalliance into the subconsciousness Walker wants to explore.

I'm happy I powered through, as I would have lost the most powerful elements of the book had I abandoned. In the end, The Dreamers is more than just a new Station Eleven, and should be reckoned on its own merits, giving credit to the questions Walker wants to explore, which are not conventional to the genre and which offer important insights into the human condition.

3.5/5