Barbara (NOT RECEIVING NOTIFICATIONS!)'s Reviews > The Dreamers

What I found amazing about “The Dreamers” by Karen Thompson Walker is that she speculated what would occur if an air-born virus popped up out of nowhere. In her imagination this air-born virus caused sleep. Her virus affected the population almost in the exact way that our current air-born virus, Covid-19, is doing now. Plus, how her fictitious government reacted is similar to what’s going on now. It’s like she had a crystal ball and foresaw our virus future. The big difference is her virus was contained to a town, after the government of her imagination fully quarantined the town and the town-folk.

In “The Dreamers”, this mysterious virus begins in a small university in Southern California. It begins in a woman’s dorm, but swiftly grows outside the university. At the beginning, a psychiatrist is involved, in that there are no physical symptoms that would indicate a physical problem causing continuous sleep. It is discovered that this young lady has very active brain waves, indicating heightened dreams. After it is decided that it’s viral, and airborne, mayhem ensues. Grocery stores are flocked; people lose all sense of civility. Helicopters, roadblocks, and police become mainstays.

But this isn’t a cautionary tale about a highly contagious virus. Walker writes of deep dreams. In her imagination, those sleeping enjoy very involved dreams. Some are of the future. Some dream of the past. She examines what emotions we entertain during dreams, and how dreams seem so real. To add dimension, some dreamers are sleepwalkers.

Walker writes her story in an almost dream-like way. It’s a “quiet” story, explaining what is transpiring in different places. There are the college kids from the dorm who have the virus. A janitor from the university is a single parent to two young girls gets infected. After he succumbs to the virus, the girls pillage on their own. There is a young professor who has an infant daughter, and his wife falls ill. There’s an immigrant family who fled Egypt under horrific conditions, and now they are dealing with their new reality in their new country. There is the Psychiatrist, who is no doing all medical things outside her specialty because most the doctors and nurses have fallen ill. There are salespeople, in town for a conference and kicked out of their hotel with nowhere to go. And the list goes on. In Walker’s imagination, her virus sweeps through the small town and affects everyone in different ways. Furthermore, she provides the reader with thought-provoking ideas of dreams and reality. She ponders whether there are people who prognosticates the future. But what she does, in hindsight, is prognosticate Covid-19 and the human reactions to the virus and the government’s attempts to contain it.

I listened to the audible production, narrated by the amazing Cassandra Campbell. Campbell reads the story perfectly. Her voice is melodic, almost dreamy. Her voice adds to the spirit of the story.