In the meantime, Walker telescopes in and out among these characters’ experiences and the college town, animating both intimate and panoramic moments of the plague. Seamlessly, the author circulates through the town and a specific constellation of characters: Mei Sara and Libby, daughters of a conspiracy-fueled father Ben, a young parent Catherine, a neuropsychiatrist from Los Angeles who is attempting to figure out the precise nature of the illness and Nathaniel, a biology professor who cares for his dementia-addled partner. Instead of using the first-person voice, as in “ The Age of Miracles,” Walker works on a broader canvas here, with a roving, third-person omniscient narrator that creates a symphonic voice. She looks like an ordinary girl sleeping ordinary sleep.”įans of Walker’s best-selling debut, “The Age of Miracles,” will recognize a handful of similarities between the two novels: Chaos ensues when something goes extraordinarily amiss (in her debut, the rotation of the earth slows down, and in this novel, individuals are trapped in sleep) both are set in Southern California, where Walker grew up and both narratives tell coming-of-age stories (despite the multiple narrative threads of “The Dreamers,” a boy-meets-girl scenario sparks one of the many moments of tenderness in this book).

And yet, in those first few hours, the doctor can find nothing else wrong. … She sleeps through sunrise, and she sleeps through sunset. “She sleeps while an old man dies in a distant room. Babies are born while she sleeps,” Walker writes in the novel’s opening pages. “On the other floors of the hospital that night, women labor while the girl sleeps. The paramedics are summoned, and the unconscious student is transported to the hospital. Later, in the early evening, Mei returns, finding her roommate in the same somnolent state that she had left her nine hours earlier. Her shy roommate, Mei, doesn’t bother to wake her. Indeed, there is one question that is never posed during these commonplace conversations: What if you got too much sleep? This is what Karen Thompson Walker explores in her inventive, well-crafted novel “The Dreamers.” The story opens innocently enough: A freshman at Santa Lora College, in a small town about 70 miles from Los Angeles, doesn’t stir one morning after a night out. Which sleep aids, natural remedies or strategies do you resort to during the lonely hours of the night? What about pre-slumber rituals? Oh, you’re a new parent, good luck. Eavesdrop at any dinner party, and talk of sleep - and the lack thereof - abounds.

The dreamers karen thompson walker