Review: The Dreamers, by Karen Thompson Walker

The Dreamers, by Karen Thomson Walker

Penguin Random House Audio
General Fiction 
Audiobook 
Narrated by Cassandra Campbell

10 Hours, 29 Minutes 

My Rating (out of 5)

⭐⭐⭐1/2

A haunting and ethereal story.

A mysterious sleeping virus invades a small college town. Victims fall asleep and are unable to wake up.  There are some other interesting  symptoms, primarily heightened brain activity during sleep, as well as some lingering effects in those that survive. 

The book follows Mei who is patient zero's roommate, a young couple with a new baby, two young sisters and their father, and an older professor.

The book tells many stories at once, but to me the main protagonist was the virus itself, and the story was in how the virus affected individuals,  families,  and the town itself. The one drawback to this is that I never felt a strong connection to any of the characters. 

The writing itself was beautiful and written in a very dreamlike prose, which if course is well suited to the storyline itself.

The narration was performed by Cassandra Campbell, and was also done with a certain dream like quality - actually a little too much so for my taste - I started to enjoy it more after bumping up the speed on my app one notch. This is by no means a negative commentary on Campbell's overall ability as a narrator - her work on Where The Crawdads Sing was absolutely stellar. I don't know if the tempo of this audiobook was Campbell's choice, or by choice of the director, only that for me it was a tad too slow.  Campbell's range of character and emotion however were completely on point.

A pleasant dream like diversion.

Happy Reading,

Christine