{"id":10437,"date":"2019-02-28T06:25:23","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T11:25:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=10437"},"modified":"2019-02-28T06:25:23","modified_gmt":"2019-02-28T11:25:23","slug":"dreamers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2019\/02\/28\/dreamers\/","title":{"rendered":"In Karen Thompson Walker\u2019s Novel \u201cThe Dreamers,\u201d People Just Stop Waking Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a night of partying, a college student doesn\u2019t wake up the next morning, or the next. She just sleeps and sleeps. In Karen Thompson Walker\u2019s novel \u201cThe Dreamers\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(Random House), the sleeping sickness soon spreads to neighbors in the young woman\u2019s dorm in a sleepy college town nestled along a lake in the woods somewhere in southern California.<\/p>\n

The students are quarantined, but still more get sick. Confined and bored and scared, the students run off and spread whatever it is they\u2019ve contracted. A widowed dad employed as a custodian at the college comes home in a panic after cleaning the first patient\u2019s dorm room. He locks himself and his two daughters inside their house. He\u2019s a prepper and his apocalypse has arrived. Next door, parents of a new daughter are testy inside their fraying marriage. One by one they fall ill. Two young men are found unwaking in bed together. Walker writes, \u201cDisease sometimes exposes what is otherwise hidden. How carelessly it reveals a private self.\u201d<\/p>\n

\""The<\/a>
“The Dreamers” by Karen Thompson Walker. (Random House)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The sleepers, it seems, have vivid dreams. If they wake, they rise disoriented between waking and dreaming. But an Alzheimer’s patient miraculously awakes from his long illness, lucid, and returns home to his longtime partner, a biology professor at the college.<\/p>\n

A dad and baby get caught in a panic at a grocery store. The town is cordoned off. A man is shot trying to escape. Fear, rumors, anger and scapegoating burn through the small community.<\/p>\n

\"Karen<\/a>
Karen Thompson Walker (Dan Hawk Photography LLC)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Walker doesn\u2019t recount the incidents as a thriller. Her tone is calm, philosophical, parental maybe\u2014a plague artfully considered from a comfortable, thoughtful perspective.<\/p>\n

The novel muses on the bonds of friends and lovers and family. Much attention is paid to parents and children\u2014a widower desperate to protect his daughters; a neuropsychiatrist away from her toddler for the first long time; the worried mom of one of the college girls; a woman unwaking but with a baby growing inside her. \u201cThis is how sickness travels best,\u201d Walker writes, \u201cthrough all the same channels as do fondness and friendship and love.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a night of partying, a college student doesn\u2019t wake up the next morning, or the next. She just sleeps and sleeps. In Karen Thompson Walker\u2019s novel \u201cThe Dreamers\u201d\u00a0(Random House), the sleeping sickness soon spreads to neighbors in the young woman\u2019s dorm in a sleepy college town nestled along a lake in the woods somewhere […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10467,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10437"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10474,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10437\/revisions\/10474"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}