How would you describe her personality? How does she change over the course of the novel? One of the main characters is a college freshman named Mei.Why do you think Karen Thompson Walker chose to feature a large cast of characters instead of focusing on just one person's experience? How did this choice affect your reading of the book? Did one character resonate with you more than the others?.Do you think her dreamed-of life is somehow real? Or just a delusion? What about Nathaniel's extended dream of Henry? Consider Rebecca, who dreams of an entire lifetime, including a son. Some of the sick dream of extraordinarily vivid alternate lives.How does The Dreamers differ from other books about disaster and dystopia? What does it have in common with those stories?.What do you think of Matthew's character? Are his actions heroic or heartless? Selfless or self-aggrandizing? Or some combination? Is it ethical to privilege the lives of one's loved ones over the lives of strangers?.How do these possibilities play out in The Dreamers? Our culture is dominated by two opposing narratives about how people respond to disasters: Some believe they bring out the worst in people, others that they bring out the best. A contagious disease, a quarantined town ' - the characters in The Dreamers are facing an extreme situation.It seemed shocking, but my thoughts were still on disruption rather than danger - if schools closed here, how could we possibly entertain our two rambunctious daughters for so many weeks on end? Days are long with young children, and scented markers and iPads only get a parent so far. I had just read that Japan had closed all of its schools for a month. 28, I texted my friend who is a doctor to ask her what she thought about this new coronavirus thing. (And for the record, it differs in many ways from our current circumstance - my imaginary virus is a sleeping sickness that triggers extraordinary dreams in its victims.)įast forward 18 months: On Feb. I wrote this story based on a lot of research and from the comfort of a time and a place where no such threat was raging. Meanwhile, some people insist that the whole thing is just some kind of hoax.

Eventually, the government cuts an entire town off from the rest of the world in hopes of halting the spread. The stores in nearby Los Angeles even run out of facemasks. Officials scramble to respond, with increasingly draconian measures, as cases rise precipitously. A hospital is overrun by a surge of patients. The sickness is too new for scientists to fully understand. In the book ('The Dreamers'), there is no treatment and no vaccine. Last year, I published a novel about a mysterious, highly contagious virus that suddenly surfaces in an American town.

The dreamers karen thompson walker