Dreamers

Definitely not as strong as Thompson Walker's debut, [b:The Age of Miracles 12401556 The Age of Miracles Karen Thompson Walker https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1342487370s/12401556.jpg 17382941]. Very hypnotic reading but didn't seem to add up to anything. Except maybe "Hey man, what if our lives are really just dreams, and our dreams are our real lives?" - you know, the kind of thing you think of when you're a stoned college kid. There was a lot of unnecessary information about how a fetus develops over time, which might be fascinating for a new parent like the author but just seemed like one big anti-abortion argument to me. And I don't expect a happy ending for everyone in a book, but I thought that one of the characters who doesn't fare well was given a particularly cruel fate that caused the book to change from dreamily eerie to downright depressing. Age of Miracles was one of my favorite books of 2012 and it provided lots of rich fodder for my book club discussion. The Dreamers was disappointing, but maybe it's just a sophomore slump from which Walker can rally for her next book.