Not all of Walker’s characters are quite so well-rounded, however. Walker thoughtfully guides us through various emotional and psychological responses to the crisis: through tentative sexual experiences, childhood resilience and single parenthood.

There are Ben and Annie, endeavouring to repair their troubled marriage while fearing that their newborn baby, Grace, may have been infected by donor breast milk.

There are preteen siblings Sara and Libby, whose survivalist father has predicted this kind of crisis, which has left the girls better prepared – and yet more isolated – than their peers. This book achieves dazzling, aching humanity.There is painfully shy first-year student Mei who, at the novel’s opening, is “still stunned by how quickly it happened, how the friendships formed without her, a thick and sudden ice”. Walker’s sentences are smooth, emotionally arresting-of a true, ethereal beauty. The Dreamers is overflowing with humanity.” - Jezebel written with symphonic sweep.” - The New York Times Book Review “ gripping, provocative novel should come with a warning: may cause insomnia.” - People (Book of the Week) the perfect ambiguous frame for a tense and layered plot.” - O: The Oprah Magazine “Walker’s roving fictive eye by turns probes characters’ innermost feelings and zooms out to coolly parse topics like reality versus delusion. Written in luminous prose, The Dreamers is a breathtaking and beautiful novel, startling and provocative, about the possibilities contained within a human life-if only we are awakened to them. They are dreaming heightened dreams-but of what? Those affected by the illness, doctors discover, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. Two sisters turn to each other for comfort as their survivalist father prepares for disaster. A young couple tries to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. When a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, Mei finds herself thrust together with an eccentric classmate as panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. Neither can the paramedics, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. One night in an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a first-year student stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep-and doesn’t wake up. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Glamour “A startling, beautiful portrait of a community in peril.”- Entertainment Weekly.An ordinary town is transformed by a mysterious illness that triggers perpetual sleep in this mesmerizing novel from the bestselling author of The Age of Miracles.NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE

The dreamers walker