
The book demonstrates how the need to believe that something terrible isn’t happening can take away all human thought and reduce people to the base behaviour of survival.

Therefore, when something bad does happen, we either ignore it because it doesn’t directly impact us, or the significance is downplayed because something terrible happens to other people. We are bombarded with bad news every day on the TV and radio. The Dreamers captures the human nature of modernity excellently. However, reading The Dreamers and recognizing the similarities to the current pandemic was jolting–even more so when one of the MCs happens to be a college student who is quickly placed under quarantine after her dorm floor becomes the site of patient zero. I didn’t even re-read the synopsis: I vaguely remembered the book was about a mysterious illness that causes–seemingly–permanent sleep. Then the other day, I randomly wanted to read a physical book and chose The Dreamers by chance. The book has been on my TBR shelf since last summer, yet I kept putting it off, prioritizing my kindle TBR list. The Dreamers was such a weird book to read while living during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mei, an outsider in the cliquish hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrust together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate.

As the number of cases multiplies, classes are canceled, and stores begin to run out of supplies. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep-and doesn’t wake up.
