Karen Thompson Walker

With a voice as distinctive and original as that of The Lovely Bones, and for the fans of the speculative fiction of Margaret Atwood, Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles is a luminous, haunting, and unforgettable debut novel about coming of age set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world.“It still amazes me how little we really knew. . . . Maybe everything that happened to me and my family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It’s possible, I guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Miracles comes a mesmerizing novel about a town transformed by a mysterious contagion that locks victims in perpetual sleep and triggers extraordinary, life-altering dreams.   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. She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. Her roommate, Mei, cannot rouse her. Neither can the paramedics who carry the girl away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then a third, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town. As the number of cases multiplies, classes are canceled. A quarantine is established. Mei, an outsider in the hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrown together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate. A psychiatrist summoned from Los Angeles attempts to make sense of the phenomenon as it spreads. Those infected, she discovers, are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, higher than has ever been recorded before. They are dreaming heightened dreams—but of what? Gorgeously written, The Dreamers is a breathtaking novel, startling and provocative, about the possibilities contained within a human life—in our waking days and, perhaps even more, in our dreams.

In this spellbinding novel, a young mother is struck by a mysterious psychological affliction that illuminates the eerie dimensions of the human mind—and of love. A provocative literary puzzle from the New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Miracles. In the first year after her child is born, Jane suffers a series of strange episodes: amnesia, premonitions, hallucinations, and an inexplicable sense of dread. As her psychiatrist struggles to solve the mystery of what is happening to Jane’s mind, she suddenly goes missing. A day later she is found unconscious in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, in the midst of what seems to be an episode of dissociative fugue; when she comes to, she has no memory of what has happened to her. Are Jane’s strange experiences related to the overwhelm of single motherhood, or are they the manifestation of a long-buried trauma from her past? Why is she having visions of a young man who died twenty years ago, who warns her of a disaster ahead? Jane’s symptoms lead her psychiatrist ever-deeper into the furthest reaches of her mind, and cause him to question everything he thought he knew about so-called reality—including events in his own life. Karen Thompson Walker’s profound and beautifully written novel is a speculative mystery about memory, identity, and fate, a mesmerizing story about the bonds of love between a mother and child, a man and a woman, and those who we’ve lost but may still be alive among us.

Em uma pequena cidade universitária nas colinas do sul da Califórnia, uma aluna do primeiro ano chega cambaleante ao seu quarto. É uma noite amena, os dormitórios estão silenciosos. Ela se deita, dorme - e não acorda mais. Continua desacordada de manhã, segue dormindo à tarde. Sua colega de quarto, Mei, é uma menina tímida, sem amigos. É ela a primeira a desconfiar de que há algo errado. Sacode a colega, tenta falar com ela, é impossível acordá-la. Nem mesmo os paramédicos, logo chamados ao dormitório, são capazes de trazê-la de volta. Muito menos os médicos, perplexos, no hospital. Quando a segunda garota pega no sono, e depois a terceira, os alunos e professores entram em pânico. Os médicos não sabem o que fazer. Constatam que a doença é contagiosa, mas não sabem como é transmitida. O pânico se espalha pela cidade. Um jovem casal tenta proteger a filha recém-nascida, conforme as pacatas ruas do vilarejo se tornam caóticas. E duas irmãs tentam ajudar uma a outra enquanto seu pai começa a estocar mantimentos para sobreviver ao desastre. As vítimas, internadas no hospital local, continuam vivas, e apresentam níveis incomuns de atividade cerebral. Seus sonhos são intensos, nunca antes registrados. Mas o que sonham? Com um texto luminoso e preciso, Karen Thompson Walker nos leva a um mundo real, tocado pelo inexplicável. Ela nos faz mergulhar na vida dessas pessoas, que mudaram de forma radical - estejam elas sonhando ou não.

Julia tiene once años y vive una plácida existencia en la soleada California con su familia cuando las noticias informan de algo que cambiará el mundo por completo: es, simplemente, el principio del fin del mundo visto a través de los ojos de una niña. "No había imágenes que mostrar en televisión. No había heridos. No había muertos. Al principio fue una catástrofe casi invisible." La que habla es Julia. Tiene once años y hasta hace muy poco tiempo solo nos habría contado cosas del colegio, de sus padres, de la complicidad con su única amiga, de ese chico, Seth, que le provoca un hormigueo especial. Pero hoy tiene algo diferente que decirnos. Hoy, ella y su familia se han despertado con una alarmante noticia: la rotación de la tierra de pronto se ha ralentizado, y los días y las noches han empezado a alargarse. Pronto los relojes no servirán de nada. El mundo está cambiando, y aunque ni ella ni nadie saben lo que va a pasar a partir de ahora, todos intuyen que el futuro será distinto. Extraño. Perturbador. Aceptar la realidad y aferrarse a la vida, tal cual Julia la conoce, es la única manera de sobrevivir. A través de la voz inocente de una niña que lucha por su felicidad, Karen Thompson Walker consigue sumergirnos en ese presente sin futuro, inquietante y extrañamente cotidiano, y nos hace cómplices de sus anhelos y de sus miedos, de sus preguntas y de sus esperanzas.