Dream State
- Author Eric Puchner
- Narrator MacLeod Andrews
- Publisher Hodder & Stoughton
- Publish Date 18 February 2025
- Run Time 13 hours and 45 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Family life fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Environmental issues, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Love and relationships, Narrative theme: Sense of place.
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Critics Review
A family history that feels monumental . . . The book's effect is hypnotically telescopic, a vision of people we come to know across decades. Puchner's manipulation of time is among his novel's most magical elements . . . We book reviewers don't get to say much about endings, but Puchner's final chapter is one of the most touching and satisfying I've read in years. I see you teetering there between choosing to read Dream State or not. Jump in
An epic tale of paradise lost...[A] brilliantly panoramic tale of family ties. American author Eric Puchner's latest novel is a colossus: a vast, bright behemoth of a book, panoramic as the Montana skyline... he tells his tale so compellingly, so engagingly, with such warmth and humour, that it's not until you set the book down that you can appreciate the breadth and brilliance of what he's done.
A fresh spin on the [marriage] plot . . . A thoughtful meditation on the seismic impact of small decisions on human and earthly conditions. It couldn't be more timely
I like it when a novel surprises me. So often, it's easy to slot literary narratives into a short list of categories: will-they-won't-they romance, journey to self-knowledge, sad girl millennial lit. By page 50, I can generally tell my thinly disguised autobiographies from my cosy crimes. But Dream State, the American writer Eric Puchner's second novel, went somewhere I wasn't expecting...as climate change books go, Dream State deals with the issue cleverly and sensitively, allowing it to bubble under the surface of the action until its inconveniences start to look like disasters...On the sentence level, Puchner's writing is almost flawless - I can't think of another book I have annotated so heavily, underlining phrases on almost every page... moving, funny and utterly engrossing.
Fresh, wise, funny, and compassionate . . . Cinematic from the outset, Dream State opens (just as if a circular lens were unscrewing) upon a beloved old family homestead, site of a doomed wedding - descriptions so warm and attentive, a reader can't help falling in head first . . . Dream State is a wonderful feast, and feat
Reports of the death of the Great American Novel have been vastly overstated . . . a decade-spanning epic that's already getting publishers excited is Eric Puchner's Dream State. It's set in Montana and traces how the events of one summer shape the lives of three friends and their children, who are vying to escape from their parents' legacies
Masterfully built
A brilliant, sprawling epic as funny as it is devastating, Dream State unspools the aftermath of that summer over many years. I haven't been this dazzled by a novel in a long time
A gorgeous, gripping epic that chronicles 50 years of change in friendships, families and the surrounding landscape. It's being hailed by some as the next great American novel
I loved Dream State - I did not stop reading it for three days straight. Puchner's depiction of passing time, of friendship and family, of the mistakes we make and the complicated joys that life brings, is astounding. This is a story of layers and richness rarely seen, and I urge you to read it.
A totally involving and moving literary page-turner about the lifelong reverberations from an act of betrayal
A moving, psychologically acute, formally surprising family saga . . . Sprawling and elegant-a novel that feels both old-fashioned and bracingly inventive
With interwoven perspectives, Puchner's layered saga is a deeply felt exploration of relationships and self-identity, and the imperfections hidden by the heart's pull
The book wonders about the what-ifs in life - what if I married a different person, what if I took that job path, what if guys just talked to each other instead of just letting things sit quietly between them?
A book of tears, laughter, longing, regrets and filled to the brim with life. Dream State is a wonder of character and craft
Dream State is a masterpiece. A glittering, evocative achievement
Dream State is a gorgeous exploration of time, grief, love, and the way that the commitments we make turn us into the people we become . . . brilliant
Dream State delivers everything I want in a novel: a love triangle, a moving friendship story, a delicious setting (including some of the best skiing scenes I've ever read in my life) and rumination about how we search for meaning in our lives . . . an absolute masterpiece
Dream State explores several monumental themes - love, family, identity, human transience, climate change - but always with a scrupulous attention to the fate of individuals, and always with a powerful sense of intimate connection . . . a remarkable achievement
Eric Puchner has populated his engrossing and deeply affecting novel with characters so complicated and sympathetic that we want - we need - to know how their lives will turn out, and what will happen to the glorious and fragile landscape they inhabit
Dream State is a delight. Every scene, every character, every sentence, is infused with Eric Puchner's intelligence and wit. An exquisitely rendered novel about the vagaries of fate, and friendship, and love
Funny and wild, here is some of the most beautiful writing that I have ever read
Lush, immersive, devastating, and stunningly alive, Dream State did the thing the very best novels do: pulled me relentlessly into its characters, its setting, concerns, losses, and triumphs, only to let me loose again with a sharper, clearer vision of the world outside
Think The Paper Palace meets Jonathan Franzen's Freedom
Mistakes are made and decades sweep by in an immersive panorama of friendship and rivalry, marriages and children, tragedy and love. Meanwhile, the climate crisis bites, and the sands of time are only running in one direction. A book to lose yourself in, but one that doesn't duck the big issues.
A fascinating and expansive novel about what happens when an impulsive decision alters the lives of three friends - spanning 50 years and multiple generations. I especially enjoyed the softness and tenderness of the male friendships in this story. Beautiful.
A really interesting, epic novel that also somehow manages to feel light
If you're looking for literary value, Dream State is basically three novels for the price of one. We start off in 2004 as Cece plans her wedding to Charlie, with the help of his best friend Garrett. But what begins as a high-stakes love triangle tale transforms into an engrossing family saga, spanning 50 years. The magnetic pull between the three characters is enough to sustain a third plotline: the devastating effect of climate change on Montana and the life they have built there.
I loved it. I read it so so fast and I think if you like, for example, Jonathan Franzen or books where people love, love, love a place so much, you too may find yourself weeping inconsolably for the planet and longing to jump in a lake.
Dream State is a gloriously baggy epic to savour line by line
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