Dream State

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

Boston Globe

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

Independent

Masterfully built

Financial Times

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

Literary Hub

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

BBC.com

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.

Jessie Burton, author of THE HOUSE OF FORTUNE and THE MINIATURIST

A totally involving and moving literary page-turner about the lifelong reverberations from an act of betrayal

Clare Chambers, author of SMALL PLEASURES

A moving, psychologically acute, formally surprising family saga . . . Sprawling and elegant-a novel that feels both old-fashioned and bracingly inventive

Kirkus

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

Booklist

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?

NPR

A book of tears, laughter, longing, regrets and filled to the brim with life. Dream State is a wonder of character and craft

Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of LESS

Dream State is a masterpiece. A glittering, evocative achievement

Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of THE ORPHAN MASTER'S SON

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

Danielle Evans, author of THE OFFICE OF HISTORICAL CORRECTIONS

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

Elin Hilderbrand, author of THE PERFECT COUPLE

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

Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate

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

Francine Prose, author of READING LIKE A WRITER

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

Alice McDermott, National Book Award winner and author of ABSOLUTION

Funny and wild, here is some of the most beautiful writing that I have ever read

Matthew Klam, author of WHO IS RICH?

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

Lynn Steger Strong, author of THE FLOAT TEST

Think The Paper Palace meets Jonathan Franzen's Freedom

Sunday Times STYLE

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.

Guardian

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.

Stylist

A really interesting, epic novel that also somehow manages to feel light

Guardian Today in Focus podcast

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.

Sunday Times

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.

Ella Risbridger, author of IN LOVE WITH LOVE

Dream State is a gloriously baggy epic to savour line by line

The Times

For a big, immersive American saga, deeply pleasurable yet tinged with melancholy, you could do no better than Dream State by Eric Puchner. . . It begins against a glorious Montana backdrop with an apparent golden couple poised to wed, then unspools over half a century through complications, children and existential crises, with the depredations of the climate crisis and our relationship with the natural world coming increasingly to the fore.

Guardian

As she's planning her wedding at the Montana lake house of her doctor fiance's family, Cece falls in love with his troubled best friend from college, Garrett . . . Eric Puchner portrays her decision and its aftermath over the decades that follow with creativity and grace, as the characters have children and grow older and somewhat wiser. Bonds are broken and sometimes healed, though nothing - including the warming Montana environment - is left unchanged.

New York Post

A multi-generational family saga, Dream State explores themes of love, betrayal, and the effects across generations of the choices we make. Beginning in 2004, the story is set in a rapidly warming, fictionalised version of Montana's Flathead Valley, with the lake at the valley's centre the nucleus of the story.

BBC

If you haven't yet read this epic novel, I urge you to listen to it. Dream State follows friends and lovers from their 20s into their seventies in the early 2000s. Through their lives, we see macro changes about the future of the American environment as a micro level study of human relationships and how they change. It's bright, barrelling, and not one to shy from humour. I found the audiobook adds some lightness to the novel.

Woman & Home

An utterly charming take on the age-old love triangle trope . . . Touching on everything from climate change to friendship, grief and addiction, it's a sprawling novel that leaves you gripped to the very last page

Independent