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There are currently 19 member reviews
for The Dream Hotel
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Kathy W. (Clarion, PA)
Is this OUR future?
I received this book through Book Browse as an Advance Reading Copy.
I have been feeling lately that books and movies just are not original anymore until I read Laila Lalami's "The Dream Hotel". This book was so frighteningly real, even though it's set in a futuristic society. Lalami creates a world not too far removed from today's world. We feel Sara's struggle as a working mom of infant twins--sleep deprived and stressed. Without reading the fine print for a sleep program that has worked well for her husband, Sara enters into world where dreams are not random, rather possible portents.
We feel Sara's frustration, panic, and despair as she's thrust into a world not of her conscious making. Having no prior experience to guide her, Sara learns to survive as best she can while watching her twins emotionally pull away from her and her husband struggle in his own way.
Perhaps it's the cynic in me, but I don't believe we are too far removed from the world in which Sara lives. And that's frightening.
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Stephanie K. (Glendale, AZ)
Nightmares In the Dream Hotel
The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is a frightening glimpse into what terrors an authoritarian government could visit on its citizens. Its main protagonist Sara unwittingly falls into a waking nightmare when she's arrested for having a dream (which are monitored by the state) in which she tries to kill her husband. Readers who enjoy dystopian fantasies and alternative histories will find this novel intriguing as it follows Sara's attempts to understand what's happening and to escape the observation facility she's placed in. In a world where anything can and does happen, there are are shocks along the winding road that Sara travels in her mind.
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Portia A. (Monroe Township, NJ)
One scary future
The author has written about a future that could happen. It is frightening that, in this future, your dreams are monitored and your actions must conform to metrics set by the system itself. Definitely worth reading, even more scary than ghosts and monsters.
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Toby G. (Chapel Hill, NC)
Dystopian Dream World
Frightening and grim tale of a future that pretty much has total control over someone, including her dreams..The entire time I was reading this, I felt enshrouded in grey. Interesting concept
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Regina S. (Long Beach, CA)
A must read!
A single book can profoundly affect our emotions and how we view the world around us. The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is such a book. Sara's fateful situation and the contrast between absurdity and reality held me captive from the first page to the last. And what a satisfying ending!
This well-written story can be considered an allegory of the future. To ensure freedom, we must all work together to overcome corruption, greed, immorality, and bad behavior. To quote Laila on page 321, "Freedom isn't a blank slate. Freedom is teeming and complicated and, yes, risky, and it can only be written in the company of others."
If you are a book club member, as I am, I highly recommend this extraordinary book. I am looking forward to the great discussion that will undoubtedly occur!
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Jill S. (Durham, NC)
Well-Plotted, Urgent, and Absolutely Riveting
Imagine this: you're a working mother of young twins, and as you teeter on exhaustion, you turn to the latest technological breakthrough. It's called Dreamcatcher, a simple implant that stores your dreams, allowing you to gain a few hours of restful sleep and wake up revitalized.
But you're living in today's America, so when you return from an overseas conference, you are retained by the Risk Assessment Administration – a federal agency that analyzes predictive biometric data to assess whether a citizen is prone to commit a crime in the future. Your score indicates you are an imminent danger, and you're sent to a retention firm for three weeks. You are guilty of nothing except an overactive dream life, which quickly becomes your nightmare.
Once I started reading it, I was so riveted I could barely tear myself away. Our protagonist, Sara Hussein, attempts to restore logic in a Kafka-esque world where dreams are regarded as a window into the most private parts of ourselves and are used to identify patterns and make predictions. But in the retention facility, where rules shift at the whim of the attendants, and any deviation adds more time to a resident's stay, Sara cannot make strides in reversing the belief in her presumptive guilt.
The Dream Hotel is filled with the questions that matter: In our quest to embrace the latest sophisticated technology to make us safer, are we losing that very element that makes us most human? Can true freedom only be written in the company of others, those courageous enough to fight back and say "no?" I'm so grateful to BookBrowse and Pantheon for being an early reader.
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Lynn D. (Kingston, NY)
They know what you're dreaming about
The Dream Hotel is set in an unspecified future in California, but it seems believable that it isn't so far from the present day. The possibilities portrayed in this story about the consequence caused by the growth of AI, and the mining of personal data are both terrifying and cautionary.
We give up our privacy to the convenience of technology at our peril. The story follows the main character's struggle to get her life, and her privacy, back. There's lots to discuss, so I'd recommend this book to book clubs and readers of character driven science fiction.
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