Dream State

Reviews / Votes

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 -- Ron Charles * Washington Post * 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. * Guardian * 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 * New York Times * 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. -- Laura Hackett * The Times * 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 -- The best books to look out for in 2025 * 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 -- Most anticipated books of 2025 * 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 -- 40 of the most exciting books to read in 2025 * 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 -- Starred review * 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? -- We can't wait to read these 10 books hitting shelves soon * 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 -- Sarah Gwonyoma, Summer Reading List * 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. -- Summer reading: the 50 hottest books to read now * 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 -- Summer culture picks * 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. -- Summer reads * 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 -- Best Books of 2025 * 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. -- Best Books of 2025 * 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. -- Best Books of 2025 * 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. -- Best Books of 2025 * 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. -- Best Audiobooks for 2026 * 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 *