The Dream Hotel: A Read with Jenna Pick: A Novel
NATIONAL BESTSELLER ● READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK AS FEATURED ON TODAY ● From Laila Lalami—the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist and a “maestra of literary fiction” (NPR)—comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance.
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.
The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.
Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most: her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.
The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended. Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.
Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.
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✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *The Dream Hotel* offers a compelling, timely dystopian vision blending surveillance, data privacy, and incarceration themes. Many praise ...
I really enjoyed this book, we are getting too close for comfort on loosing our privacy..... she nailed it.
Wow! This book reminded me of Black Mirror, which caused mixed emotions- “what if this really happened?” (fear), “people are messed up” (anger), “yes, girl” (emotional and proud of girl power). If you’re down for all that, check it out!
A sobering extrapolation of the trajectory of modern America, combining the unabashed abuses feared by minorities, women, and all disempowered citizens, with warnings against the unchecked growth of poorly monitored AI implementation, authoritarian regimes, and unexamined trust in bureaucracy. This book examines a more accessible variation of Minority Report, but with a protagonist that lacks both of Tom Cruise's saving graces: the social protections of being white, and the systemic capital of being male. Never has the "near" in the term near-future dystopia felt so threatening. The familiarity of the horror looms prescient, and the powerlessness feels inescapable.
Interesting premise, but slow book. Kind of hard to get through. Kept thinking it was going to pick up.
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