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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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Community Reviews
Really interesting premise although far from original. Think George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Thought Police/ThinkPol. A secret police force tasked with identifying and punishing "thoughtcrime" - any independent or dissenting thoughts against the Party's ideology. In his novel (written almost 8 decades ago) they use surveillance and psychological manipulation to control citizens' thoughts and ensure absolute obedience to Big Brother and the Party. Fast forward to around 30 years post Covid and another Government Agency is in place and tasked with assisting in preventing future crimes. At their fingertips is an entire world of digital information and mass surveillance that they use to collate and appoint scores to individuals in assessing their future crime risk. This novel's focus is on "The Dream-Saver". An implanted device that allows individuals to get more restful sleep, but also allows the company to monitor their dreams and sell this data to third parties (who reads the fine print in contracts right?!) The main character gets incarcerated based on some dreams that were interpreted as her having the potential to cause future harm to her husband. The facilities are privately owned and used to profit off those who end up in them, with ever changing rules and penalties, resulting in extended stays. The writing is good, character development not so much, but the novel feels frighteningly real in this privacy eroded digital and data driven world we all live in.
Lots of telling instead of showing. Nothing really happens. The character doesn’t really change throughout the story. The general idea has been done better many times before. Dialogue was unrealistic. Ignorance of various professions sticks out like a sore thumb. In depth description of vomit but little else. Extremely repetitive. Unsatisfactory ending. Interesting start.
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