Dream State (Oprah's Book Club)
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ¿ OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

“The story of relationships built and broken, mistakes inherited and repeated, and the beauty of trying again....already one of the year's best.” -People


Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her future in-laws' lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a young doctor with a brilliant life ahead of him. Charlie has asked Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, though Cece can't imagine anyone more ill-suited for the task-an airport baggage handler haunted by a tragedy from his and Charlie's shared past. But as Cece spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and she grows increasingly uncertain about her future. And why does Garrett, after meeting Cece, begin to feel, well, human again? As a contagious stomach flu threatens to scuttle the wedding, and Charlie and Garrett's friendship is put to the ultimate test, Cece must decide between the life she's dreamed of and a life she's never imagined.

The events of that summer have long-lasting repercussions, not only on the three friends caught in its shadow but also on their children, who struggle to escape their parents' story. Spanning fifty years and set against the backdrop of a rapidly warming Montana, Dream State explores what it means to live with the mistakes of the past-both our own and the ones we've inherited.

Written with humor, precision, and enormous heart, both a love letter and an elegy to the American West, Dream State is a thrillingly ambitious ode to the power of friendship, the weird weather of marriage, and the beauty of impermanence.
1145899745
Dream State (Oprah's Book Club)
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ¿ OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

“The story of relationships built and broken, mistakes inherited and repeated, and the beauty of trying again....already one of the year's best.” -People


Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her future in-laws' lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a young doctor with a brilliant life ahead of him. Charlie has asked Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, though Cece can't imagine anyone more ill-suited for the task-an airport baggage handler haunted by a tragedy from his and Charlie's shared past. But as Cece spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and she grows increasingly uncertain about her future. And why does Garrett, after meeting Cece, begin to feel, well, human again? As a contagious stomach flu threatens to scuttle the wedding, and Charlie and Garrett's friendship is put to the ultimate test, Cece must decide between the life she's dreamed of and a life she's never imagined.

The events of that summer have long-lasting repercussions, not only on the three friends caught in its shadow but also on their children, who struggle to escape their parents' story. Spanning fifty years and set against the backdrop of a rapidly warming Montana, Dream State explores what it means to live with the mistakes of the past-both our own and the ones we've inherited.

Written with humor, precision, and enormous heart, both a love letter and an elegy to the American West, Dream State is a thrillingly ambitious ode to the power of friendship, the weird weather of marriage, and the beauty of impermanence.
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Dream State (Oprah's Book Club)

Dream State (Oprah's Book Club)

by Eric Puchner

Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

Unabridged — 13 hours, 44 minutes

Dream State (Oprah's Book Club)

Dream State (Oprah's Book Club)

by Eric Puchner

Narrated by MacLeod Andrews

Unabridged — 13 hours, 44 minutes

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Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Spanning fifty years, three best friends grapple with life, love, family and climate change set against the Montana terrain in Dream State. This is perfect for fans of Ann Napolitano and The Paper Palace.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER ¿ OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

“The story of relationships built and broken, mistakes inherited and repeated, and the beauty of trying again....already one of the year's best.” -People


Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her future in-laws' lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a young doctor with a brilliant life ahead of him. Charlie has asked Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, though Cece can't imagine anyone more ill-suited for the task-an airport baggage handler haunted by a tragedy from his and Charlie's shared past. But as Cece spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and she grows increasingly uncertain about her future. And why does Garrett, after meeting Cece, begin to feel, well, human again? As a contagious stomach flu threatens to scuttle the wedding, and Charlie and Garrett's friendship is put to the ultimate test, Cece must decide between the life she's dreamed of and a life she's never imagined.

The events of that summer have long-lasting repercussions, not only on the three friends caught in its shadow but also on their children, who struggle to escape their parents' story. Spanning fifty years and set against the backdrop of a rapidly warming Montana, Dream State explores what it means to live with the mistakes of the past-both our own and the ones we've inherited.

Written with humor, precision, and enormous heart, both a love letter and an elegy to the American West, Dream State is a thrillingly ambitious ode to the power of friendship, the weird weather of marriage, and the beauty of impermanence.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK

A March 2025 Indie Next Pick • One of BBC's Best Books of 2025 • One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 • One The Times' (UK) Best Books of 2025 • One of The Guardian's 50 Hottest Books To Read Now


“A transporting wonder…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.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Expansive… explores how we might make meaning of our existence in the face of escalating loss.” —The New Yorker

“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

Dream State is a novel you should read… Puchner writes about families and relationships as well as any writer I can think of… a powerful reading experience. —Chicago Tribune

Dream State is a colossus: a vast, bright behemoth of a book, panoramic as the Montana skyline. A brilliant...tale of family ties…wrenching…he tells his tale so compellingly, so engagingly, with such warmth and humor, that it’s not until you set the book down that you can appreciate the breadth and brilliance of what he’s done.” —The 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.” —Elisabeth Egan, The New York Times

“The story of relationships built and broken, mistakes inherited and repeated, and the beauty of trying again…already one of the year’s best.” People

“A moving, psychologically acute, formally surprising family saga…Sprawling and elegant…both old-fashioned and bracingly inventive.” Kirkus Reviews *starred review*

Dream State is a delight…An exquisitely rendered novel about the vagaries of fate, and friendship, and love.” —Alice McDermott, National Book Award winner and author of Absolution

“A masterpiece. Dream State is a glittering, evocative achievement.” —Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son

“Filled to the brim with life, Dream State is a wonder of character and craft.” —Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less and Less is Lost

“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

“[Puchner’s] novel overflows with both meaning and intriguing plot, layer by layer, year by year….Don’t miss Dream State, whose memorable characters leave readers with plenty to contemplate about life’s most vital aspects.” –BookPage *starred review*

“Masterfully built.” Financial Times

Dream State deals with [climate change] 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. . . .Moving, funny and utterly engrossing.” The Times (UK)

“Funny and wild; some of the most beautiful writing that I have ever read.” —Matthew Klam, author of Who Is Rich?

“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 Mister Monkey

“Eric Puchner’s 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 and Swan Song

“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 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, UK Poet Laureate 1999-2009

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2025-01-18
A moving, psychologically acute, formally surprising family saga.

Puchner’s latest unfolds at first like a familiar (though stylish) literary romance. It’s summer 2004. Cece, about to marry a promising young doctor named Charlie, has arrived early at her fiance’s family lake house in Salish, Montana, where she makes final wedding preparations alongside their unlikely officiant, Garrett—a Middlebury friend of Charlie’s who, after a tragic death for which he felt responsible, dropped out of college and returned home to Montana to heft baggage at the airport and tend to both his psychic wounds and his dying father. Garrett is an atheist who doesn’t believe in marriage, an environmentalist who works for a polluter, a risk taker, and an incorrigible smartass; he and Cece clash immediately. The reader knows just where this is headed…but the inevitable romantic chaos (which takes place amid a norovirus outbreak that picks off the wedding party one by one) turns out to be not a destination but the starting point for an unusual and captivating family saga that will span 50 years, about half of them in a grim but realistic future of wildfire smoke and vanishing species. Cece and Garrett cross paths with Charlie (and his several wives) at first rarely and awkwardly, but later more regularly and affectionately. The next generation replicates and complicates the dynamic: Cece and Garrett’s daughter, Lana, and Charlie’s son, Jasper, are close friends, and after an adolescent entanglement that founders quickly and ends poorly, Lana—like her father—feels deeply guilty about what she’s done to Jasper, whose life takes a dark turn.

Sprawling and elegant—a novel that feels both old-fashioned and bracingly inventive.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940192183397
Publisher: Penguin Random House
Publication date: 02/18/2025
Edition description: Unabridged
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