PRAISE FOR DREAM STATE
“This story of relationships built and broken, mistakes inherited and repeated and the beauty of trying again is already one of the year’s best.”
– People (Book of the Week)
“A transporting wonder… made me miss my subway stop…Although Puchner’s novel is a long, deep ride that traverses half a century, it never labors under the weight of its broad scope…gradually coalesces into a family history that feels monumental…Puchner’s manipulation of time is among his novel’s most magical elements… [The] structure puts Puchner’s skills as a novelist and a short-story writer on parallel display. While exercising full control across the whole arc of the book, he also manages to create strikingly beautiful chapters… petals of insight fall gently on every page of this deeply humane novel…Puchner’s final chapter is one of the most touching and satisfying I’ve read in years.”
- Ron Charles, The Washington Post
"A great book that everyone should read…Puchner writes about families and relationships as well as any writer I can think of. The depth of engagement with his characters, along with the scope of the story spanning 50 years Puchner brings to Dream State make for a powerful reading experience…seeing how Puchner braids the individual threads into a whole and moves these people through time is one of the chief pleasures of the novel."
- John Warner, Chicago Tribune
"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 (Book of the Week)
"I’m as relieved as I am thrilled to report joy in discovering Dream State, Puchner’s exuberant, gritty, glittering new novel…Fresh, wise, funny, and compassionate…So many delicious lines float forward, a reviewer is overwhelmed…real tenderness and wit saturate every page…Dream State is a wonderful feast, and feat."
- Joan Frank, Boston Globe
“A shimmering Montana saga....A coming-of-old-age story…[that reminds] us that a mutable self doesn’t end with adolescence.”
- The New York Times Book Review
"Philip Roth came to mind…masterfully built and responsibly focused and toned."
- Financial Times
"This is a packed saga of the very best kind…Not many authors could successfully pull off such a sprawling, multifaceted chronicle, but Puchner excels at both the big picture and the small details…this novel overflows with both meaning and intriguing plot…Don’t miss Dream State, whose memorable characters leave readers with plenty to contemplate about life’s most vital aspects."
- BookPage (starred review)
"A moving, psychologically acute, formally surprising family saga…Sprawling and elegant - a novel that feels both old-fashioned and bracingly inventive."
- Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Riveting…Puchner's layered saga is a deeply felt exploration of relationships and self-identity, and the imperfections hidden by the heart’s pull."
- Booklist (starred review)
"Fans of old-fashioned, multilayered storytelling at its finest will savor Dream State, Eric Puchner's generation-spanning work about family, friendship, and the fate of the planet…Puchner devotes most of this novel to the travails of his characters, whose lives, like all lives, are a mix of rainbows and sucker punches. Both phenomena are rendered in exquisite detail in this marvelous work."
- Shelf Awareness
"Dream State is a masterpiece. A glittering, evocative achievement. I thought about the ending for days.”
- Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son
"Puchner's subject is love over the passage of time, shuffling the deck of years and revealing to us, like a magician, precisely the perfect cards. A book of tears, laughter, longing, regrets and filled to the brim with life. Dream State is a wonder of character and craft; settle in and enjoy!"
- Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less and Less Is Lost
"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-winning author of Absolution
"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
"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. Puchner expertly balances the looming question of our place as a species in a burning world with the eternal human question of which of our choices matter and to whom. Sharply observed, tenderly compassionate, and with an expansive capacity for both hilarity and heartbreak, this brilliant novel dazzles and surprises."
- Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections
“Eric Puchner’s Dream State delivers everything I want in a novel: a juicy (indeed scandalous) love triangle, a friendship story, a delicious, aspirational setting (including some of the best skiing scenes I’ve ever read in my life) and deeper ruminations about how we search for meaning in our lives and how our planet responds to mankind’s decisions. This is an absolute masterpiece.”
- Elin Hilderbrand, author of The Perfect Couple and Swan Song
“Elegant and formally exhilarating, Dream State is funny and wild, full of wonder, terror, and joy. Here is some of the most beautiful writing that I have ever read. At times I felt that I too was on skis, flying as if in a dream.”
- 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
"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. This is what makes it such a remarkable achievement - and also, despite the gravity of its subjects, such a compellingly entertaining read. Eric Puchner writes with a marvelous buoyancy and precision, and the generous sweep of his narrative is at once exhilarating, and proof of the compassion that lies at its heart."
- Andrew Motion, UK Poet Laureate 1999-2009