Dream State: Oprah's Book Club

Dream State by Erik Puchner is a powerful exploration of marriage, parenthood, lost love, and lifelong commitment. At its heart lies a complicated triangle: two friends and a woman, Cece, loved by both — and loving both in return. The novel weaves a story that spans two generations and leaps through time like there’s no tomorrow, refusing to deliver the full picture all at once. It leaves you with questions, with a sense of frustration, but also with deep admiration for its craft. I loved all the characters right from the beginning. Puchner has a real gift for painting them so vividly — their personalities, their inner worlds — that you feel like you truly know them. But as the story moves on, and especially with the unconventional jumps through time, it became harder for me to stay connected to them. Except maybe Lana — she stood out. While I appreciated the bold structure and the way it skipped ahead years or even decades between chapters, it sometimes felt like the characters lost some of their depth in the process, like their essence became blurred. Still, what fascinated me most was how Puchner writes in such an intriguing and wonderful way that you simply can’t put the book down — even though almost everything that happens is what you were hoping wouldn’t. It’s not what I would call an optimistic book. It’s realistic. It’s heartfelt. It speaks to the experiences of thousands of people who ask themselves, perhaps every day: *Was it the right decision?* I loved this book not just for the beautiful writing, but for the thoughts it stirred in me. It was refreshing to read a novel that whispers, *don’t expect too much.* Every time I thought I knew where the story was going, how it would all turn out, it surprised me — sometimes gently, sometimes brutally. The narrative skips through time quickly and confidently, and yet never loses its emotional grounding. If there’s one thing I truly longed for, it was an ending — not just the closing of a narrative loop, like with the house, but a sense of completion for Cece herself. I kept waiting for a revelation, a lesson, a final truth from her — and it never came. That absence lingered with me. Still, Dream State is a remarkable book. It doesn’t tie things up with a bow, but maybe that’s the point. Life doesn’t either.

"If you look for a meaning, you'll miss everything that happens.” - Andrei Tarkovsky. My reading highlight 2025 so far. I thank my GR friend Ron - whose taste in books I usually share - for his review which first ever turned my attention to this book. Tell me a book is a monumental novel spanning generations and decades in a family and its orbit - and I basically have no choice but to read it. And I was well rewarded. I feel like the older I get the more I enjoy books that basically have no real plot and no ulterior motive or lesson to learn but rather just depict life in its complex, multi-dimensional, non-linear, irrational, random, non-one-plotty-way. IF DONE WELL of course. "Dream State" is such a book. It is set in Montana, follows three people and spans about 50 years. It starts off with Cece, a 27-ish y/o bride that comes to the Montana family summer house of her fiancé Charlie. She arrives in Montana by herself, hoping to find some solitude and get the planning done for her and Charlie's wedding that is bound to happen a month later. Her fiancé sends his estranged best friend Garrett - whom Cece never met before and who lives just down the road of the house - to look after Cece (to provide her with weed in fact). Within the few weeks left until the marriage Cece falls in love with Garrett, who himself is a quiet, lonely man that never recovered from a traumatizing day he experienced during his college years. Which sounds like the beginning of any off-the-shelf Netflix rom-com is anything but it. The character-driven book follows Charlie, Cece and Garrett and later their kids. It tells many stories that uncover many shades of loyalty, betrayal, love, grief, friendship, marriage, adult- and childhood. The book is beautifully written, it is often joyous, often dark, often simply gray and in that such an honest depiction of what life as a human is like. What I particularly enjoyed is the book's composition. It spans years and does so sometimes in the blink of an eye, or specifically in the blink of a sentence. You may fast forward 5 years within one paragraph, and no you don't get an end of chapter or even a line break to assist you to keep up with this temporal switch. I loved this. Also the circularity. The book starts with the planning of the wedding, then you follow Cece, Charlie and Garrett until they're over 70, and the final chapter wraps up where we were headed when we started: the wedding day. What I've also adored are all the blank spaces. The things unwritten. There are certain moments Puchner doesn't tell, and doesn't show either. He implies and thus leaves room for the reader's imagination. Why did Cece exactly fall in love with Garrett, what happened between them before the wedding day? Except for one detailed hike and an omnious wine tasting we simply don't know. Which some reviewers disliked. But for me, this was extraordinary and a very strong methodoligcal trick. Exactly what a Netflix rom-com would have cannibalized are moments that Puchner leaves in the dark - between Cece and Garrett. Lastly, this book has a strong angle on environmental topics - in many ways that I don't want to spoiler here. It looks at the many detrimental effects that human-induced climate change has (e.g. animal extinction, dry seasons, fires). The way Puchner does it is - in my opinion - extremely clever and effective. His approach is not one of "let me tell you"/in-your-face, but one of subtlety and everydayness. Which makes it horrifiyingly realistic and tangible. I absolutely enjoyed the setting and descriptions of Montana and its nature. I am so happy I found this book. I highly recommend it to @Camille, my mum and @Phoenix. I think you'd enjoy it. Maybe also @Annabel especially for the nature and environment aspects of it.