Synopses & Reviews
In this hypnotic literary debut, a young couple is recruited by their magnetic boarding school headmaster to assist in a controversial sleep study, revealing the slippery nature of trust—and the immense power of our dreams.
Sylvie is attending boarding school in Northern California when she falls for Gabe, a fellow student whose mischievousness and insatiable curiosity make him Sylvie’s polar opposite. When he leaves school with no explanation, Sylvie is too blindsided and heartbroken to investigate, but she is never fully able to move on.
Years later, Sylvie is living a new life in college when Gabe comes to find her, and the reasons behind his disappearance begin to emerge. Gabe has become an assistant to Dr. Adrian Keller, their old headmaster, known for his innovative research in the field of lucid dreaming. Keller has been performing experiments on people who suffer from debilitating sleep disorders, training them to recognize when they are dreaming and to become active participants in their sleep worlds. In doing so, he hopes to endow them with much-needed self-knowledge—and the capacity for intervention.
Cautious but elated to be reunited with Gabe, Sylvie signs on to help with the study. But when patient studies go dangerously awry and former participants spiral out of control, even Sylvie begins to lose her grip on reality. What if our sleeping selves are somehow more real, she wonders, than who we are in waking life? Can she really trust Gabe? If Gabe had to choose, would his loyalty lie with her or Keller?
That’s when she finds a hidden file in Keller’s office. Suddenly, all of the unanswered questions and irreconcilable moments shift into place. As she struggles to navigate the hazy, permeable boundaries between what is real and what isn’t, who can be trusted and who cannot, Sylvie also faces surprising developments in herself: an unexpected infatuation, growing paranoia, and a new sense of rebellion.
Review
"Chloe Benjamin's ambitious debut novel matches the subtle surrealism of a dream with the underpinnings of a thriller. Back and forth in time like so many memories coming to light at once, Benjamin has produced a wholly original tale."
Review
"A beautiful, haunting plunge into a mysterious world where the real and the dream are cleverly blurred. Sylvie’s story drew me in from the first, and the subtle menace kept me turning pages to its surprising conclusion. Chloe Benjamin has crafted an eerie, compelling first novel which, like the lingering effects of a vivid dream, resonates long past its finish."
Review
"A debut novel of subtlety, depth, intrigue and tenderness. Chloe Benjamin is a great new talent."
Review
“A vibrant, ambitious novel that wrestles with the big complexities of early adulthood—the impossibility of fully knowing a partner, the quixotic desire for meaningful work, and the surprisingly sudden nature of obsession. Chloe Benjamin’s impressive debut shimmers and surprises with its wonderfully original fusion of compelling quirk and surreal mystery."
Review
"A sly, promising, and ambitious debut."
Review
"Rich in metaphor and hypnotic rhythms, the prose is lyrical and dreamlike."
Review
“Mounting tension and [an] atmosphere of secrecy will definitely keep the pages of this taut psychological exploration turning right up until the tense, satisfying denouement.”
Review
"The way that Benjamin gives equal weight to both the romantic relationship and the novel's more cerebral, philosophical questions is impressive -- and a feat we hope to see in many more books to come."
Review
"Uncertainty lingers through much of Benjamin's book, which has all the trappings of a scary thriller, but which skillfully converts itself into something more genteel and, in a way, more methodical: a study of the grim work of growing up."
Review
"After reading Chloe Krug Benjamin’s The Anatomy of Dreams, you’ll never dream the same way again. Benjamin’s debut is a majestic collision of sci-fi thriller and love story that explores, as the title claims, the anatomy of dreams — their power, both chilling and beautiful— through the lens of a young couple. Sylvie and Gabe meet as teens at a California boarding school and, years later, become sleep researchers investigating lucid dreaming under the instruction of their former teacher, an intelligent and mysterious man with potentially sinister intentions. Though anchored in reality, their story takes surreal turns.It’s a riveting tale that will instantly transfix readers, like a dream you’re not quite ready to wake up from."
Review
"This stirringcoming-of-age story explores the murky landscape of the human psyche and forcesreaders to question the fine line that defines our moral limits. A subtle yetstartling debut, The Anatomy of Dreams is both a psychological thriller as wellas a love story that will transfix readers all the way to its portentous conclusion."
Review
"In deft,tender-but-not-sentimental prose, Benjamin follows her protagonist SylviePatterson from a boarding school in northern California to the New Englandcoast to the Midwest along a journey influenced and shaped—in ways even Sylviedoesn’t understand—by an enigmatic headmaster and medical researcher, and by Sylvie’sfirst love. Benjamin’s novel envelops like a dream, but also provides a muchmore complete, satisfying story than a dream can."
Review
“This elegant first novel is both driving mystery and stirring love story…A fast-paced, satisfying read from a bright new talent."
Synopsis
Winner of the Edna Ferber Prize
Long-listed for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize
"A sly, promising and ambitious debut." --Publishers Weekly
"Chloe Benjamin is a great new talent." --Lorrie Moore, author of Bark: Stories
It's 1998, and Sylvie Patterson, a bookish student at a Northern California boarding school, falls in love with a spirited, elusive classmate named Gabe. Their headmaster, Dr. Adrian Keller, is a charismatic medical researcher who has staked his career on the therapeutic potential of lucid dreaming: By teaching his patients to become conscious during sleep, he helps them to relieve stress and heal from trauma. Over the next six years, Sylvie and Gabe become consumed by Keller's work, following him from the redwood forests of Eureka, California, to the enchanting New England coast.
But when an opportunity brings the trio to the Midwest, Sylvie and Gabe stumble into a tangled relationship with their mysterious neighbors--and Sylvie begins to doubt the ethics of Keller's research, recognizing the harm that can be wrought under the guise of progress. As she navigates the hazy, permeable boundaries between what is real and what isn't, who can be trusted and who cannot, Sylvie also faces surprising developments in herself: an unexpected infatuation, growing paranoia, and a new sense of rebellion.
In stirring, elegant prose, Benjamin's tale exposes the slippery nature of trust--and the immense power of our dreams.
Synopsis
“Human beings are more productive than ever before, but they’re also unhappier. They feel oppressed by the limits of their lives: the boredom, the repetition, the fatigue. What if you could use your sleep to do more—to receive all of the traditional regenerative benefits while problem-solving, healing, even experiencing alternate worlds? Wouldn’t you be capable of extraordinary things?”
So asks Dr. Adrian Keller, a charismatic medical researcher who has staked his career on the therapeutic potential of lucid dreaming. Keller is headmaster of a boarding school in Northern California where Sylvie Patterson, a student, falls in love with a spirited classmate named Gabe. Over the next six years, Gabe and Sylvie become increasingly involved in Keller’s work, following him from the redwood forests of Eureka, California to the New England coast. But when a new opportunity brings the trio to Wisconsin, Sylvie begins to doubt the ethics of Keller's controversial research, fearing dangerous consequences. As she navigates the hazy, permeable boundaries between what is real and what isn’t, who can be trusted and who cannot, Sylvie also faces surprising developments in herself: an unexpected infatuation, growing paranoia and a new sense of rebellion.
Marking the arrival of a tremendous new talent, this hypnotic literary debut reveals the slippery nature of trust—and the immense power of our dreams.
Synopsis
Winner of the Edna Ferber Prize
Long-listed for the 2014 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize
“A sly, promising and ambitious debut.” —Publishers Weekly
“Chloe Benjamin is a great new talent.” —Lorrie Moore, author of Bark: Stories
It’s 1998, and Sylvie Patterson, a bookish student at a Northern California boarding school, falls in love with a spirited, elusive classmate named Gabe. Their headmaster, Dr. Adrian Keller, is a charismatic medical researcher who has staked his career on the therapeutic potential of lucid dreaming: By teaching his patients to become conscious during sleep, he helps them to relieve stress and heal from trauma. Over the next six years, Sylvie and Gabe become consumed by Keller’s work, following him from the redwood forests of Eureka, California, to the enchanting New England coast.
But when an opportunity brings the trio to the Midwest, Sylvie and Gabe stumble into a tangled relationship with their mysterious neighbors—and Sylvie begins to doubt the ethics of Keller’s research, recognizing the harm that can be wrought under the guise of progress. As she navigates the hazy, permeable boundaries between what is real and what isn’t, who can be trusted and who cannot, Sylvie also faces surprising developments in herself: an unexpected infatuation, growing paranoia, and a new sense of rebellion.
In stirring, elegant prose, Benjamin’s tale exposes the slippery nature of trust—and the immense power of our dreams.
About the Author
Chloe Benjamin is a graduate of Vassar College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received her MFA in fiction. She is a recipient of the Sally Mead Hands Award for fiction writing and the Dorothy D. Bailey Summer Prize Fellowship, and her work has appeared in PANK, The Washington Independent Review of Books, The Laurel Review, Pebble Lake Review, Tar River Poetry, Whiskey Island, Verse Wisconsin, and Devil’s Lake, among others. She has taught creative writing and freshmen composition at UW-Madison and Edgewood College. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where she works for a nonprofit, runs a writing workshop for preteen girls, and writes in the hours in between.
Chloe Benjamin on PowellsBooks.Blog
When people ask how I came up with the concept for my second novel,
The Immortalists — four siblings visit a fortune teller who is rumored to be able to tell anyone the date that they will die — I always wish I had a better answer. The truth is that it simmered for years, condensing slowly; it’s hard to pinpoint the moment when the idea was first sparked...
Read More»