This 2019 novel is about a pandemic that takes out a college town. Some people die, but mostly people sleep--if they have medical support and didn't fall asleep somewhere dangerous. It's an omniscient voice story, with little glimpses into what the sleepers experience, but mostly the story is told by those who are awake. I assume there's some big statement about the state of awakeness that I haven't picked up on. I'll think about it some more. I think Karen Thompson Walker began the novel before Trump took office, but surely her work must have been influenced. I don't see how directly, though. I think a lot of us would prefer to sleep through the rest of his presidency, which is perhaps not the most proactive approach to fighting fascism. There is one protagonist who is explicitly a person of color, with lots of talk of pale skin, which strikes me as unlikely in a California college town.

There are evocative descriptions, like

Everything around her, the dim lights and the rusted railings and teh faraway sound of something dripping--all of it seems suffused with meaning, as if the whole night has been transformed already into memory.

I remember in high school and college, pausing sometimes, to realize that what I was experiencing was in a way, already over and something I might or might not hold in my thoughts in the future. I remember doing that, but I wonder if I've forgotten every instance!
And on the next page,

Already, she can hear her older self telling this story one day, years into the future, the terrible thing that happened when she was young, that girl Kara in her dorm, the second month of freshman year, her first glancing disaster. The whole event is racing away toward the past.

I wonder how self-documentation via social media will impact memory when today's young people are old?

Oh, and this deadly accurate observation about the sleep getting spread at a wedding,

This is how sickness travels best: through all the same channels as do fondness and friendship and love.

Maybe this one is even more haunting,

A few people have collected on their porches now, watching, but they stay where they are: the unkindness of fear.

There's a character to thinks love is unethical, that caring about one person will cause you to prioritize that person's well-being, even over that of two others, or ten, or a hundred, etc. Is he wrong?

I'd probably have given the book five stars if the cast of characters hadn't been so white...unless that's important somehow...?