by Laila Lalami
336pp (Hardcover)
My Rating: 6/10
LibraryThing Rating: 3.8/5
Goodreads Rating: 3.61/5
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The Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami is a standalone literary science fiction novel set in a version of the not-too-distant future where the Risk Assessment Administration monitors data to evaluate the likelihood that an individual will commit a crime. It’s a chillingly plausible story that will likely make you wish to go off the grid completely, and I thought it was excellent at creating a future that seems possible based on our history and present. However, my initial high opinion of it faded somewhat by the time I reached the end. Some parts of it were too drawn out, and it didn’t delve quite as deeply into exploring its ideas as I’d anticipated, especially given its earlier setup and a new perspective introduced later in the story that I thought would have greater significance.
In this version of the future, the Risk Assessment Administration was created after someone shot a bunch of people on live television during a Super Bowl half-time show, killing more than 100 attendees total. After the fact, it was clear that there was a lot of data indicating that this man would do something like this—including documentation of abusive behavior, recent ammo purchases on his credit card, and internet searches related to bypassing security—and these deaths could have been prevented if all these factors had been taken into consideration earlier. In response, a system that measured each person’s potential to commit a crime was developed: one that tracked each individual’s data and updated their risk assessment score accordingly. Though some wondered if this was too intrusive, studies showed that suicide rates and gun deaths decreased dramatically after this system’s implementation, and many people found the score to be a number that they barely had to think about since it did not have a huge impact on their lives and only came up when applying for a mortgage or such.
This had been the case for Sara, the main character, until the day she was stopped at the airport on her way back from an annual work-related conference. When she finally learned she was being held because her risk assessment score had risen slightly above what was considered “safe,” she had difficulty thinking of anything she could have done to raise her score to that level. But it turned out she didn’t technically do anything to raise her numbers: the implant she started using as a sleep aid after the birth of her twins had been recording her dreams, and her risk assessment score increased because she had dreamed of harming her husband.
Like most of the women held in the same facility because of their potential to commit a crime, Sara has been kept there for far longer than the 3 weeks she was told to expect, and she’s been in detention for about 10 months at the beginning of the novel. She’s been told repeatedly that there will be no hindrances to her release as long as she keeps her head down and follows the rules, but she has not even been able to schedule her first hearing and has been growing increasingly frustrated as her sentence continues to drag on with no end in sight. This is the story of the obstacles she faces while in detainment, her attempts to make sense of the dreams that landed her there, and her struggle to regain her freedom and reunite with her family.
As you may have inferred from my opening paragraph, I found The Dream Hotel to be a bit frustrating. It hooked me immediately with its vision of a near future that seemed all too close and eerily plausible, and earlier parts of the novel had some quotes that stood out and made me pause, such as:
“To be a woman was to watch yourself not just through your own eyes, but through the eyes of others.” (page 43)
During the first third or so, I was especially interested in seeing how it engaged with the variety of topics it touched on and seemed likely to explore: for example, those related to data tracking, technology, and freedom; the intersection between race/immigration and imprisonment (given that Sara details her experiences with flights as the daughter of Moroccan immigrants and is likely detained in part due to that); and how capitalism ties into the exploitation of detainees for profit.
Unfortunately, the novel did not delve into these subjects much more as it progressed, and I found my interest waning during the second half. It wasn’t a bad book, but it was one that had potential to be so much better than it was, and I was disappointed that it kept teasing compelling or thoughtful aspects only to hold back on further engagement with them. It outright annoyed me that there was one section in the middle following another perspective that seemed like it was going to be far more significant than it ended up being, especially given that it really felt like it was leading into a major subplot that never came to be.
This may have worked better for me if it delved further into the characters, or at least the main protagonist. Sara is a deeply sympathetic character with her terrible circumstances and grief at missing so many of her babies’ earliest milestones, and her overall emotional journey and realizations about handling her situation are rewarding. She’s not a poorly developed character by any means, but she wasn’t particularly dimensional, especially considering she’s the only character with a decent amount of development. She certainly didn’t have the amount of depth or sort of vivid narrative voice (told in third person) that made her everyday life at the detainment center—which included working, conversing, trying to set up hearings, visiting with her family on occasion, dreaming, and writing in her dream journal—remain compelling throughout later parts of the novel. (Maybe I just have exceptionally strange dreams, but I also felt like most of the sections detailing her dreams as they were happening did not feel truly dreamlike.) There’s one instance of a climate-change-induced wildfire that breaks up some of the mundanity while illustrating the horrible treatment of these people who are prisoners in all but name, but this section was only slightly more interesting than the novel had become at that point. The novel started to feel like it had overstayed its welcome a bit past the halfway point.
The Dream Hotel does have a satisfying, meaningful ending, though it’s not as strong as it would have been if the added section shown from a different perspective hadn’t made it seem like it had been leading up to a more momentous conclusion. Given that there was a dangling bigger event that was then mostly dropped, it seemed like more would happen or be addressed in its final pages.
Though I’d hoped The Dream Hotel would offer more to question and ponder, I did appreciate how it highlighted the inhumane treatment of imprisoned/detained people and the need for community and bonds with each other, as well as the deep empathy that runs through it. Between these strengths and its promising first few chapters, it had a lot of potential to become one of my frequently recommended books, but ultimately, it felt underbaked.
My Rating: 6/10
Where I got my reading copy: I purchased it.
