The Dream Hotel

Starred review from January 15, 2025
A woman is detained under an American regime where even dreams are being surveilled. Lalami's stellar fifth novel concerns Sara Hussein, a Moroccan American woman who's returning home from a conference in London to her family in L.A. when she's held by the Risk Assessment Administration, a federal agency that uses biometric data to assess citizens' "pre-crime" tendencies. She's done nothing troubling, but her "risk score" is high enough to force a stay at an all-woman "retention center" that's effectively a prison. Though her stay is supposed to be brief, the smallest hiccups lead to extensions, and the private-prison firm contracted by RAA charges extortionate rates for everything from emails to clean sheets; Sara and the other retainees are also expected to work to lower their scores, labor that partly involves feeding AI models. There are echoes ofThe Handmaid's Tale here--as Margaret Atwood does in that book, Lalami builds a convincing near-future dystopia out of current events, and Sara plots a similar small-scale resistance. But Lalami's scenario is unique and well-imagined--interspersed report sheets, transcripts, and terms-of-service lingo have a realistic, poignant lyricism that exposes the cruel bureaucracy in which Sara is trapped. (Not for nothing does she have a Borges book checked out of the library.) And the story exposes the particular perniciousness of big tech's capacity to exploit our every movement, indeed practically every thought. It's a fiction-workshop cliche that dreams are unnecessary, but here they play a crucial role in the plot, opening up questions of what we're sacrificing in the name of convenience and safety. The novel's striking message is summarized in Sara's retort to a bureaucrat who tells her the data doesn't lie: "It doesn't tell the truth, either." An engrossing and troubling dystopian tale.

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February 1, 2025

Award-winning Lalami's (Conditional Citizens) new novel starts with Sara's arrest by the Risk Assessment Administration after data from her dreams indicates that she will soon commit a crime against her husband. As a result, she is required to spend 21 days under observation, along with others convicted of dream deviations. While many of the novel's devices are commonplace tropes--AI surveillance, for example--Lalami's distinctive writing style adds a layered edge, effecting a strange, reverberating quietness that abruptly yet elegantly morphs into critiques of systemic inequities in the book's dystopian world. The story feels urgent and real, but this is not a fast-paced thriller, although elements of that genre come into play. Instead, Lalami leans toward the speed of thoughts, their lack of linearity, and the strange overlap between the feeling and thinking worlds of people's inner lives, here made visible and tactile through AI. VERDICT A beautifully executed, plot-driven, yet cerebral meditation on AI. Perfect for those looking for something to read while awaiting the forthcoming film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun.--Emily Bowles

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February 1, 2025
"To be a woman was to watch yourself not just through your own eyes, but through the eyes of others." It has been 20 years since a massacre at the Super Bowl led to the establishment of the Risk Assessment Administration, which uses personal data to prevent future crimes. Those the RAA deems "questionable" are subject to indefinite periods of retention. Coming home from a business trip, Sara Hussein is detained at LAX by officers who cite her elevated crime risk score as justification. Desperate to get back to her husband and twin toddlers, she scrambles to answer their questions. She has committed no offense. With no end to the investigation in sight and her family waiting, Sara struggles to keep her emotions in check to avoid further suspicion. Lalami's (The Other Americans, 2019) fourth novel explores predictive policing and what is lost when people choose the promise of safety over individual freedom. Fans of The Minority Report (2002), by Philip K. Dick, and Our Missing Hearts (2022), by Celeste Ng, will enjoy this literary novel set in the near future.

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