When Sylvia and Gabe meet and fall in love at boarding school in Northern California in 1998, they never in their wildest dreams could have imagined the path their lives would take. The spirited duo becomes the central characters in Chloe Benjamin’s debut novel The Anatomy of Dreams, a story both poignantly romantic and deeply philosophical. At boarding school, Sylvia and Gabe study under medical dream researcher Adrian Keller and after graduation, the pair follow the talented but elusive researcher across the country as he performs mysterious sleep studies investigating the therapeutic potential of lucid dreaming. But when the young couple decides to join Keller at UW-Madison, life takes a tangled, dangerous turn. The pair find themselves working on a project so secretive they can tell no one, and Sylvia and Gabe are suddenly confronted with questions of the ethics behind the studies and forced to navigate the blurry boundaries between the real and surreal.
This stirring coming-of-age story explores the murky landscape of the human psyche and forces readers to question the fine line that defines our moral limits. A subtle yet startling debut, The Anatomy of Dreams is both a psychological thriller as well as a love story that will transfix readers all the way to its portentous conclusion.
A graduate of Vassar College and UW-Madison, Benjamin currently resides in Madison. The Anatomy of Dreams is her first novel. Benjamin will appear at Boswell Book Co. at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 27.
