The Dallergut Dream Department Store

The Dallergut Dream Department Store was the second book that a friend from work recommended to me. It is the story of Penny, who gets a job at the titular Dallergut Dream Department Store, where dreams are sold to the dreamers who visit Penny's world when they sleep. In this world, our brains don't create our dreams; instead, there are beings who craft dreams (and it's a whole big thing in Penny's world, where the big dream makers are celebrities and they have a yearly award ceremony that everyone watches). The dreams are paid for after the fact, with strong emotions that the dreamers experience. Those emotions can be bought and sold, and used as needed (added into cookies and drinks, sprayed on furniture to create a certain feeling, stuff like that). 

The Dallergut Dream Department Store is Penny's first year working for Dallergut, from her initial interview into the new year. She begins learning the ins and outs of the business, and meets some of the dream makers, all the while tending to the dreaming customers' needs. Most of the chapters are interspersed with stories of dreamers in the waking world (and how the dreams they choose to purchase influence them). These dreamers are often loosely connected, in that one may be friends with another, or hear of another's life, but otherwise their stories standalone.

The characters who work at (or around, in the case of the dream makers) Dallergut's store are quite varied and eccentric. I enjoyed a lot of them, especially Dallergut. Dallergut is both wise and infinitely curious, asking questions that make the others around him think. He values curiosity and insight, as that was largely how Penny was hired in the first place. 

Unfortunately, while the world and the characters are interesting, I found the story of the book largely lacking. I started losing interest in reading it part way through (possibly in part because it reads like a bunch of kind of boring short stories after the initial wonder of the setting wears off). I actually really struggled to finish reading the book (I found myself wishing I was reading one of the graded French readers I've been reading lately instead). It's such a shame: The Dallergut Dream Department Store has a lot of promise, but failed to live up to that. :(