World split into pocket dimensions; protagonist escapes from windowless room, later lives in abandoned city and raids a supermarket

Question

I've asked this elsewhere to no avail, so now I'm trying it here. I read the book sometime in the past couple years, but I think it was older, maybe from the 80s. I'm pretty sure the title included the word "dream(s)."

The novel starts with the protagonist in a windowless office, with little or no memory of his previous life. The only person he sees is his boss/supervisor, who assigns him tasks he doesn't understand, brings him old books and magazines as well as food, and can walk through walls. The protagonist manages to contact the outside world by stealing his boss's phone and computer, and it's eventually revealed that the world has shattered into multiple pocket dimensions and most people can walk between them-- but the protagonist is one of the few who can't. I think he's called a "recluse" because of this? At one point there's a scene where he's standing in front of a wall, and his boss (or someone else) is telling him to try and step over to the other side, because everyone there is waiting for him.

Once he gets out of the office, he jumps between several different dimensions. At one point he returns to his former life (or a version thereof), dies falling off the roof, and comes back as a zombie (not sure about this one). At another time, he's living with a woman and a dog in a seaside city with few or no other people, and they survive by raiding a grocery store which is mysteriously restocked. I think there's a disaster at one point caused by a dimensional portal opening. There might also have been some chapters from other points of view, such as the man's wife trying to move on after his "death" (when he's actually in the office).

Answer 1

I think this may be Dream Science by Thomas Palmer.

Why does Rocker Poole, a nondescript businessman living in Connecticut, find himself confined for months in a small windowless office he has never seen before? What is the meaning of his abrupt departures into foreign places clearly different from our world? Is he going mad? Is he being transported to parallel universes where he becomes trapped?

Such are the questions that underlie Thomas Palmer's profoundly original and provocative novel. In tantalizing, unsettling fashion, Dream Science plays with some of our most crucial polarities — reason and madness, self and surroundings, life and death. As the story builds toward its dramatic climax. we, like Rocker Poole, are forced to recognize that the world we know is a strangely ambiguous, only deceptively familiar, uncannily shifting place, ready to plunge us at any moment into the totally alien.

This seems to be an obscure book and I cannot find a copy to check, but the listing on Google books does allow searching, and it looks as though this might be your book. For example if I search for recluse I find:

"A recluse," Mac said. "You might be a recluse."
"What's that?"
"They're people who can't get across lines. They're pretty scarce supposedly. But since they can't travel, there could be a ..."

Or if I search for breakfast I find an excerpt that looks like it might be Poole's boss bringing him food:

... some sort of breakfast for Poole - doughnuts, grapefruit, oatmeal, eggs. At noon he went out again and cam back an hour later with sandwiches and soup, chili, or some other hot food.