Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... The Age of Miracles: A Novel (edition 2013)by Karen Thompson Walker
Work InformationThe Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
Books Read in 2013 (26) » 17 more Best Family Stories (124) Books Read in 2016 (3,934) Books Read in 2015 (2,379) Female Protagonist (663) Books Set in California (113) KayStJ's to-read list (1,238) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. What if the earth started to rotate slower and slower each day? Would humans and the earths other species be able to adapt and survive ? This is the question The Age of Miracles poses. It's wonderfully told from the point of view of a 12 year old girl, but what makes this book so interesting is that opens up so many questions of what really would happen if this were to occur and I found my mind constantly turning to the subject even when I wasn't actually reading it. What if ? A book with unsettling basis. Time is slowing as the rotation of the earth slows and the major and minor impacts as the rate changes. Focused on a family in southern California, the young girl and how she deals with all the strange changes happening to birds, crops, relationships, changing length of day and night. I wondered how the author would end the story but did not feel let down by the fact she didn't try for a happy ending or even an explanation of why it all happened.
"The Age of Miracles"? More like: "The Age of Disasters"! Before I get into why I say that, I'll elaborate on what the book is about. First off, it's actually a very well written book. it's told from the point of view of a middle school aged girl and the events in the story take place are told through her perspective. Everything was fine, until the days started to get longer. First it was only by a few minutes everyday, then it escalated to half an hour, then a full hour, then hours, until people who were stuck on the side of the hemisphere facing the Sun found that the suns hostile rays make the outside world totally inhospitable. people were forced to permanently take refuge inside their household as a slight reprieve to escape a heat-related death. The reason I call it "The Age of Disasters" is because of how terribly things spiral out of control. Everyday lives are thrown out of whack as people scramble to reorient themselves into their new reality. I went into the book having almost no prior knowledge about its plot. I thought it would be a lot happier than what it was on account of it having the word "Miracles" in the title. And boy was I wrong. The ending of this book doesn't even come close to the word "bittersweet." It's just plain bitter to me. It doesn't delve too deeply into the fate of humanity, but a 20 year time-skip does show you what becomes of the main character and her family, sans her love interest who she hasn't seen since the suns powerful rays gave him cancer and forced him to move to new mexico for treatment. They promised that they'd keep in touch, and meant it, but due to unknown reasons the letters the main character sent to him were never returned and they never saw one another again. My guess is that the treatment failed and he didn't survive, or maybe they never made it to new mexico at all. This is a great, albeit depressing book. What sets the story apart from more run-of-the-mill high-concept novels is Ms. Walker’s decision to recount the unfolding catastrophe from the perspective of Julia, who is on the verge of turning 12. Her voice turns what might have been just a clever mash-up of disaster epic with sensitive young-adult, coming-of-age story into a genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair. “The Age of Miracles” is not without its flaws. There are moments when the spell the author has so assiduously created wobbles, and moments when a made-for-Hollywood slickness seeps into the story. Some minor plot developments feel as if they had been created simply for pacing, and Ms. Walker sometimes seems so determined to use Julia’s circumscribed life as a microcosm of the larger world that the reader has to be reminded that “the slowing” is supposedly a planet-altering phenomenon. AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Imagines the coming-of-age story of young Julia, whose world is thrown into upheaval when it is discovered that the Earth's rotation has suddenly begun to slow, posing a catastrophic threat to all life. No library descriptions found.
|
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumKaren Thompson Walker's book The Age of Miracles was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
A young girl tells us about how she and her family deal with "the slowing", a catastrophic change in the rotation of the Earth that changes everything.
While the slowing is constantly present, story is really about her family dynamics and her first experiences with love.
While big things are happening all the time in this book it almost feels like nothing happens - its all just mundane in this new world.
Read it quickly - in just a sitting or two - and enjoyed it quit a bit, but I can't quite put my finger on why. ( )