The age of miracles : a novel (edition 2012)

I read this for a book club that has not yet met to discuss it -- my views may change after that discussion. However, for now, I have to say that I found it to be a slow and not all that interesting read. The writing is OK, but I had a hard time engaging with the characters and found the plot to be lacking. I would only recommend this to folks with an interest in science fiction...it really leaves you hanging at the end -- the narrator jumps from age 11-12 to age 24 and the reader is left with no clue about how things continued to change in that decade in between...the reader is left feeling like the author just ran out of ideas... ( )

Most events that bring about the end of the world in books and movies are pretty outlandish. Even the cause in The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker is crazy, but she wrote the novel so well with enough realism that you can easily believe it could happen. The earth begins to spin slower which lengthens the day and night and starts a cataclysmic turn for the worse for Earth and all its occupants.

The story is told from the perspective of a 6th grader named Julia who ends up experiencing much of what I experienced in 6th grade and middle school. I was a soccer player, too, and my childhood friends found other more interesting girls in which to be friends. There was a 6th grade party even! I remember mine quite vividly. In the novel, it’s the adult Julia reflecting back on her 6th grade year when the world as she knows it ends.

I enjoyed the novel. Although the premise is hard to believe, the story was very believable. It prompted me to think about what the definition of a day is. If the earth spins slower, and it takes more than 24 hours to make a full rotation, should a day still be 24 hours long? The government termed this clock-time and made everyone run on a 24-hour day regardless of the sun’s position on Earth. Or, do you follow the sun and its light and darkness? The rebels called this real-time.

The book invokes a nervousness as if the Earth could possible begin to spin slower. What would I do? Karen Thompson Walker effectively draws in the reader and makes you think about this question, and I think that is proof of a believable end-of-the-world scenario. ( )

I liked this, but it was a little anticlimactic. It's about the world spinning slower each day until it will eventually stop told from the point of view of a girl who lives in the suburbs. ( )

Interesting subject, but I kept waiting for more, I thought she'd address the 'after', since she used so often the expressions 'back then', 'in those days'... I suppose I wanted more of a sci-fi book, with reasons for what was happening.
And at times it felt so deeply american, so foreign: why was it only the 'nutters' that had solar energy? It's California, longer days, the issue of power should have been the least of their worries, for my european brain. ( )

You can read my review here:
http://abshepherdsreinventedreader.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/the-age-of-miracles-by-karen-thompson.html# ( )