“It still amazes me how
little we really knew. . . . Maybe everything that happened to me and my
family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It’s possible, I
guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”
Luminous, haunting, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles is a stunning fiction debut by a superb new writer, a story about coming of age during extraordinary times, about people going on with their lives in an era of profound uncertainty.
On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 11-year-old Julia and her family awake
to discover, along with
the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun
to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is
affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles
to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the
normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage,
the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre
behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy,
spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts
to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.Luminous, haunting, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles is a stunning fiction debut by a superb new writer, a story about coming of age during extraordinary times, about people going on with their lives in an era of profound uncertainty.
On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 11-year-old Julia and her family awake
With spare, graceful prose and the emotional wisdom of a born storyteller, Karen Thompson Walker has created a singular narrator in Julia, a resilient and insightful young girl, and a moving portrait of family life set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world.
My review:
I liked this author's take on how the world might end. It's a bit different than anything I've ever read in that genre. It is written in the perspective of a preteen girl and Karen captures that perspective well. I think a lot of her imagined scenarios might be dead on, but it was her character stories that I loved best. I did find the ending less than satisfying, but for me that seems to be the norm lately. The book might feel a bit slow in parts, but I always wanted to know what would happen next. A worthy read for anyone.
Karen Thompson Walker was born and raised in San Diego, California, where The Age of Miracles
is set. She studied English and creative writing at UCLA, where she
wrote for the UCLA Daily Bruin. After college, she worked as a newspaper
reporter in the San Diego area before moving to New York City to attend
the Columbia University MFA program.
A former book editor at Simon & Schuster, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work—sometimes while riding the subway.
She is the recipient of the 2011 Sirenland Fellowship as well as a
Bomb Magazine fiction prize. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.
You can read an interview with Karen here or you can check out her website here.
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