Title: The Age of Miracles
Author: Karen Thompson Walker
Page Count: 269
Where I Read It: Car Ride to and from Port Sanilac
Summary: (Adapted from GoodReads)
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.
Thoughts on Book:
This book is unique, but also totally ordinary. The plotline
is a very typical bildungsroman or coming-of-age story. It’s a young girl
dealing with ordinary youthful problems: friend drama, first crushes, bra
shopping, arguing parents, and loss. It is the kind of story that anyone can
relate to.
What makes the story profound is contrasting it against the
backdrop to a pre-apocalyptic world. Around Julia people are descending into
panic about the “slowing.” People are moving away, others hoarding food, others
creating colonies for “real time.” Walker succeeds in the world building of
this slightly altered reality. I couldn’t tell you if any of the science bits
are correct, but in the end they are irrelevant. The way that people react is
both fascinating and frightening. Walker makes it all seem so real in the human
ramifications of the slowing.
The slowing has little consequence to the plot, except for
maybe the ending. However, the contrast between the buildingsroman raises a lot
of questions for the reader. How are ordinary lives as risk of falling in
future disaster? Are we like the
narrator already too late to change our world? This is the kind of story that
might have passed into a genre for younger readers, but instead this novel was
published as “literary fiction” which for readers should be an indication that
the author is doing something deeper with the story she is telling. Her
memoir-istic writing and traumatic aspects definitely nestles it in the current
trends in lit fic today.
The only thing that really bothered me was the use of
technology in the book. I never felt like it was realistic to the way kids use
technology today. The family seems to get all their news from the TV and
newspaper, which maybe the occasional car radio. Which was weird, since the
narrator has her own cellphone at age 12. It seemed as if texting, social
media, and online news didn’t exist in their world. However at the end, she all
of sudden mentions internet servers crashing, as well as giving a monologue
about technology. I felt like this was the only aspect that kept the novel from
being believable to me.
However, Walker’s writing style is both lyrical and
whimsical, which help makes up for her technological failings. The book is
subtle and gentle, only really emotional in the last few chapters.
Similar to: Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer, a YA
novel with has a similar premise, but is much more of a “survival” story,
whereas Walker’s novel is a coming-of-age novel above anything else.
Listen Along With:
Let’s Be Young – Evan McHugh// Youth- Troye
Sivan// I Was Here- Roo Panes
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