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3.62 AVERAGE
3.62 AVERAGE
Karen Thompson Walker starts with an intriguing premise, blending a basic YA coming-of-age story with a strong sci-fi hook (the earth no longer allows its days to be measured in neat, predictable 24-hour units). It's interesting to think about where the tipping points would occur - how would crops survive 20 hours of sunlight followed by 20 hours of darkness, etc etc? Will people behave differently on "dark days" opposed to "light days"? The plot doesn't hold up, though, and the big questions are mostly skirted. I glossed over the "science" (dubious even by genre standards), but got hung up on the implausible and ill-explained friction between people who continued using clocks and those who didn't. Shoehorned dystopia, basically. On the more traditional side of the story, there are some understated moments that poignantly capture pre-teen alienation and the mindless cruelty of kids. Other times, though, the protagonist sounds way more like an adult woman than a young girl - and the characters surrounding her feel flat on the page (including a laughable love interest - a brooding, skateboarding, 12-year-old-or-so cipher).
if you're looking for something kind of different but quick, pick this one up. really interesting story narrated by a girl looking back on her adolescence as the Earth goes through was is known as The Slowing, which is exactly what it sounds like (Earth's rotation slow and days stretch into 70 hours, tides change, crops fail, new diseases pop up, etc.). sounds sort of sci-fi-y, but it's really a nice coming of age story about this girl, Julia, who just happens to live through a strange time period.
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I enjoyed the premise of the story, but I felt like I was waiting for something to happen the whole time.
Great coming of age story. Despite the fact that the world, as we know it, might be coming to an end, the adolescent protaganist really just wants a boy to notice her. Young love; nothing like it!
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
4.5 stars, actually.
This book is a slow burn. Even though its about Catastrophes (both global and personal) and the surviving of them, don't look for any last minute heroics or scientific breakthroughs-- this is all about the ways we survive on a day to day basis, slowly adjusting to the terrible things around us.
Julia lives in Southern California, so she's no stranger to the ways the Earth can shake things up. But even Julia and her family aren't ready for the gradual slowing of the rotation of the Earth, and the lengthening days and nights, off-balance magnetic fields, and dying birds.
The world's governments deal with this catastrophe piecemeal, reacting with "clock time" when the days lengthen too far, giving up on the astronauts trapped in the space station, and turning off all nonessential power so that dwindling energy can be used for UV lamps to grow food.
Meanwhile, Julia is dealing with personal catastrophes of her own in the same, slow-reacting way. She's lost her best friend to Mormon retreat, her grandfather's disappeared, and her parents are falling away from each other. And there's this boy, Seth, she keeps blurting out awkward things to.
For me, the slow death of society as we know it was tied up with the emotional and social awkwardness of Julila's personality. All the catastrophes play out in a slow, sad, downward spiral. It's the small details of Julia's mother buying emergency peanut butter, and 'real timers' abandoning society for supposed Utopias in the desert, and the social perils of waiting for the school bus in the dark that layer together a delicious, slice-of-near future-dystopia life for the reader to enjoy.
It doesn't quite make the 5th star for me because the pace slowed down just a bit too much for me sometimes, and I felt like the promise of several characters (and their ultimate fates) were never quite fully fulfilled or explained.
Still, my 6th grader said she enjoyed the book as well. (Romancey bits are quite tame). For a literary-flavored near future meditation on weathering emotional and global catastrophes, this is your book.
This book is a slow burn. Even though its about Catastrophes (both global and personal) and the surviving of them, don't look for any last minute heroics or scientific breakthroughs-- this is all about the ways we survive on a day to day basis, slowly adjusting to the terrible things around us.
Julia lives in Southern California, so she's no stranger to the ways the Earth can shake things up. But even Julia and her family aren't ready for the gradual slowing of the rotation of the Earth, and the lengthening days and nights, off-balance magnetic fields, and dying birds.
The world's governments deal with this catastrophe piecemeal, reacting with "clock time" when the days lengthen too far, giving up on the astronauts trapped in the space station, and turning off all nonessential power so that dwindling energy can be used for UV lamps to grow food.
Meanwhile, Julia is dealing with personal catastrophes of her own in the same, slow-reacting way. She's lost her best friend to Mormon retreat, her grandfather's disappeared, and her parents are falling away from each other. And there's this boy, Seth, she keeps blurting out awkward things to.
For me, the slow death of society as we know it was tied up with the emotional and social awkwardness of Julila's personality. All the catastrophes play out in a slow, sad, downward spiral. It's the small details of Julia's mother buying emergency peanut butter, and 'real timers' abandoning society for supposed Utopias in the desert, and the social perils of waiting for the school bus in the dark that layer together a delicious, slice-of-near future-dystopia life for the reader to enjoy.
It doesn't quite make the 5th star for me because the pace slowed down just a bit too much for me sometimes, and I felt like the promise of several characters (and their ultimate fates) were never quite fully fulfilled or explained.
Still, my 6th grader said she enjoyed the book as well. (Romancey bits are quite tame). For a literary-flavored near future meditation on weathering emotional and global catastrophes, this is your book.
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced