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steveab 's review for:
The Age of Miracles
by Karen Thompson Walker
I loved Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles. The novel starts from a simple premise: all of a sudden, the Earth begins to slow down its daily rotation. Each day gains a bit more time, and over time, the rolling global impact grows and deepens. As the days get longer, gravity changes, the weather changes, plant and animal life suffer.
I have read comments on this book wondering about the science behind the story. That's not the point of the book. Walker tells the story from the point of view of an 11-year old suburban California girl, Julia. Yes, its another coming of age story, and Julia has her own problems to worry about. Family strains and stresses, friends at schools, boys, her clothes and appearance and all the rest.
Julia's first-person reflections about her life match the pace of the unfolding disaster. The writing sparkles with descriptive and emotional power. The prose has a languid quality that reinforces the feeling that the world really has slowed, gotten hotter, harder to move through. I loved its wondrous, dreamlike pace, and it has stayed with me since finishing the book.
I can't imagine being eleven again. Like other young adult novels, Julia's issues bring on self-absorption and inner torment. She doesn't need a global catastrophe on top! From that point of view, I found it fun and interesting that in taking on environmental collapse, Walker chose a source that human activity didn't cause and which we can't easily overcome. From Julia's point of view, it doesn't really matter. Its a problem inflicted on her by the adult world. It's for this reason, the lack of typical "hard" science fiction detail didn't bother me.
And yet, the book has an undertone that maybe we did cause this, maybe we didn't. Maybe its connected with everything else gone wrong, maybe it happened on its own. And maybe the government and societal responses show the best of humanity, and maybe they just show self-interest , shortsightedness, and social and economic unevenness. I loved how all this starts off just beyond Julia's reach, and then she grows up in the crisis, trying to balance it with her issues of school, family, first love.
This is Walker's first novel. Though the story begs for a sequel, I almost hope that she leaves the story and Julia's life snapshot to stand on their own, and moves on to dazzle us with a whole new set of people and issues.
I have read comments on this book wondering about the science behind the story. That's not the point of the book. Walker tells the story from the point of view of an 11-year old suburban California girl, Julia. Yes, its another coming of age story, and Julia has her own problems to worry about. Family strains and stresses, friends at schools, boys, her clothes and appearance and all the rest.
Julia's first-person reflections about her life match the pace of the unfolding disaster. The writing sparkles with descriptive and emotional power. The prose has a languid quality that reinforces the feeling that the world really has slowed, gotten hotter, harder to move through. I loved its wondrous, dreamlike pace, and it has stayed with me since finishing the book.
I can't imagine being eleven again. Like other young adult novels, Julia's issues bring on self-absorption and inner torment. She doesn't need a global catastrophe on top! From that point of view, I found it fun and interesting that in taking on environmental collapse, Walker chose a source that human activity didn't cause and which we can't easily overcome. From Julia's point of view, it doesn't really matter. Its a problem inflicted on her by the adult world. It's for this reason, the lack of typical "hard" science fiction detail didn't bother me.
And yet, the book has an undertone that maybe we did cause this, maybe we didn't. Maybe its connected with everything else gone wrong, maybe it happened on its own. And maybe the government and societal responses show the best of humanity, and maybe they just show self-interest , shortsightedness, and social and economic unevenness. I loved how all this starts off just beyond Julia's reach, and then she grows up in the crisis, trying to balance it with her issues of school, family, first love.
This is Walker's first novel. Though the story begs for a sequel, I almost hope that she leaves the story and Julia's life snapshot to stand on their own, and moves on to dazzle us with a whole new set of people and issues.