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april_does_feral_sometimes 's review for:
The Age of Miracles
by Karen Thompson Walker
I am still thinking about this book because it is a bit between - between genres, age groups, how many stars. I feel it's YA, but I'd be careful about the young person I'd recommend it to. The narrator is a realistic middle-class eleven year old, so there is nothing like swearing or hard words or too grown-up situations, but the underlying problem - the earth's rotation is stopping - is . An anxious, nervous worrying kid should not read this book.
Julia is a very young girl - a year away from her first training bra, she loves soccer, and she has a crush on a boy. Her father is a doctor, her mother a teacher. Julia is taking piano lessons and she has two pet cats. Then one day, there is an announcement in the news from the US government that scientists had detected two things - the earth is slowing down its spin so that the 24 hour day is now 25 hours, and that gravity is tugging heavier on all of earth. After the initial panic, life goes on as usual. But inescapably, the days become longer, and wildlife and gardens begin dying. During the overturning of everything people are accustomed to - steady electrical power, birds, 24 hour clock - Julia is 'coming-of-age', going to school, learning about friendships, watching her parents not quite work well together. In the meantime, the effects of the earth's rotation changes everything about the future, but yet nothing, almost, about daily life. People hoard, suicide, divorce, disappear, start apocalyptic cults, build underground shelters, but still tend to their families, go to work and to school, and put their gardens inside hothouses.
The idea of what might happen if the earth's rotation slowed is intriguing, if scary. However, the author pulls her punches in this surprisingly lightweight exploration of such an event. If she took out that underlying scenario, this would be a too ordinary elementary school (6th grade?) level book. As it is, it's about two and a half stars, but I rounded up on that because it is an interesting scenario.
Spoiler
without a solution, so that the inevitable death of life on earth is obvious from the beginning to anyone with a slight science education. The story is actually a remembrance of a young woman telling of her eleventh year up to her twelfth birthday and a few months beyond that. She is going to college, but she has no idea if they will be alive on earth before graduation.Julia is a very young girl - a year away from her first training bra, she loves soccer, and she has a crush on a boy. Her father is a doctor, her mother a teacher. Julia is taking piano lessons and she has two pet cats. Then one day, there is an announcement in the news from the US government that scientists had detected two things - the earth is slowing down its spin so that the 24 hour day is now 25 hours, and that gravity is tugging heavier on all of earth. After the initial panic, life goes on as usual. But inescapably, the days become longer, and wildlife and gardens begin dying. During the overturning of everything people are accustomed to - steady electrical power, birds, 24 hour clock - Julia is 'coming-of-age', going to school, learning about friendships, watching her parents not quite work well together. In the meantime, the effects of the earth's rotation changes everything about the future, but yet nothing, almost, about daily life. People hoard, suicide, divorce, disappear, start apocalyptic cults, build underground shelters, but still tend to their families, go to work and to school, and put their gardens inside hothouses.
The idea of what might happen if the earth's rotation slowed is intriguing, if scary. However, the author pulls her punches in this surprisingly lightweight exploration of such an event. If she took out that underlying scenario, this would be a too ordinary elementary school (6th grade?) level book. As it is, it's about two and a half stars, but I rounded up on that because it is an interesting scenario.