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A review by sterling8
The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
3.0
Well, I did think about this book after I finished it. The tone stayed with me.
Here's the thing: the author has written a coming-of-age book, but she's chosen to bind it with a slow apocalypse, an end-of-the world story. And I'm not sure she should have done that. I was reading this as a science fiction reader, and as science fiction, the book fell short. As a young adult coming of age book, I think it succeeded.
Our main character is pretty passive through most of the book, hardly says anything and spends most of her time observing. We read through the alienation of early teen years, when you just can't quite find a place to fit, the helplessness of your first crush, and how the ground feels pulled from underneath you when your parents show their feet of clay. While maybe a bit too flowery, this was generally well done. Probably Judy Blume did the brutality of the early teen years a bit more bluntly, but this worked.
I couldn't get into the slowing of the earth, though. I wasn't sure that the science of the earth spinning more slowly made much sense. There was never an explanation, but people seemed pretty calm about the whole end of the earth thing as a whole. Some people went off and lived in "real time" colonies, attempting to adjust to the new reality, while most others stayed on "clock time" in order to maintain a semblance of the old world's rules. I actually had some sympathy for trying to adjust to the new world, but all the "real timers" were portrayed as dropped-out druggies, so I guess that's not where the author's sympathies lay.
There just didn't seem to be much emotional impact to the end of life as our main character knew it. She watched but never seemed to have much feeling about it. Maybe she was too young? However, this book was written from the standpoint of the main character ten years later looking back. You'd think there would be more sadness than remarking upon when she ate her last grape. In fact, I've got no clue how our main character, or anyone for that matter, is still alive. It's just not seen as important.
I wish that the author had found another "hook" for her book than the end of the world. In this work, the two concepts of coming of age and apocalypse just don't mesh well together. The book also just seems to stop, not end. Part of me wonders if this would have worked better as a short story, without the additional expectation of explanation that a longer work engenders.
Here's the thing: the author has written a coming-of-age book, but she's chosen to bind it with a slow apocalypse, an end-of-the world story. And I'm not sure she should have done that. I was reading this as a science fiction reader, and as science fiction, the book fell short. As a young adult coming of age book, I think it succeeded.
Our main character is pretty passive through most of the book, hardly says anything and spends most of her time observing. We read through the alienation of early teen years, when you just can't quite find a place to fit, the helplessness of your first crush, and how the ground feels pulled from underneath you when your parents show their feet of clay. While maybe a bit too flowery, this was generally well done. Probably Judy Blume did the brutality of the early teen years a bit more bluntly, but this worked.
I couldn't get into the slowing of the earth, though. I wasn't sure that the science of the earth spinning more slowly made much sense. There was never an explanation, but people seemed pretty calm about the whole end of the earth thing as a whole. Some people went off and lived in "real time" colonies, attempting to adjust to the new reality, while most others stayed on "clock time" in order to maintain a semblance of the old world's rules. I actually had some sympathy for trying to adjust to the new world, but all the "real timers" were portrayed as dropped-out druggies, so I guess that's not where the author's sympathies lay.
There just didn't seem to be much emotional impact to the end of life as our main character knew it. She watched but never seemed to have much feeling about it. Maybe she was too young? However, this book was written from the standpoint of the main character ten years later looking back. You'd think there would be more sadness than remarking upon when she ate her last grape. In fact, I've got no clue how our main character, or anyone for that matter, is still alive. It's just not seen as important.
I wish that the author had found another "hook" for her book than the end of the world. In this work, the two concepts of coming of age and apocalypse just don't mesh well together. The book also just seems to stop, not end. Part of me wonders if this would have worked better as a short story, without the additional expectation of explanation that a longer work engenders.