The Age of Miracles

by

Karen Thompson Walker

269 pages

Published by Random House
in June 2012

***

THIS BOOK COUNTS FOR THE FOLLOWING READING CHALLENGE:

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

Do you really know what’s going to happen to our planet on the winter solstice of 2012? Will the magnetic poles be reversed? Do you know the exact speed of the rotation of the Earth? What if this speed gets dramatically altered? Do you really know more than Julia, the teenage heroin of The Age of Miracles?
She admits: “It still amazes me how little we really knew. . . .”, as she discovers one day that the Earth’s rotation has started slowing down.

If you are in for a good thrill and an easy read, you have to read this book. Warning: you will have a hard time putting it down, but you may be a bit depressed at the end.

I’m usually not too much of a fan of coming of age novels, but this one is really smartly done, combined with the element of science-fiction, as Julia experiences one after another all the consequences of “the slowing”, together with personal crisis at her personal and family levels.

The characters, the younger ones as well as the adults, sound real, in their behavior, language, and daily struggles.

It is actually quite a scary book, with events presented in the long line of current problems we are already experiencing on our planet, because of too long of an abuse. If all of this is already happening, why not this phenomenon as well?

No doubt that publishing this book a mere 6 months before the expect-the-unexpected-2012-winter-solstice should be a great marketing idea!

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

“It still amazes me how little we really knew. . . . Maybe everything that happened to me and my family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It’s possible, I guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 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. From the author’s website.

On the website, you will find a trailer, a reader’s guide of  The Age of Miracles, and much more!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Thompson Walker was born and raised in San Diego, California, where The Age of Miracles is set. She studied English and creative writing at UCLA, where she wrote for the UCLA Daily Bruin. After college, she worked as a newspaper reporter in the San Diego area before moving to New York City to attend the Columbia University MFA program.

A former book editor at Simon & Schuster, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work—sometimes while riding the subway.

She is the recipient of the 2011 Sirenland Fellowship as well as a Bomb Magazine fiction prize. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband. From her website

And you can read her interview on the future of American Fiction here.

HAVE YOU READ THIS BOOK YET?
DO YOU FEEL LIKE READING THIS BOOK?
If you hear tomorrow that the rotation of the earth has been altered,
what would you do first?
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS  IN A COMMENT PLEASE