The age of miracles a novel
by Karen Thompson Walker
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- The age of miracles a novel
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- Karen Thompson Walker
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- hyper7
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- New York Random House cop. 2012
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Imagines the coming-of-age story of young Julia, whose world is thrown into upheaval when it is discovered that the Earth's rotation has suddenly begun to slow, posing a catastrophic threat to all life.Tags
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BookshelfMonstrosity Despite differences in plot -- a teenager's post-murder afterlife in The Lovely Bones, and show more civilization's slow, steady collapse in the aftermath of disaster in The Age of Miracles -- the thoughtful young heroines of these melancholy, haunting stories are similar to one another. show less
23
Othemts Young narrators observe the slow decline of society into dystopia as result of natural disasters.
Member Reviews
Julia is an ordinary middle school girl living an ordinary life, until the day when everybody's definition of "ordinary" changes: a 25-hour day. It turns out the Earth's rotation is mysteriously slowing, and each day from then on is longer than the last. Which is not good news for humanity, although Julia and her family carry on as best they can.
Let me start by saying, this is a pretty good book. Honestly. It's very well-written (especially for a YA novel, which I think is how it was marketed), it captures the feel of those awkward middle school years well, the characters are believable, and it hits some nice, poignant emotional notes. And yet... Well, I think I was precisely the wrong reader for this one.
My biggest problem was that I show more kept getting hung up on the science (or the lack thereof). I told myself I wasn't going to, that I could just accept the premise for what it was, but I simply could not help it. The more details Walker threw in about what was happening, the more I felt compelled to question it all. So I spent a lot of the novel with this voice in the back of my head that went something like, "OK, if something magically increased the gravitational constant, that could account for most of this, including increased gravity and the slowing of the Earth's rotation due to tidal effects. Hey, maybe Q from Star Trek did it; he mentioned being able to once. But... But surely to account for a slowing this dramatic, it would have to be an increase big enough that it would cause way more havoc than is being described here. Hmm, I could dig out my old physics textbook and try to calculate it... No! No, my physics is too rusty, and I do not have the time to waste on that! Anyway, I'm sure it would turn out to be entirely inaccurate. But... But maybe..." And then the whole thing would repeat again. Eventually that voice faded a bit, but it was hard to concentrate on much else while it was nattering on.
And even aside from the science, I had some plausibility problems, including the fact that for ages I was trying to figure out what year this was, when every middle school kid has a cell phone but the internet doesn't exist. Eventually I decided it must be some kind of alternate universe. And then, 150 pages in, the narrator casually mentions something about blogs. So everybody was getting all their information from the newspaper and CNN and nobody ever found out anything about anything until they saw it on TV or heard if from a neighbor because...?
In fact, this lack-of-characters-being-aware-of-things-quickly-enough issue led to the book managing to inadvertently put me off with the very first sentence. The sentence is "we didn't notice right away," which by itself is a great first sentence. But what it's talking about is people not noticing that the day had increased by 56 minutes. And... OK. I work at an astronomical observatory. Every day, Thanksgiving and Christmas not excluded, we run a project for the US Naval Observatory designed to carefully measure the difference between rotation-of-the-Earth time and atomic clock time. They use our data to calculate this value down to, I believe, a hundred-thousandth of a second. And we pay attention to the results because if we don't, all our other observations will be a little bit off. The point is, we would notice. Long before the day slowed down by 56 minutes! And so would every amateur astronomer with a backyard telescope, for that matter. I think I almost felt personally insulted by this. Later, I decided this may have been unfair, as she seems to maybe be implying the 56-minute slowdown happened essentially overnight, rather than gradually, as I'd first assumed. Which, of course just takes us right back to the "I'm nearly certain that ought to have had even more dire consequences than it has in the book" problem.
And then there's the scene where the government announces -- reasonably enough, I thought, given how rapidly the days are lengthening -- that things are going to stay on 24-hour clock time, regardless of day or night. The protagonist is aghast. How can they possibly be expected to adapt to such a schedule?! Now, I work rotating shifts, and have for a very long time. I know all too well how badly being out of sync with the sun can screw with you, and probably I, of all people, should be sympathetic. But instead, all I could think at that moment was, "Welcome to my world, bitches! Now you'll see what it's like!" And then I started speculating about how maybe the slowing was actually the doing of some supervillain shiftworker who wanted to force the rest of the world to understand. Which, needless to say was not the effect the author was going for.
Indeed, none of that is remotely what this book is about. It's about a girl and her family living through difficult times. It's about the experience of early adolescence, and the fragility of everything, and a bit about humanity's relationship to time and to nature. And it doesn't do a bad job of being about those things, in a somewhat lightweight kind of way. I tried to appreciate it on that level, and I succeeded to a certain extent, but it was still hard for me to get past my various issues.
So. Basically, I think I would not recommend this book to people with physics degrees, people who have anything at all to do with astronomy, people who read a lot of hard SF and expect good scientific explanations for things, people who work night shifts and have some degree of resentment towards those who don't, or people whose suspension of disbelief snaps immediately when nobody in a modern-day story seems to have Facebook. For everybody else, if it sounds like your sort of thing, go for it! show less
Let me start by saying, this is a pretty good book. Honestly. It's very well-written (especially for a YA novel, which I think is how it was marketed), it captures the feel of those awkward middle school years well, the characters are believable, and it hits some nice, poignant emotional notes. And yet... Well, I think I was precisely the wrong reader for this one.
My biggest problem was that I show more kept getting hung up on the science (or the lack thereof). I told myself I wasn't going to, that I could just accept the premise for what it was, but I simply could not help it. The more details Walker threw in about what was happening, the more I felt compelled to question it all. So I spent a lot of the novel with this voice in the back of my head that went something like, "OK, if something magically increased the gravitational constant, that could account for most of this, including increased gravity and the slowing of the Earth's rotation due to tidal effects. Hey, maybe Q from Star Trek did it; he mentioned being able to once. But... But surely to account for a slowing this dramatic, it would have to be an increase big enough that it would cause way more havoc than is being described here. Hmm, I could dig out my old physics textbook and try to calculate it... No! No, my physics is too rusty, and I do not have the time to waste on that! Anyway, I'm sure it would turn out to be entirely inaccurate. But... But maybe..." And then the whole thing would repeat again. Eventually that voice faded a bit, but it was hard to concentrate on much else while it was nattering on.
And even aside from the science, I had some plausibility problems, including the fact that for ages I was trying to figure out what year this was, when every middle school kid has a cell phone but the internet doesn't exist. Eventually I decided it must be some kind of alternate universe. And then, 150 pages in, the narrator casually mentions something about blogs. So everybody was getting all their information from the newspaper and CNN and nobody ever found out anything about anything until they saw it on TV or heard if from a neighbor because...?
In fact, this lack-of-characters-being-aware-of-things-quickly-enough issue led to the book managing to inadvertently put me off with the very first sentence. The sentence is "we didn't notice right away," which by itself is a great first sentence. But what it's talking about is people not noticing that the day had increased by 56 minutes. And... OK. I work at an astronomical observatory. Every day, Thanksgiving and Christmas not excluded, we run a project for the US Naval Observatory designed to carefully measure the difference between rotation-of-the-Earth time and atomic clock time. They use our data to calculate this value down to, I believe, a hundred-thousandth of a second. And we pay attention to the results because if we don't, all our other observations will be a little bit off. The point is, we would notice. Long before the day slowed down by 56 minutes! And so would every amateur astronomer with a backyard telescope, for that matter. I think I almost felt personally insulted by this. Later, I decided this may have been unfair, as she seems to maybe be implying the 56-minute slowdown happened essentially overnight, rather than gradually, as I'd first assumed. Which, of course just takes us right back to the "I'm nearly certain that ought to have had even more dire consequences than it has in the book" problem.
And then there's the scene where the government announces -- reasonably enough, I thought, given how rapidly the days are lengthening -- that things are going to stay on 24-hour clock time, regardless of day or night. The protagonist is aghast. How can they possibly be expected to adapt to such a schedule?! Now, I work rotating shifts, and have for a very long time. I know all too well how badly being out of sync with the sun can screw with you, and probably I, of all people, should be sympathetic. But instead, all I could think at that moment was, "Welcome to my world, bitches! Now you'll see what it's like!" And then I started speculating about how maybe the slowing was actually the doing of some supervillain shiftworker who wanted to force the rest of the world to understand. Which, needless to say was not the effect the author was going for.
Indeed, none of that is remotely what this book is about. It's about a girl and her family living through difficult times. It's about the experience of early adolescence, and the fragility of everything, and a bit about humanity's relationship to time and to nature. And it doesn't do a bad job of being about those things, in a somewhat lightweight kind of way. I tried to appreciate it on that level, and I succeeded to a certain extent, but it was still hard for me to get past my various issues.
So. Basically, I think I would not recommend this book to people with physics degrees, people who have anything at all to do with astronomy, people who read a lot of hard SF and expect good scientific explanations for things, people who work night shifts and have some degree of resentment towards those who don't, or people whose suspension of disbelief snaps immediately when nobody in a modern-day story seems to have Facebook. For everybody else, if it sounds like your sort of thing, go for it! show less
The Age of Miracles is making a big splash for being such a quiet little book. When I started to read it, I was hooked by the innocent voice and the strange things which puzzled that voice. It's such an interesting idea - the idea of the earth slowing down and time being prolonged.
Shortly into the novel I realized this is not your typical science fiction, or even post-apocalyptic type of book. This is the book that shows us the other side, you know.. the side we never see in movies. While we're used to seeing the astronauts out to save the world, or those last minute government decisions, very rarely do we get to see the side of the average Joe and how he, his family, his neighborhood, and his community handles a crisis like this. And show more the narrator of this story professes a very similar sentiment.
There are no big disasters in The Age of Miracles. There are just small things that get a little larger - things that you wouldn't expect to bother you, but ... give them enough space and it's clear that they just might after all. I was sincerely moved as I journeyed through this story with its young narrator, and I found myself wondering what would happen if something similar happened to us.
There are no real answers in the book, so don't go into them expecting to receive a clear-cut one (hear that, Stephen King? No aliens needed). Rather, I think this book is made all the stronger for not having one because it opens the imagination and gives the reader something to think about, long after the pages are closed. show less
Shortly into the novel I realized this is not your typical science fiction, or even post-apocalyptic type of book. This is the book that shows us the other side, you know.. the side we never see in movies. While we're used to seeing the astronauts out to save the world, or those last minute government decisions, very rarely do we get to see the side of the average Joe and how he, his family, his neighborhood, and his community handles a crisis like this. And show more the narrator of this story professes a very similar sentiment.
There are no big disasters in The Age of Miracles. There are just small things that get a little larger - things that you wouldn't expect to bother you, but ... give them enough space and it's clear that they just might after all. I was sincerely moved as I journeyed through this story with its young narrator, and I found myself wondering what would happen if something similar happened to us.
There are no real answers in the book, so don't go into them expecting to receive a clear-cut one (hear that, Stephen King? No aliens needed). Rather, I think this book is made all the stronger for not having one because it opens the imagination and gives the reader something to think about, long after the pages are closed. show less
This quick read is a quiet coming-of-age story with an unusual setting. Sometime now, or vaguely in the future, the Earth has started slowing. Eleven-year old Julia -- in rather mature prose, but I didn't mind -- reflects on the impacts of the slow-growing disaster on a planetary and personal level.
Living in sunny California, the slight increase in the day's lengths aren't immediately noticed, but as the days stretch from 27 hours to 40 hours, her family -- and society at large -- struggle to maintain some semblance of normalcy. The government declares life will operate in 'clock time', maintaining a rigid adherence to the 24 hour clock (school starts at 7am, even if it is a solar midnight, etc.). Radicals operate on 'real time', show more following the day's rhythms, even if it means staying away for twenty hours or more.
There's a sweetly myopic focus on Julia's social life that resonated even if I, at times, wanted more ecological disaster than emotional minefield. Julia's chronicle of this time is mixed with national news and scientific discovery as well as the tumultuous unraveling of her own life -- the disintegrating school days, her confusing friendships, her first crush.
The characters aren't totally vibrant, but I don't know if that comes from the author's skill -- Julia is only a pre-teen, how nuanced of an understanding can she have of her parent's marriage and emotional landscape? -- or the need for more page space for Walker to flesh everyone out.
A brief read -- just 220ish pages -- I was mostly charmed although I found the ending a bit abrupt. There's a jump when storyteller Julia reveals her current age, the status of the world, and it felt sudden after the sort of slow, lingering storytelling before it. Still, I read this in two hours, racing to see just what the end result of this fascinating catastrophe would be, and while there wasn't the raining doom I thought I was getting, I enjoyed the novel take on a young girl's uncomfortable journey toward adulthood. show less
Living in sunny California, the slight increase in the day's lengths aren't immediately noticed, but as the days stretch from 27 hours to 40 hours, her family -- and society at large -- struggle to maintain some semblance of normalcy. The government declares life will operate in 'clock time', maintaining a rigid adherence to the 24 hour clock (school starts at 7am, even if it is a solar midnight, etc.). Radicals operate on 'real time', show more following the day's rhythms, even if it means staying away for twenty hours or more.
There's a sweetly myopic focus on Julia's social life that resonated even if I, at times, wanted more ecological disaster than emotional minefield. Julia's chronicle of this time is mixed with national news and scientific discovery as well as the tumultuous unraveling of her own life -- the disintegrating school days, her confusing friendships, her first crush.
The characters aren't totally vibrant, but I don't know if that comes from the author's skill -- Julia is only a pre-teen, how nuanced of an understanding can she have of her parent's marriage and emotional landscape? -- or the need for more page space for Walker to flesh everyone out.
A brief read -- just 220ish pages -- I was mostly charmed although I found the ending a bit abrupt. There's a jump when storyteller Julia reveals her current age, the status of the world, and it felt sudden after the sort of slow, lingering storytelling before it. Still, I read this in two hours, racing to see just what the end result of this fascinating catastrophe would be, and while there wasn't the raining doom I thought I was getting, I enjoyed the novel take on a young girl's uncomfortable journey toward adulthood. show less
In The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker's debut novel, Julia is an eleven year old living in a Southern California suburb and a sixth grader in middle school when it happened: the earth's rotation started to slow. "It was, at the beginning, a quite invisible catastrophe (pg. 12)" Julia recounts the surreal events occurring around her while she is navigating the tumultuous time of middle school/ junior high and puberty. In The Age of Miracles Julia is dealing with things that are endemic to her age, which are juxtaposed to the world wide catastrophe unfolding around her. As the "slowing" increases, the lengthening of both the day and night, it baffles scientists, and there are more and more global repercussions.
I really enjoyed show more Julia as the narrator in The Age of Miracles. She's an observant, honest narrator. Her voice rang true. She is a quiet, observant girl, an only child who takes careful note of everything that is occurring around her. Yes, there are catastrophic changes happening, but, to someone her age, losing friends, getting a bra, or liking a boy can all feel just as earth shattering. She is dealing with the day to day realities while living with and observing the inexplicable world changing events of the slowing. She mentions events happening from the slowing, birds falling out of the sky and a division between the "real timers" versus the "clock timers," placed in the context of her daily life.
Rather than a traditional science fiction tale, The Age of Miracles is a coming-of-age story with a science fiction element to the plot. Julia is looking back, as an adult, telling the story of what happened to her when the slowing first started. As Julia says: "This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove (pg. 43)." She's going to mention many of the disastrous details, but they are believably mixed with details from her life. It is reminiscent of people recalling where they were or what they were doing during any disaster. No matter the scale of the disaster, you look back at the before and after of the event through your eyes and your experiences. Changes or disasters, large and small, are all placed in the context of your life when you retell them. You try to make connections to make some sense of what you know is to come.
Julia observes: "And it sees to me now that the slowing triggered certain other changes too, less visible at first but deeper. It disrupted certain subtler trajectories: the track of friendships, for example, the paths toward and away from love. But who am I to say that the course of my childhood was not already set long before the slowing? Perhaps my adolescence was only an average adolescence, the stinging a quite unremarkable stinging. There is such a thing as coincidence: the alignment of two or more seemingly related events with no causal connection. 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 (pg. 33-34).
Since The Age of Miracles is the story of one year in the life of someone who is an eleven-going-on-twelve-year-old girl, the age of the narrator would generally place this as a young adult novel, but a case could be made that it is more of an adult novel because it is an adult looking back. On the other hand, I could generally see a younger audience liking this novel too. Certainly Julia's concerns come across as realistic from someone that age. And, although there are disasters happening, they are not graphic or violent. The writing is simple, eloquent, and compelling.
The Age of Miracles is an exquisite debut novel. Very Highly Recommended
http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/ show less
I really enjoyed show more Julia as the narrator in The Age of Miracles. She's an observant, honest narrator. Her voice rang true. She is a quiet, observant girl, an only child who takes careful note of everything that is occurring around her. Yes, there are catastrophic changes happening, but, to someone her age, losing friends, getting a bra, or liking a boy can all feel just as earth shattering. She is dealing with the day to day realities while living with and observing the inexplicable world changing events of the slowing. She mentions events happening from the slowing, birds falling out of the sky and a division between the "real timers" versus the "clock timers," placed in the context of her daily life.
Rather than a traditional science fiction tale, The Age of Miracles is a coming-of-age story with a science fiction element to the plot. Julia is looking back, as an adult, telling the story of what happened to her when the slowing first started. As Julia says: "This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove (pg. 43)." She's going to mention many of the disastrous details, but they are believably mixed with details from her life. It is reminiscent of people recalling where they were or what they were doing during any disaster. No matter the scale of the disaster, you look back at the before and after of the event through your eyes and your experiences. Changes or disasters, large and small, are all placed in the context of your life when you retell them. You try to make connections to make some sense of what you know is to come.
Julia observes: "And it sees to me now that the slowing triggered certain other changes too, less visible at first but deeper. It disrupted certain subtler trajectories: the track of friendships, for example, the paths toward and away from love. But who am I to say that the course of my childhood was not already set long before the slowing? Perhaps my adolescence was only an average adolescence, the stinging a quite unremarkable stinging. There is such a thing as coincidence: the alignment of two or more seemingly related events with no causal connection. 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 (pg. 33-34).
Since The Age of Miracles is the story of one year in the life of someone who is an eleven-going-on-twelve-year-old girl, the age of the narrator would generally place this as a young adult novel, but a case could be made that it is more of an adult novel because it is an adult looking back. On the other hand, I could generally see a younger audience liking this novel too. Certainly Julia's concerns come across as realistic from someone that age. And, although there are disasters happening, they are not graphic or violent. The writing is simple, eloquent, and compelling.
The Age of Miracles is an exquisite debut novel. Very Highly Recommended
http://shetreadssoftly.blogspot.com/ show less
A scifi premise enhances but doesn’t overpower this character rich story that’s impossible to put down
Earth’s rotation is slowing, days and nights are lengthening, natural disasters are increasing, and in this newly unpredictable world people are still living their lives while adjusting as best they can, including Julia, the narrator, who is recounting her thoughts and experiences as an eleven year old girl coping with a lost friendship, a first crush and the deterioration of her parent’s marriage when the changes begin. Initially the longer periods of darkness are most frightening, but then it’s the long, hot radiation filled days. Powerful and erratic tides have washed out all the expensive beach front homes in Julia’s show more California town, knocking down walls and depositing sand and sea creatures. A disruption in the magnetic field means that auroras, with their pulsating waves of green light, are no longer confined to polar regions, they now stretch all the way to the equator.
When scientists announce Earth’s slowing rotation most people react with panic, but everyone panics differently. Julia’s best friend Hanna is a Mormon and her family flees to Utah believing they know where Jesus will soon ascend, which leaves Julia feeling like she’s lost a limb. Hanna comes back in a few weeks, but the friendship doesn’t survive, more a victim of the shifting alliances of adolescence than the result of cataclysmic world events. Julia is left to eat her lunch alone in the library until her crush on Seth, a skateboarding loner, turns into her first experience with love and she has someone to explore and challenge the brave new world with.
The strange and changing circumstances they confront mean that at first people don’t know when they should go to school or leave for work, since light and dark periods are no longer predictable. Soon, however, most world governments agree that the economic markets need stability so it would be best if everyone lives by the old 24 hour “clock time” no matter where the sun is in the sky. Most people comply, but this is America so others rebel and try to adapt to the new day length, some moving off the grid and forming their own isolated real time colonies in the desert. The real-timers who stay are seen as dangerous and are ostracized, including Julia’s former piano teacher, a free-spirit who lives next door, and the friendly, formerly tolerated counter-culture couple down the street.
The Age of Miracles has a science fiction-like premise, but it’s scifi only in the way the Time Traveler’s Wife is. Set in our present time, it’s a beautifully written, deeply imagined, character-based coming of age story, filled with ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. show less
Earth’s rotation is slowing, days and nights are lengthening, natural disasters are increasing, and in this newly unpredictable world people are still living their lives while adjusting as best they can, including Julia, the narrator, who is recounting her thoughts and experiences as an eleven year old girl coping with a lost friendship, a first crush and the deterioration of her parent’s marriage when the changes begin. Initially the longer periods of darkness are most frightening, but then it’s the long, hot radiation filled days. Powerful and erratic tides have washed out all the expensive beach front homes in Julia’s show more California town, knocking down walls and depositing sand and sea creatures. A disruption in the magnetic field means that auroras, with their pulsating waves of green light, are no longer confined to polar regions, they now stretch all the way to the equator.
When scientists announce Earth’s slowing rotation most people react with panic, but everyone panics differently. Julia’s best friend Hanna is a Mormon and her family flees to Utah believing they know where Jesus will soon ascend, which leaves Julia feeling like she’s lost a limb. Hanna comes back in a few weeks, but the friendship doesn’t survive, more a victim of the shifting alliances of adolescence than the result of cataclysmic world events. Julia is left to eat her lunch alone in the library until her crush on Seth, a skateboarding loner, turns into her first experience with love and she has someone to explore and challenge the brave new world with.
The strange and changing circumstances they confront mean that at first people don’t know when they should go to school or leave for work, since light and dark periods are no longer predictable. Soon, however, most world governments agree that the economic markets need stability so it would be best if everyone lives by the old 24 hour “clock time” no matter where the sun is in the sky. Most people comply, but this is America so others rebel and try to adapt to the new day length, some moving off the grid and forming their own isolated real time colonies in the desert. The real-timers who stay are seen as dangerous and are ostracized, including Julia’s former piano teacher, a free-spirit who lives next door, and the friendly, formerly tolerated counter-culture couple down the street.
The Age of Miracles has a science fiction-like premise, but it’s scifi only in the way the Time Traveler’s Wife is. Set in our present time, it’s a beautifully written, deeply imagined, character-based coming of age story, filled with ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances. show less
This is a perfect example of a book that I probably would not have read if I wasn't doing readers' advisory. But should I be thankful that I am experiencing new stories and broadening my horizons or should I be shocked and terrified at the number of books I'm missing out on?
The Age of Miracles asks us an unusual yet profound question: What happens when our concepts of "day" and "night" no longer exist? In the story, scientists have discovered that the Earth's rotation is slowing, to the point where society no longer operates on a 24 hour schedule. Crops start dying. Sickness and disease start spreading. Some people abandon clocks all together and attempt to function using their circadian rhythms. The Earth's gravitational force starts show more to shift. No one knows what's causing it and no one knows how to stop it.
The plot occurs during the first year of the slowing and centers around eleven-year-old Julia. Julia is the story's only narrator, but she is recalling the events of that first year from a point many years in the future. This tells us that she survives the first year of the slowing, so there's no suspense as to whether or not she lives.
In fact, the plot is not particularly important to the story. Julia goes to school, deals with boys, watches her family slowly fall apart, but these are not the important factors. What's important is how the characters handle the crisis, and how Julia copes with this insecurity in addition to the typical insecurities of middle school. This is a story of reactions, relationships, emotions, and complicated questions.
Since the novel only takes place over the course of one year, the ending is not resolved. We know that Julia has lived, but we don't know what happens to her after that first year, and we don't know what will happen to her once the story ends. Generally, I prefer stories with more closure, but an ambiguous ending is really the only thing that works here.
I classify this novel as literary science fiction, although I know many readers will probably find fault with the "science fiction" aspect of the story. The emphasis is on complex, unanswerable questions, lyrical writing, nostalgia, and a bittersweet remembrance of how life used to be before the earth slowed. I'm adding this title to my list of "Sure Bets," and I think this also makes a good suggestion for readers who don't generally read literary fiction. At just under 300 pages, it's not a time consuming read and it doesn't demand a lot of mental effort from the reader. I imagine it as a reading journey - the story captures you at the very beginning and leaves you with an ache in your heart and more questions than answers.
Readalikes:
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold. The bittersweet and emotional tones are very similar, and both novels add speculative elements to an otherwise literary story. The Lovely Bones is more emotionally intense, however, and contains much more violent material than The Age of Miracles.
The Last Policeman - Ben H. Winters. The genres are very different (mystery vs. literary science fiction), but both stories take place in pre-apocalyptic worlds in which the characters must go about their daily lives in the face of impending disaster.
After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall - Nancy Kress. (From NoveList). Young protagonists struggle to make sense of their new societies & lifestyles in these bleak & thought-provoking stories. This book is more clearly defined as science fiction and may provide an appealing alternative to readers who wished The Age of Miracles provided more scientific realism. show less
The Age of Miracles asks us an unusual yet profound question: What happens when our concepts of "day" and "night" no longer exist? In the story, scientists have discovered that the Earth's rotation is slowing, to the point where society no longer operates on a 24 hour schedule. Crops start dying. Sickness and disease start spreading. Some people abandon clocks all together and attempt to function using their circadian rhythms. The Earth's gravitational force starts show more to shift. No one knows what's causing it and no one knows how to stop it.
The plot occurs during the first year of the slowing and centers around eleven-year-old Julia. Julia is the story's only narrator, but she is recalling the events of that first year from a point many years in the future. This tells us that she survives the first year of the slowing, so there's no suspense as to whether or not she lives.
In fact, the plot is not particularly important to the story. Julia goes to school, deals with boys, watches her family slowly fall apart, but these are not the important factors. What's important is how the characters handle the crisis, and how Julia copes with this insecurity in addition to the typical insecurities of middle school. This is a story of reactions, relationships, emotions, and complicated questions.
Since the novel only takes place over the course of one year, the ending is not resolved. We know that Julia has lived, but we don't know what happens to her after that first year, and we don't know what will happen to her once the story ends. Generally, I prefer stories with more closure, but an ambiguous ending is really the only thing that works here.
I classify this novel as literary science fiction, although I know many readers will probably find fault with the "science fiction" aspect of the story. The emphasis is on complex, unanswerable questions, lyrical writing, nostalgia, and a bittersweet remembrance of how life used to be before the earth slowed. I'm adding this title to my list of "Sure Bets," and I think this also makes a good suggestion for readers who don't generally read literary fiction. At just under 300 pages, it's not a time consuming read and it doesn't demand a lot of mental effort from the reader. I imagine it as a reading journey - the story captures you at the very beginning and leaves you with an ache in your heart and more questions than answers.
Readalikes:
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold. The bittersweet and emotional tones are very similar, and both novels add speculative elements to an otherwise literary story. The Lovely Bones is more emotionally intense, however, and contains much more violent material than The Age of Miracles.
The Last Policeman - Ben H. Winters. The genres are very different (mystery vs. literary science fiction), but both stories take place in pre-apocalyptic worlds in which the characters must go about their daily lives in the face of impending disaster.
After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall - Nancy Kress. (From NoveList). Young protagonists struggle to make sense of their new societies & lifestyles in these bleak & thought-provoking stories. This book is more clearly defined as science fiction and may provide an appealing alternative to readers who wished The Age of Miracles provided more scientific realism. show less
A dark story about, yes, coming of age and the approaching apocalypse, but also about the meaninglessness of it all. The narrator's voice is detached and dooming and keeps you reading. Every now and again you have a feeling you ought to stop, really, but, similarly to people watching accidents, you keep reading because you want to know just how bad it gets. It gets very bad indeed. I agree with someone here who said that sience accuracy is beside the point. The questions that arise are philosophical, existantialist and , therefore, very uncomfortable ones.
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ThingScore 88
"The Age of Miracles"? More like: "The Age of Disasters"! Before I get into why I say that, I'll elaborate on what the book is about. First off, it's actually a very well written book. it's told from the point of view of a middle school aged girl and the events in the story take place are told through her perspective. Everything was fine, until the days started to get longer. First it was only show more by a few minutes everyday, then it escalated to half an hour, then a full hour, then hours, until people who were stuck on the side of the hemisphere facing the Sun found that the suns hostile rays make the outside world totally inhospitable. people were forced to permanently take refuge inside their household as a slight reprieve to escape a heat-related death.
The reason I call it "The Age of Disasters" is because of how terribly things spiral out of control. Everyday lives are thrown out of whack as people scramble to reorient themselves into their new reality. I went into the book having almost no prior knowledge about its plot. I thought it would be a lot happier than what it was on account of it having the word "Miracles" in the title. And boy was I wrong.
The ending of this book doesn't even come close to the word "bittersweet." It's just plain bitter to me. It doesn't delve too deeply into the fate of humanity, but a 20 year time-skip does show you what becomes of the main character and her family, sans her love interest who she hasn't seen since the suns powerful rays gave him cancer and forced him to move to new mexico for treatment. They promised that they'd keep in touch, and meant it, but due to unknown reasons the letters the main character sent to him were never returned and they never saw one another again. My guess is that the treatment failed and he didn't survive, or maybe they never made it to new mexico at all.
This is a great, albeit depressing book. show less
The reason I call it "The Age of Disasters" is because of how terribly things spiral out of control. Everyday lives are thrown out of whack as people scramble to reorient themselves into their new reality. I went into the book having almost no prior knowledge about its plot. I thought it would be a lot happier than what it was on account of it having the word "Miracles" in the title. And boy was I wrong.
The ending of this book doesn't even come close to the word "bittersweet." It's just plain bitter to me. It doesn't delve too deeply into the fate of humanity, but a 20 year time-skip does show you what becomes of the main character and her family, sans her love interest who she hasn't seen since the suns powerful rays gave him cancer and forced him to move to new mexico for treatment. They promised that they'd keep in touch, and meant it, but due to unknown reasons the letters the main character sent to him were never returned and they never saw one another again. My guess is that the treatment failed and he didn't survive, or maybe they never made it to new mexico at all.
This is a great, albeit depressing book. show less
added by morgan434
What sets the story apart from more run-of-the-mill high-concept novels is Ms. Walker’s decision to recount the unfolding catastrophe from the perspective of Julia, who is on the verge of turning 12. Her voice turns what might have been just a clever mash-up of disaster epic with sensitive young-adult, coming-of-age story into a genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and surreal, the show more ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair.
“The Age of Miracles” is not without its flaws. There are moments when the spell the author has so assiduously created wobbles, and moments when a made-for-Hollywood slickness seeps into the story. Some minor plot developments feel as if they had been created simply for pacing, and Ms. Walker sometimes seems so determined to use Julia’s circumscribed life as a microcosm of the larger world that the reader has to be reminded that “the slowing” is supposedly a planet-altering phenomenon. show less
“The Age of Miracles” is not without its flaws. There are moments when the spell the author has so assiduously created wobbles, and moments when a made-for-Hollywood slickness seeps into the story. Some minor plot developments feel as if they had been created simply for pacing, and Ms. Walker sometimes seems so determined to use Julia’s circumscribed life as a microcosm of the larger world that the reader has to be reminded that “the slowing” is supposedly a planet-altering phenomenon. show less
added by ozzer
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Author Information
4 Works 4,574 Members
Karen Thompson Walker is a New York Times Bestselling author of the novels, The Age of Miracles, which was named one of the best books of the year by People, O: The Oprah Magazine and Financial Times. She was born and raised in San Diego and graduated from UCLA and the Columbia MFA program. She is currently an assistant professor of creative show more writing at the University of Oregon. Her title,The Dreamers, also made the Bestseller List in 2019. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Wij waren hier
- Original title
- The Age of Miracles
- Original publication date
- 2012-06-26
- People/Characters
- Julia; Hanna; Helen; Joel; Michaela; Jacob Kaplan (show all 29); Beth Kaplan; Gabby; Sylvia; Tom; Carlotta; Trevor Watkins; Seth Moreno; Daryl; Mr. Jensen; Mrs. Pinsky; Adam Jacobson; Gene; Chip; Tracey Blair; Ms. Mosely; Ben Harvey; Mr. Valencia; Keith; Alma; Josh; Harry; Kai; Molly Kopachek
- Important places
- California, USA; Circadia
- Epigraph
- Here in the last minutes, the very end of the world,
someone's tightening a screw thinner than an eyelash,
someone with slim wrists is straightening flowers...
Another End of the World, James Richardson - Dedication
- For my parents and for Casey
- First words
- We didn't notice right away.
We did not sense at first the extra time, bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath skin. - Quotations
- Sometimes the saddest stories take the fewest words...
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)We dipped our fingers in the wet cement, and we wrote the truest, simplest things we knew - our names, the date, and these words: We were here.
- Blurbers
- Bloom, Amy; Sittenfeld, Curtis; Russell, Karen; Bender, Aimee; Shapiro, Dani; Englander, Nathan (show all 9); Cronin, Justin; Li, Yiyun; Shepard, Jim
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.6
- Canonical LCC
- PS3623.A4366
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- ASINs
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