Age of Miracles

Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

Random House 2012

A book that combines the best of Juvenile reading with an exceptional setting. 

The protagonist here is a girl of eleven, facing all the regular issues a girl that age faces; boys, bras, friendships and family.  The difference is that this girl is living through extraordinary times.

One Saturday morning, Julia wakes up to find that the whole world has changed.  The Earth’s rotation has begun to slow down.  In ways familiar to all of us who lived through the World Trade Center attacks, the tsunami in Japan or Hurricane Katrina, Walker describes this young family’s reaction.  The day is spent glued to their TVs waiting for some kind of answer.  Watching interviews with scientist after scientist, listening to fanatics rave, and news anchors philosophize, they are completely and utterly absorbed by the tragedy around them.  The freaky thing about this scenario though is that this catastrophe is happening very slowly, and life for this suburban family keeps going.

Walker takes the reader through this changing landscape both gradually and suddenly. Juxtaposing the steady changes to the earth with the every day events of a middle school girl, she creates a wonderful flow to the timing of the novel. 

I just can’t say enough about the creativity that went into this seemingly simple novel.  I praise Walker for not letting it carry her away either.  She somehow finds a balance between letting her imagination soar and keeping the story real.

A die-hard sci-fi fan may be looking for a more factual account of what would happen when the Earth’s rotation slowed (Walker has been criticized for not researching the true effects).  But then those readers probably wouldn’t be interested in a thoughtful, character driven coming-of-age story either, which at its heart, is what “Age of Miracles” is.