Overview

What if our twenty-four-hour day grew longer, first in minutes, then in hours, until day became night and night became day? What effect would this slowing have on the world? On the birds in the sky, the whales in the sea, the astronauts in space, and on a family and a young girl, who is already coping with the normal disasters of everyday life? Julia's account of how lives can be knocked unexpectedly out of kilter begins on one seemingly ordinary Saturday morning in a California suburb - when she and her parents wake to discover that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. No one knows why, no one knows how to deal with it. The enormity of this change is almost beyond comprehension...

Full Product Details

Author:   Karen Thompson Walker ,  SB
Publisher:   Simon & Schuster Ltd
Imprint:   Simon & Schuster Ltd
ISBN:  

9780857207241

ISBN 10:   0857207245
Pages:   384
Publication Date:   31 May 2012
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Reviews

<p>Advance praise for The Age of Miracles <br> [A] gripping debut . . . Thompson's Julia is the perfect narrator. . . . While the apocalypse looms large--has in fact already arrived--the narrative remains fiercely grounded in the surreal and horrifying day-to-day and the personal decisions that persist even though no one knows what to do. A triumph of vision, language, and terrifying momentum, the story also feels eerily plausible, as if the problems we've been worrying about all along pale in comparison to what might actually bring our end. -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) <br> In Walker's stunning debut, a young California girl coming of age in a dystopian near future confronts the inevitability of change on the most personal level as life on earth withers ... She goes through the trials and joys of first love. She begins to see cracks in her parents' marriage and must navigate the currents of loyalty and moral uncertainty. She faces sickness and death of loved ones. ... Julia's life is shaped by what happens in the larger world, but it is the only life she knows, and Walker captures each moment, intimate and universal, with magical precision. Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) <br> What a remarkable and beautifully wrought novel. In its depiction of a world at once utterly like and unlike our own, The Age of Miracles is so convincingly unsettling that it just might make you stockpile emergency supplies of batteries and bottled water. It also--thank goodness--provides great solace with its wisdom, its compassion, and the elegance of its storytelling. --Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep <br> 'Miracles' indeed. Karen Thompson Walker's debut novel is a stunner from the first page--an end-of-the-world, coming-of-age tale of quiet majesty. I loved this novel and can't wait to see what this remarkable writer will do next. --Justin Cronin, author of The Passage <br> Is the end near? In Karen Thomps

Steph writes: I accidentally stumbled across this book and I'm so glad I did because it's an ambitious, clever first novel by Karen Thompson Walker and a truly fascinating read. What if our 24 hour days steadily grew longer? Maybe at first we wouldn't notice the seconds slowing down a fraction. But soon those seconds would stretch into minutes, which would grow into hours until entire days would pass blanketed in darkness or scorched by sunlight. It's a brave and powerful concept but that's not what makes this novel so enjoyable to read. Thompson Walker explores these huge concepts but tells them from the eyes of a 12 year old girl, Julia, fast approaching the humiliation and confusion of puberty. Julia's beautiful, simple and witty observation of how her world - modern day California - changes in the midst of such a massive shift both warmed and broke my heart. It's amazing how much we take a construct like time for granted and Thompson Walker really makes this point so well and through so many ways. When Julia's mother hits a pedestrian - fatigued from a 45 hour &lsquo;white day' as they come to be known - gravity pulls him to earth harder, making his chances of survival much slimmer than originally calculated. Little things like this coupled with huge tidal changes, scattered weather patterns and fraying human functionality highlight that such a simple slowing down of the earth's rotation would have disastrous consequences upon the society we know today. It's well written, interesting and when read in a cafe whilst Venus transits the sun, it can be quite scary!

Author Information

Karen Thompson Walker is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program. A former book editor, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work. Born and raised in San Diego, California, she now lives in Brooklyn with her husband. The Age of Miracles is her first book.

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