The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker
number of voters: 8
percentage of voters who finished the book: 100
highest rating: 8.75
lowest rating: 6.75
average rating: 7.53
average length of a day, as of March 31, 2013, measured in
hours: 24
*****
We didn’t notice it at first. We
couldn’t have anticipated it, the way this book started drawing us into its
orbit and then seeping into us.
It was supposed to be science
fiction, or so we thought. A book about the slowing of the earth’s rotation. A
tale of the impending “end of the world” that soapbox prophets have long
foretold.
But the slowing was not the plot. In
fact, the slowing was hardly the point at all; the slowing was merely the
setting. At the heart of The Age of
Miracles is a middle-school girl named Julia.
Some claimed to have seen it
coming. For them, it was never going to be about the lengthening of days. For
them, it was all about Julia. They remember middle school: Some days can make
you feel like the world is ending. These women, sentimental toward tales of
human experience, settled in and let the author take them for an unhurried,
poetic ride. They appreciated how, even though the whole world was changing,
life—crushes, affairs, the transient nature of friendships—stays the same.
Others, just a few, were waiting for
more. For them, it was all about the sun, the science, the slowing. With every
lengthening rotation of the earth they looked for a technical explanation or a
logical answer.
Instead, the story unwinds like a
ball of yarn, gradually and methodically, without enlightenment. Day after day,
the length of a day grows longer, and no one understands why. Week after week,
Julia navigates the turbulence of middle school in a world that is tentative, facing a
future where even the rising of the sun is unreliable.
Then it ends. It is a bit
abrupt, jarring even, to come to a stopping point after so much decelerating.
At the end we are left holding an unwound hunk of yarn, a mass of uncertainty.
And we are aching for more. Julia has won us over. We are
hanging on her every breath, wondering if it will be her last. Wondering what
will become of her.
As for the earth: As far as we
know, it is still spinning.
***********
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