The Age of Miracles
Karen Thompson Walker
The Age of Miracles
'It is never what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown...' What if our 24-hour day grew longer, first in minutes, then in hours, until day becomes night and night becomes 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 an eleven-year-old girl, grappling with emotional changes in her own life..? One morning, Julia and her parents wake up in their suburban home in California to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth is noticeably slowing. The enormity of this is almost beyond comprehension. And yet, even if the world is, in fact, coming to an end, as some assert, day-to-day life must go on. Julia, facing the loneliness and despair of an awkward adolescence, witnesses the impact of this phenomenon on the world, on the community, on her family and on herself.
3.7 out of 5 based on 7 reviews
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Omniscore:
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| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Pages |
384 |
| RRP |
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| Date of Publication |
June 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-0857207234 |
| Publisher |
Simon & Schuster |
| |
'It is never what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown...' What if our 24-hour day grew longer, first in minutes, then in hours, until day becomes night and night becomes 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 an eleven-year-old girl, grappling with emotional changes in her own life..? One morning, Julia and her parents wake up in their suburban home in California to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth is noticeably slowing. The enormity of this is almost beyond comprehension. And yet, even if the world is, in fact, coming to an end, as some assert, day-to-day life must go on. Julia, facing the loneliness and despair of an awkward adolescence, witnesses the impact of this phenomenon on the world, on the community, on her family and on herself.
Reviews
The Daily Express
Charlotte Heathcote
“Walker melds a disorientating take on global catastrophe with the story of a lonely young girl watching her life spiral out of control, looking back from the vantage point of adulthood to conclude: “It is never what you worry about that comes to pass in the end.” ”
24/06/2012
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The New York Times
Michiko Kakutani
“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 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.”
18/06/2012
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The Sunday Times
Alison Flood
“The lonely, beautifully imagined Julia, though, is pre-occupied with an adolescent’s inward worries: the boy she stares at in class, her parents’ marital troubles, getting her first bra. Julia’s voice is eloquent and original, and Thompson Walker makes the “slowing” at the heart of the story hauntingly believable, in an impressive and quietly terrifying book.”
01/07/2012
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The Financial Times
Isobel Berwick
“It’s all highly plausible: “The real catastrophes are always different – unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.” Because the book is related by the young adult Julia, we know she survives. That doesn’t, somehow, diminish the bleakness of the environmental destruction (all birds and trees die, crops can only grow in greenhouses) or the clarity of Thompson Walker’s insight into the awkward, amazing world of the almost-teen … simple, affecting ...”
06/07/2012
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The Daily Telegraph
Claudia Yusef
“The lack of causal logic underpinning “the slowing” may be a sticking point for some. To quibble with the physics, though, seems as futile as Julia’s mother’s relentless acquisition of canned food, or Julia’s father’s equally relentless scientific positivism. The Age of Miracles is a gentle reminder of what adolescents learn and adults try to forget – that the world is alarmingly mysterious and that the talismans of modernity are no defence against the “unimagined, unprepared for” miracles or calamities of love and loss.”
21/06/2012
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The Guardian
Edward Docx
“… a fine coming-of-age novel wrapped in a high concept … Walker renders her characters persuasively, with insight, economy and subtlety. Strip out the creaking contrivance and the novel's many affecting moments would surely resonate all the more through the sincerity and power of their realism. The paradox is that without the high concept, publishers wouldn't have had the confidence to buy the novel at such a price … it is mildly depressing that so nimble, delicate and emotionally sophisticated a novel should find itself burdened by such sci-fi oafishness.”
08/06/2012
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The Guardian
(Unknown)
“Thompson Walker's writing is flat, efficient, careful. It reveals all the hallmarks and acquired craft skills of the creative writing course: a persistent blandness, an incorruptible awareness of political correctness, but also a kind of defensive knowingness. She has been taught to keep the plot moving, to produce small surprises or reversals. But she also writes with a total lack of irony, of awareness of the larger world. Characterisation is done by numbers: as soon as the soft-eyed boy with the skateboard appears you know that not only will he get the girl, he won't make it to the end of the novel.”
13/07/2012
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