Saturday, December 12, 2015

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

genre: young adult speculative fiction


There are a few things we feel like we know for certain in this life on the Blue Planet - the foremost among them the fact that the sun will rise again in the morning, giving us a fresh start. But for Julia, when she is 11, that constant rising in the morning shifts. Our 24 hour day lengthens. Our planet slows down. The consequences, both immediate and eventual, are enormous and suddenly Julia's coming of age is a story of a way of life coming to an end.

Age of Miracles is a lovely piece of work - told in retrospective, an homage to all the things we take for granted.  Julia's perspective, as a woman looking back on her middle school years, was very effective for me - the pacing and foreshadowing (which usually annoys me), somehow felt fresh and made the story more believable. The language is particularly careful, so many phrases caught me by surprise with their beauty. It's not always pretty, as usually happens with end-of-world-stories but it succeeding in making me look at my world with new, more appreciative eyes.

1 comment:

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...