Review & Tour: The Age of Miracles

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
Publisher: Random House
Format: ARC
Source: TLC Book Tours
Release Date: June 26th 2012
Buy It From Amazon |  Goodreads
★★★★☆

“It still amazes me how little we really knew. . . . Maybe everything that happened to me and my family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It’s possible, I guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

Luminous, haunting, unforgettable, The Age of Miracles is a stunning fiction debut by a superb new writer, a story about coming of age during extraordinary times, about people going on with their lives in an era of profound uncertainty.

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.

The Age of Miracles is a somber and insightful look into the end of it all. I began reading filled with hope. That hope was slowly drained. I wanted to see Julia beat the odds and persevere! Instead I got a nostalgic look back on things that we take for granted every single day: a bird, sunlight, grass, etc. It was through Julia’s eyes that I could see just how delicate the balance of our planet is… and just how easily it can all come apart. The greatest thing about this book is the realism! The worst and most chilling part is that we’ve already experienced some of it.

"Haunting." In one word that's how I would describe The Age of Miracles. There were several scenes that left me hopeless for Julia’s world. I compare the feeling, not plot, of this book to the movie The Butterfly Effect, if you've ever seen it. Despite the slowness of the novel, I found it hard to stop reading. The Age of Miracles was not difficult to push through, not uninteresting, just slow at times. I guess that goes with the whole “slowing” of the world thing.

I was going to give The Age of Miracles 3 stars due to the open ending and lack of conclusion, until I realized that’s the whole point! This book is supposed to make you think. It’s supposed to evoke feeling. For that, I give The Age of Miracles 4 stars. Read this if you are looking for an eco-apocalyptic read that is thoughtful and emotional.

*Special thanks to Random House and TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to review this book!*

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