My sister slept with the light on until she was 27. She rightfully blames me. I would leap out of closets with my hands made into claws. I would...
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smark12, January 30, 2013 (view all comments by smark12)
This was the first book in a very long time in which I was completely and totally immersed. So much so that I needed to remind myself that I was reading fiction, and that the events in the novel weren't actually happening in present, everyday life. I really loved that it was from the perspective of a young woman looking back on her adolescence; the author created such a disquieting account of nostalgia. The sense of longing is amplified by her uncertain future. There is a great parallel to the isolation felt as a pre-teen/teen to the desolation created through 'the happening'. A very thought-provoking novel, and one I will definitely be recommending to others.
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Leonard Sommer, January 30, 2013 (view all comments by Leonard Sommer)
Growing up as teenage girl in suburban LA, and, oh yeah, the world is coming to a slowing end. The book makes you think about the large historical forces and their impact on our tiny lives and development. Well written and even lyrically written.
Megan Morrow, January 30, 2013 (view all comments by Megan Morrow)
This beautiful, haunting, affirming book stuck with me long after I turned the last page, and I recommended it to everyone who was looking for their next book to read. I was also inspired by hearing Karen Thompson Walker speak about her process during a visit to a Minneapolis bookstore -- so much of her writing was done before work through years of diligence and dedication. I really loved a lot of books last year, but this one was tops.
JBev, January 28, 2013 (view all comments by JBev)
After finishing this book I kept thinking about it as I went about my regular routine - thinking of how lucky we all are. I rarely have a book stay with me in this manner, and didn't expect it while reading Age of Miracles ... and yet, I found myself wandering through the grocery store amazed by all of the choices, abundance a single aisle held, and grateful that we have these choices and this abundance. A mere tilt of the planet and it could all change.
Product details
288 pages
Random House -
English9780812992977
Reviews:
"Staff Pick"
by Heidi Mager,
As if facing the everyday insecurities and turmoil of adolescence isn't enough, 11-year-old Julia lives within the reality of a post-apocalyptic situation as the earth's rotation begins slowing by measurable degrees each day. Relationships, personal and official, fracture, torn apart by the uncertainty of living in a world where time — night, day, schedules — no longer holds much meaning. In a tale that is as graceful as it is intelligent, as realistic as it is fantastic, this haunting debut creates a snapshot of a world changing beyond recognition. What effect will it have on you?
by Heidi Mager
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"In this gripping debut, 11-year-old Julia wakes one day to the news that the earth's rotation has started slowing. The immediate effects — no one at soccer practice; relentless broadcasts of the same bewildered scientists — soon feel banal compared to what unfolds. 'The slowing' is growing slower still, and soon both day and night are more than twice as long as they once were. When governments decide to stick to the 24-hour schedule (ignoring circadian rhythms), a subversive movement erupts, 'real-timers' who disregard the clock and appear to be weathering the slowing better than clock-timers — at first. Thompson's Julia is the perfect narrator. On the brink of adolescence, she's as concerned with buying her first bra as with the birds falling out of the sky. She wants to be popular as badly as she wants her world to remain familiar. 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. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME Entertainment." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
"Review"
by Michiko Kakutani, New York Times,
"[Walker's] 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."
"Review"
by Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake,
"The Age of Miracles spins its glowing magic through incredibly lucid and honest prose, giving equal care and dignity to the small spheres and the large. It is at once a love letter to the world as we know it and an elegy."
"Review"
by Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion,
"Gripping from first page to last, The Age of Miracles is itself a small, perfectly formed miracle: Written with the cadence and pitch of poetry, this gem of a novel is a wrenching and all-too-believable parable for our times, and one of the most original coming-of-age stories I have ever read. Karen Thompson Walker is the real deal."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews (starred review),
"Walker captures each moment, intimate and universal, with magical precision. Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving."
"Review"
by Nathan Englander, author of What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank,
"The Age of Miracles is pure magnificence. Deeply moving and beautifully executed, Karen Thompson Walker has written the perfect novel for the global-warming age."
"Review"
by Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep,
"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."
"Review"
by Justin Cronin, author of The Passage,
"'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."
"Review"
by Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!,
"Is the end near? In Karen Thompson Walker's beautiful and frightening debut, sunsets are becoming rarities, 'real-timers' live in daylight colonies while mainstream America continues to operate on the moribund system of 'Clock Time,' and environmentalists rail against global dependence on crops that guzzle light. Against this apocalyptic backdrop, Walker sets the coming-of-age story of brave, bewildered Julia, who wonders at the 'malleable rhythms'of the increasingly erratic adults around her. Like master fabulists Steven Millhauser and Kevin Brockmeier, Karen Thompson Walker takes a fantastic premise and makes it feel thrillingly real. In precise, poetic language, she floods the California suburbs with shadows and a doomsday glow, and in this altered light shows us amazing things about how one family responds to a stunningly imagined global crisis."
"Review"
by Amy Bloom, author of Away,
"This is what imagination is. In The Age of Miracles, the earth's rotation slows, gravity alters, days are stretched out to fifty hours of sunlight. In the midst of this, a young girl falls in loves, sees things she shouldn't and suffers heartbreak of the most ordinary kind. Karen Thompson Walker has managed to combine fiction of the dystopian future with an incisive and powerful portrait of our personal present."
"Review"
by Nathan Englander, author of For the Relief of Unbearable Urges,
"The Age of Miracles is pure magnificence. Deeply moving and beautifully executed, Karen Thompson Walker has written the perfect novel for the global-warming age."
"Review"
by Yiyun Li, author of Gold Boy, Emerald Girl,
"Reading The Age of Miracles is like gazing into a sky of constellations and being mesmerized by the the strange yet familiar sensation of infinity. Beautifully written, the novel lets the readers see the world within us and the world without with an unforgettable freshness."
"Review"
by Jim Shepard, author of Like You'd Understand, Anyway (National Book Award finalist),
"The Age of Miracles is harrowing and beautiful on the ways in which those catastrophes already hidden about us in plain sight, once ratcheted up just a bit, provide us with a glimpse of the end of our species' run on earth: the uncanny distress of hundreds of beached whales, or the surreal unease of waves rolling across the rooftops of beachfront houses. And as it does it reminds us of all of the miracles of human regard that will have taken place before then: the way compassion will retain its resilience, and the way, for those of us in love, a string of afternoons will be as good as a year."
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