THE AGE OF MIRACLES

Earth’s rotation is really slowing down! Don’t get alarmed, because it slows down 1.7 milliseconds every 100 years, or so. But in Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel, the day grew 56 minutes before the scientists even noticed, and when they did a scientist said on TV  “To a certain extent, we can adapt, but if the earth’s rotation continues to slow-and this is just speculation-I’d say we can expect radical changes in the weather.” Adapt to what? This is a novel that proposes a unique event, while at the same time follows the life of our narrator, Julia, through her adolescent years known as the age of miracles. Somehow the author succeeds in uniting these two subjects into a peculiar and unparalleled story. The story did stall about midway, but thankfully it then took off to a interesting, but somewhat heavy-hearted and pessimistic conclusion. Walker’s character development was a little weak, except for Julia and her want-to-be paramour, Seth Moreno. In this reviewer’s mind, these two flaws keep this unusual novel from five stars.

The story begins in California at the home of Julia, her mom Helen, her dad Joel, and their two cats. I don’t remember the author ever saying what the family’s last name was, not that it matters. Anyway the TV news broadcast said that the earth’s rotation was slowing down. Helen is very upset; Joel, a baby Doctor, seems unperturbed; and Julia sees it as a way of getting out of soccer practice. In two days, the length of a day is ninety minutes longer. People start getting gravity sickness, because the slowing had altered the gravity and everything was a little more susceptible to the pull of the ground. Julia still has to deal with problems any eleven year old would have, regardless of the earth’s slowing rotation. There is the bully at the bus stop; the on and off friendship with her various girlfriends; and the unrequited love of Seth. Her eighty plus year old grandpa seems to have flipped out, birds start dying off, and bugs start multiplying at a furious pace. And now the day is forty two hours long! People start to hoard food, and grass and plants begin the dying process. The government states on TV that the 24 hour clock has to be observed regardless of the days length. Some people object. They become “the real timers”, who are instantly hated, because “The real-timers made the rest of us uncomfortable. They too often slept while the rest of us worked. They went out when everyone else was asleep.” The day is now forty eight hours long!

The slowing syndrome affected only certain people, Julia’s mom among them. The symptoms could be dizziness, nausea, insomnia, fatigue, fainting, and bleeding of the gums. The day is now fifty six hours long, and growing. Kansas has a first ever earthquake, thousands of whales wash ashore, and California’s famous eucalyptus trees begin to fall. The day is now sixty hours long. Is this just the start of the end, or is it the new beginning? I’m going to have to stop here and you will have to read your own copy of this credible story to find out how it is resolved. I read somewhere that Walker had a astrophysicist read the book before publication to make sure her story was plausible. Her impeccable prose is probably due to her previous work as a book editor for Simon & Schuster . Folks, this is one of 2012’s best, I highly recommend readers of all genres to get behind this novel.

RATING: 4 out of 5 stars.

Comment: I know my review sounds like this novel is another apocalyptic tale of grief, but it is not. I’m not sure what genre this novel falls under. Is it sci-fi? Is it fantasy? Or is it just plain good old American fiction. I think it’s the latter. What does Karen Thompson Walker say about that? “A good story, just like a good sentence, does more than one job at once. That's what literature is: a story that does more than tell a story, a story that manages to reflect in some way the multilayered texture of life itself.” So there you go, it’s just a story! But a pretty good one.

Remember how I said the novel seemed mistake free? Well, Karen says “I like to edit my sentences as I write them. I rearrange a sentence many times before moving on to the next one. For me, that editing process feels like a form of play, like a puzzle that needs solving, and it's one of the most satisfying parts of writing.” Are you listening, Cormac McCarthy? Just kidding. The wonderful thing about literature is the wide variety of writers and styles available to the reader.

Recently, Karen explained to Scotsman.com how the novel got it’s start...”The Age of Miracles began as a short story inspired by the 2004 earthquake in Indonesia. It was so powerful that it knocked the earth’s axis, and shortened the length of a day by a tiny, tiny fraction.

It seemed haunting and creepy, that something we think is so fixed – the sun rises and the sun sets, every day – could change. I didn’t know that could happen. I wanted the cause to be unknown. The fact that the earthquake and tsunami in Japan happened [afterwards] was just a weird coincidence.” She wanted her novel to feel immediate and a little mysterious. The year is unspecified, enhancing the sensation that “this will happen tomorrow, [in] the very near future.” Walker’s goal was a novel that felt logical and plausible, but didn’t distract with technology. So there you go, now you know.

Although I’ve read my fill of apocalyptic novels, I have a few that I still want to read. Both of these books portray events after a nuclear war ( what else? ). Pat Frank’s  Alas, Babylon , published in 1959, is considered a classic; as is, 1961’s Hugo award winner A Canticle for Leibowitz written by Walter M. Miller, Jr. My favorite that I have read is still Larry Niven’s classic story of a wayward comet, Lucifer's Hammer .