159. The Age of Miracles
Rating: ☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Author: Karen Thompson Walker
Genre: Fiction, Science Fiction, Young Adult
294 pages, published June 21, 2012
Reading Format: Audio Book
Summary
The premise of The Age of Miracles is that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. While the days and nights grow longer and longer, the world’s environment, including gravity and electro magnestism, are hugely impacted. When the worlds’ governments declare that they will keep the standard 24 hour daily calendar, even though days and nights no longer correspond to it, some people respond by becoming rebellious real-timers who are shunned and eventually ostracized. In this dystopian future, we follow the life of middle schooler Julia as she tries to cope not just with the impact of the slowing, but all of the ups and downs of the ordinary landscape of her life.
Quotes
“How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.”
“Some say that love is the sweetest feeling, the purest form of joy, but that isn’t right. It’s not love–it’s relief.”
“The only thing you have to do in this life is die,” said Mrs. Pinsky…”everything else is a choice.”
“Doesn’t every previous era feel like fiction once it’s gone?”
“We were, on that day, no different from the ancients, terrified of our own big sky.”
“This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove. Our first flaws were emerging, but they were being corrected. Blurry vision could be fixed invisibly with the magic of the contact lens. Crooked teeth were pulled straight with braces. Spotty skin could be chemically cleared. Some girls were turning beautiful. A few boys were growing tall.”
“It was that time of life: Talents were rising to the surface, weaknesses were beginning to show through, we were finding out what kinds of people we would be. Some would turn out beautiful, some funny, some shy. Some would be smart, others smarter. The chubby ones would likely always be chubby. The beloved, I sensed, would be beloved for life. And I worried that loneliness might work that way, too. Maybe loneliness was imprinted in my genes, lying dormant for years but now coming into full bloom.”
“Later, I would come to think of those first days as the time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and swine flu and killer bees. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.”
“I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.”
“Even beauty, in abundance, turns creepy.”
“And this one fact seemed to point to other facts and others still: Love frays and humans fail, time passes, eras end.”
“I liked the idea, how the past could be preserved, fossilized, in the stars. I wanted to think that somewhere on the other end of time, a hundred light years from then, someone else, some distant future creature, might be looking back at a preserved image of me and my father at that very moment in my bedroom.”
“A man should enjoy things if he can; he should spend his final days in the sun. Mine will be spent by a reading lamp.”
“Seth and I used to like to picture how our world would look to visitors someday, maybe a thousand years in the future, after all the humans are gone and all the asphalt has crumbled and peeled away. We wondered what thise visitors would find here. We liked to guess at what would last. Here the indentations suggesting a vast network of roads. Here the deposits of iron where giant steel structures once stood, shoulder to shoulder in rows, a city. Here the remnants of clothing and dishware, here the burial grounds, here the mounds of earth that were once people’s homes. But among the artifacts that will never be found – among the objects that will disintegrate long before anyone from elsewhere arrives – is a certain patch of sidewalk on a Californian street where once, on a dark afternoon in summer at the waning end of the year of the slowing, two kids knelt down together on the cold ground. We dipped our fingers in the wet cement, and we wrote the truest, simplest things we knew – our names, the date, and these words: We were here.”
My Take
The Age of Miracles has an interesting premise, i.e. what happens if the rotation of the earth begins to slow. While Thompson explores the real world ramifications of a slowing, most of her book is focused on the life of Julia, a California middle schooler who is coping with ordinary issues that face many 12 and 13 years old: the loss of friends as you move from one stage of growing up to the next, her parents’ estrangement, first love, social isolation, peer pressure, etc. These issues are handled with a deft touch and you do feel compassion for Julia as she tries to navigate the difficult world of pre-teen angst while the real world is busy falling apart. If found The Age of Miracles to be an enjoyable read, but without a great deal of lasting impact.
