The Age Of Miracles

Karen Thompson Walker

Simon & Schuster

Otago Daily Times, June 23rd 2012

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson-Walker is a beautiful coming of age story set against the backdrop of a world that is slowly but surely dying. At first nobody notices that the Earth is turning more slowly; a few minutes longer at sunset, a slight delay before the morning dawn.  But as the days inexorably lengthen and the hours of light and darkness extend, the effects of the slowdown make themselves felt.

It begins with the birds, falling from the skies as the subtle changes in gravity or in the magnetic field disrupt their ability to fly, and gradually encroaches on every aspect of life. Things fall faster, tides and weather change and crops begin to fail in the extended hours of darkness. 

Humanity does its best to adapt, all but a few reverting to ‘clock time’ and unmooring the rhythms of their daily lives from the cycle of light and darkness, but nothing can alter the physical and psychological changes that begin to tear communities and families apart. 

For Julia, the young girl through whose eyes we experience the story, this fragmentation coincides with her own transition into adolescence, the instability of external world reflecting and amplifying the uncertainty of her internal one. The familiarity of her own daily triumphs and disasters – the struggle for social acceptance, her parents faltering marriage and Julie’s own first experience of love and loss – are a tribute to something indomitable in the human spirit.  Come what may, nothing can undo the fact that somewhere, sometime, we were here.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/life-quickens-light-disappears