Age of Miracles** By Karen Thompson Walker
New York: Random House 2012
ISBN: 978-0812992977 — Hardback 288 pgs. $26.00
Annotation: When the earth’s rotation slows—and the days begin to lengthen—eleven-year old Julia navigates a difficult passage in this coming-of-age novel.
Summary: This is an adult novel with huge appeal for teens because this audience LOVES dystopian fiction. Teens find an exploration of dystopian worlds infinitely fascinating. Told from the perspective of eleven-year old Julia, the reader learns almost immediately that the earth’s rotation is slowing. As a counter point, the government decides to adjust “clock-time” to correspond with the length of each day. Disturbing, unexplained events play out as the days continue to lengthen. The government is as stymied to explain the trajectory of events as is the scientific community. Still, these unsettling events are the extent of Julia’s experience as she must still navigate the customary terrain of a Southern California middle-class tween. The subtleties experienced by a youngster coming-of-age during an extraordinary time is the substantive text of the novel.
Evaluation: I’ve done some cursory exploration of dystopian fiction. Age of Miracles is one example of how a dystopian scenario might play out. Assessed from that perspective, I enjoyed reading the novel, but I’m not too terribly worried about the sky falling. Taking the science at face-value, I’m more interested in watching how Julia processes her world as a young tween. Her keen observations and sense of emerging self offer readers a singular hope in a bleak, unsettling world.
Karen Thompson Walker’s Website
Awards & Lists:
Booklist Editors’ Choice – Adult Fiction for Young Adults 2012
School Library Journal’s Adult Books 4 Teens: 2012
Named One of the Best Books of 2012 By: People ∙ O: The Oprah Magazine ∙ Financial Times ∙ Kansas City Star ∙ BookPage ∙ Kirkus Reviews ∙ Publishers Weekly ∙ Booklist
Rating Scale 1 – 10: 7
Genre: Adult Fiction with Teen Appeal, Dystopian, Coming of Age, Science Fiction
Appeal Factors:
Storyline is character-driven.
The book moves along at a measured pace.
Tone of the story is bleak, haunting, and thought-provoking.
Writing Style is compelling, descriptive, and engaging.
Booktalking Ideas:
I dig on the idea of a booktalk featuring dystopian fiction. I would target adults as well as teens as my audience. I would create a bookmark to highlight the booktalk titles.
Book Discussion Questions:
1. As readers, why do you think we’re drawn to stories about the end of the world? What special pleasures do these kinds of narratives offer? And how do you think this element works in The Age of Miracles?
2. Julia is an only child. How does this fact affect who she is and how she sees the world? How would her experience of the slowing be different if she had a sibling? How would her experience of middle school be different?
3. How much do you think the slowing alters Julia’s experience of adolescence? If the slowing had never happened, in what ways would her childhood have been different? In what ways would it have been the same?
4. Julia’s parents’ marriage becomes increasingly strained over the course of the book. Why do you think they stay together? Do you think it’s the right choice? How much do you think Julia’s mother does or does not know about Sylvia?
5. Julia’s father tells several crucial lies. Discuss these lies and consider which ones, if any, are justified and which ones are not. Is lying ever the right thing to do? If so, when?
6. How would the book change if it were narrated by Julia’s mother? What if it were narrated by Julia’s father? Or her grandfather?
7. Why do you think Julia is so drawn to Seth? Why do you think he is drawn to her?
8. Did you identify more with the clock-timers or with the real-timers? Which would you be and why?
9. The slowing affects the whole planet, but the book is set in southern California. How does the setting affect the book? How important is it that the story takes place in California?
10. How do you feel about the way the book ends? What do you think lies ahead for Julia, for her parents and for the world?
11. The slowing throws the natural world into disarray. Plants and animals die and there are changes in the weather. Did this book make you think about the threats that face our own natural world? Do you think the book has something to say about climate change?
12. If you woke up tomorrow to the news that the rotation of the earth had significantly slowed, how do you think you would respond? What is the first thing you would do?
(Questions from the author’s website.)
AMAZON Q & A with Karen Thompson:
Q. In The Age of Miracles, you envision a natural phenomenon that threatens the entire world. This “slowing” is global, yet you decided to focus on Julia. Why?
A. Julia’s voice–the voice of a young woman looking back on her adolescence–came into my head as soon as I had the idea of the slowing. It was the only way I could imagine writing the book. Adolescence is an extraordinary time of life, a period when the simple passage of time results in dramatic consequences, when we grow and change at seemingly impossible speeds. It seemed natural to tell the story of the slowing, which is partly about time, in the context of middle school. It was also a way of concentrating on the fine-grain details of everyday life, which was very important to me. I was interested in exploring the ways in which life carries on, even in the face of profound uncertainty.
Julia felt like a natural narrator for this story because she listens more than she speaks, and she watches more than she acts. I think the fact that Julia is an only child is part of why she’s so observant. Julia also places a very high value on her friendships, and is unusually attuned to the subtle tensions in her parents’ marriage, which increase as the slowing unfolds.
Q. The details of how such a slowing would affect us and our environment are rendered quite realistically. How did you get these details right?
A. No one knows exactly what would happen if the rotation of the earth slowed the way it does in my book, so I had some freedom. I did some research at the outset, but I came across many of my favorite details accidentally. Whenever I read an article that contained a potentially relevant detail–anything from sleep disorders, to new technologies for growing plants in greenhouses, to the various ways people and governments reacted to the financial crisis–I would knit it into the fabric of the book. After I finished the book, I had an astrophysicist read it for scientific accuracy, which was an extremely nerve-racking experience. I was relieved by how many of my details he found plausible, but made some adjustments based on what he said.
In general, I wanted my book to seem as real as possible. I recently read a Guardian interview with the Portuguese writer José Saramago, who said that his books were about “the possibility of the impossible.” He explained that even if the premise of a book seemed “impossible,” it was important to him that the development of that premise be logical and rational. That’s exactly the way I wanted The Age of Miracles to function.
Q. Like Julia, you grew up in Southern California, where natural disasters are always looming. Do you think this influenced you in writing of The Age of Miracles?
A. I grew up in San Diego on a cul-de-sac of tract houses much like the one where The Age of Miracles takes place. In most ways, California was a very pleasant place to grow up. But it could also be a little scary. I remember how the sky would sometimes fill with smoke during fire season, how the smoke hung in the air for days at a time, burning our throats and turning everything slightly orange. I remember the way the windows rattled at the start of every earthquake, and the way the chandelier above our dinner table would swing back and forth until the shaking stopped. I sometimes couldn’t sleep at night, worried that an earthquake or a fire would strike at night. But when I think of those years now, I realize that my novel grew partly out of my lifelong habit of imagining disaster.
If I’ve given the impression that I was constantly afraid as a child, that’s not right. In fact, one of the things I remember most vividly about living in California is the way we mostly ignored the possibility of danger. We always knew that the “big one”–the giant earthquake that scientists believe will one day hit the region–could strike at any time, but mostly we lived as if it never would. Life often felt idyllic: We played soccer, we went swimming, we went walking on the beach. A little bit of denial is part of what it means to live in California. Then again, maybe that’s also just part of being alive. I really wanted to capture that feeling in The Age of Miracles.
Read-alikes:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta
Divergent by Veronica Roth
The Fifth Wave by Rick Yancy
TAGS: dystopian fiction, coming-of-age stories, adult fiction, teen appeal, award winner
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