The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker [Book]

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues.

– theageofmiraclesbook.com

The basis behind The Age of Miracles was intriguing right from the start.  It is the perfect type of “science fiction” for a literal person such as myself, who really can’t stand “science fiction”.  When it comes to the beloved “infinite frontier”, I just don’t give a shit.  I might watch Cosmos from time to time, but only to further relay my dissidence with the fact that we are absolutely nothing to this world, and mean absolutely nothing as well.  Sort of an anti-narcissitic view if you will (unless that makes me some sort of sick diluted narcissist for thinking this way, then so be it).  But this book was something different.  It takes the concept of what could happen to us as humans when the earth stops functioning as we are used to, and how seemingly normal ways of life can be completely turned around when we don’t know how to handle new and consistent change.

This book also does something brilliant as far as telling a “coming of age story” without sliding into the horrific oblivion of Young Adult novels out there that are plaguing our society with their bullshit supernatural redirect, and just plain terrible writing.  Karen Thompson Walker manages to tell a tale of a young woman who doesn’t quite understand the world as it functions on a normal basis, let alone when everything decides to slow down, leaving the entirety of Earth’s population in literal turmoil.  Everything around her is seemingly normal, with the troubles with boys and friends and senile grandparents, just as any young girl may have.  And now she has to deal with this shit?  It is another tail of a young woman who has to come to terms with herself and her surroundings in order to survive the madness.  But, she doesn’t necessarily have to kill everyone around her for the sake of other’s bemusement.

Walker has created a beautiful story that is in that could wonderfully fall under the reign of the likes of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.  Kaufman comes to mind simply because he takes simple ideas that are unfathomable, and most times impossible, but really makes you wonder what exactly would happen if said storyline were possible, and the effects it would have on the human psyche.  What if we could live in the mind of somebody else for 15 minutes?  What if we could completely erase somebody from our mind altogether?  And what would we do if we were forced to sustain 40 hours of daylight, followed by the same for the night?  What if everything we have ever known, which didn’t seem to great to begin with, was completely disfigured and distorted?  And the use of a young woman in this case is pretty brilliant when you starts to realize:  who the hell else sees the world in such a literal and sometimes dreary fashion?  The stereotypes of a teenaged middle class white girl are there for a reason, and this time around, the reason is the exploit the world when things fall into a complete and utter disarray.  And it is suffice to say that Karen Thompson Walker has put this subject matter on wax in a brilliant manner.