Book Review by Heidi Simmons
————————–
The Age Of Miracles
Karen Thompson Walker
Novel
————————–
Post-apocalyptic life and distopian world stories are a growing trend in young adult literature. These themes are popular with adults as well. The Age Of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (Random House, 272 pages) was not marketed and sold as a YA novel, though perhaps it should have been.
Eleven-year-old Julia narrates her story the day a global catastrophe is announced. It is not a natural disaster with injuries or a specific cataclysmic event, but rather an unexplained rotational slowing of the earth. Hardly noticeable at first, scientists do not know the cause and cannot give an explanation. And they most certainly do not have a solution.
The story is set in southern California as Julia starts the sixth grade. She is an only child. Her father is a distracted, although dedicated, gynecologist and obstritcian. Her mother is a stay-at-home mom, part time neurotic and teacher. Julia has a grandfather who is generous but paranoid. Over a course of one year, Julia shares the details of her life. Being eleven, she just barely understands anything about the world, other than being an expert in childhood angst. To be fair, her natural state of angst is set against the possibility of total global annihilation.
As the days get longer — up 72 hours, and the gravity gets more “gravitational” — hard to kick a soccer ball or do skateboard tricks — through Julia’s small world view we get the subtle and devastating effects on the world around her. People are falling apart emotionally and they suspect an epidemic of “gravity sickness.” There is political upheaval. There are food and gas shortages. Author Thompson Walker describes this well. Every chapter adds something to this slowly altering existence. The bougainvillea no longer flowers and finally dies, birds fall out of the sky, sheet metal is added to the house to prevent radiation poisoning from the longer sun exposure. These vivid and disconcerting elements are why I kept reading.
The world starts to divide into real-timers: those who want to keep a day measured by sunrise and sunset, and those who are clock-watchers — allowing the hour to distinguish day from a “night.” Neighbors turn on neighbors, people leave the city. There are earthquakes and fall-out shelters being built; however, all the utilities mostly stay on and the community’s infrastructure seems to function and the water remains potable.
Karen Thompson Walker delivers an authentic voice of a young girl. Hmmm, I wonder if she might have been one herself? Julia has a best friend who helps her cope with her folks and boys and school, like a good BFF should until — the friend moves to Utah with her big Mormon family for the end of the world! Now Julia must cope with all the challenges of adolescence all by herself. Gosh, why is that boy so mean at school and then nice at the park? If only her parents could understand how difficult it is in the sixth grade! Oh, her poor folks.
I kept waiting for the story to happen; for Julia to grow up; for the world to end. Something. But it doesn’t. In the final chapter, Julia is 23. It’s twelve years later and the world has not changed. Or if it has, Julia hasn’t noticed and offers no particular insight other than remembering the boy she liked and the mark they left in fresh cement. What?
If intentionally written as a young adult novel, I might have enjoyed this book more. Knowing I was going to spend the whole time in a child’s head might have prepared me better for the experience. The conditions of the changing earth were interesting and thought provoking. The barely mentioned geopolitical ideas were compelling. As a YA book, The Age of Miracles is simply a provocative setting for Julia’s coming of age story. As an adult novel, maybe it works best to think of it as a metaphor. Inevitably the world is slowly being altered. As sophisticated as we like to think we are, living in the age of miracles as it were, there are things we cannot change, and we still die. Or we must grow up and deal with it. And then die. Maybe the YA version is best.
