The Age Of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

The Age Of Miracles

by Karen Thompson Walker

Random House, 2012

ISBN: 978-0812992977

269 p.p.

When Julia wakes up one Saturday morning to learn that the Earth’s rotation has slowed, she has no idea what changes are in store for her and her little world. The friends she will lose. The wisdom she will gain. The obstacles in life she will have to surmount and courage she will show in getting over them.

The Age Of Miracles follows Julia as the effects of a slower rotating planet play out across California and the rest of the world. Told from her point of view in the not-too-distant future, the narrative is a reflection, a looking back on the changes that took place and the wisdom she has gained since then. With a sense of perspective, she conveys the story of her first lost love, her parents unraveling, and her loss of innocence.

Soon after the slowing, Julia’s mother contracts what they called the sickness, a mentally, emotionally, and physically debilitating lethargy that is quickly found emerging in patients up and down the West Coast. The country attributed the pandemic to changes in the Earth’s atmosphere as a result of the slowing, but the cause is irrelevant. Julia is unable to avoid worrying about her mother’s condition.

When her childhood best friend, Hanna, is taken away by her parents to live in a community of radicals living outside of the now outdated 24-hour clock, Julia faces the loss of her best friend. In her loneliness, she stumbles into a relationship with the boy of her dreams: Seth Moreno. But soon another man in her life throws everything out of order. Her father.

Having taken piano lessons at Mrs. Sylvia’s house across the street for years, Julia thinks she knows her neighbor well. But when she catches her father leaving the house for secret rendezvous with her piano instructor, everything she thought she knew falls apart. Why is her father cheating on her mother? Her ailing mother, no less! How long has this been going on? Should she tell her mom, or will this only cause her more pain?

Thrust into the adult world in this way, Julia is forced to deal with the issues of ended friendships, first loves, and crumbling family, all at the young age of thirteen.

She needs a miracle.

Does she ever get one? The answer is unclear. Julia is reunited with her friend but Hanna seems to have moved on from their past and wants nothing to do with Julia. Sylvia’s piano is crushed by a fallen tree that destroys her house and before long she moves away. Julia’s mother survives but her grandfather is found dead in a hidden backyard bomb shelter after an accidental fall. And the love of her young adult life, Seth, eventually contracts the sickness. He moves away to recover, but is never heard from again.

Julia survives. Her father remains at home. Her mother fights the sickness. Her town manages to make it through year after year while the days continue to increase in size. Are these the miracles we are meant to look for? Is the miracle in fact life itself and the ability to survive these ever changing conditions?

Thompson leaves us at the end of the novel with no solid answers. No one has flown in to save the day. The rotation does not miraculously speed up again and restore the planet to its natural pace.

Instead we wonder: What’s next for Earth? Will Julia survive it? And what exactly is this miracle we’re searching for? Have we yet to find it, or has it been with us all along?

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After getting her undergraduate degree in English and creative writing at UCLA, Karen Thompson Walker worked as a newspaper reporter before moving to New York to participate in Columbia University’s MFA program. After college, she took a job as an editor at Simon & Schuster. In the mornings, she would write bits and pieces of her first novel, The Age Of Miracles, before going off to work. She received the Sirenland Fellowship in 2011 and her 2012 TED talk focuses boldly on the power of fear. Walker now lives in Brooklyn with her husband.