The Age of Miracles

The Age of Miracles is making a big splash for being such a quiet little book. When I started to read it, I was hooked by the innocent voice and the strange things which puzzled that voice. It's such an interesting idea - the idea of the earth slowing down and time being prolonged.

Shortly into the

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novel I realized this is not your typical science fiction, or even post-apocalyptic type of book. This is the book that shows us the other side, you know.. the side we never see in movies. While we're used to seeing the astronauts out to save the world, or those last minute government decisions, very rarely do we get to see the side of the average Joe and how he, his family, his neighborhood, and his community handles a crisis like this. And the narrator of this story professes a very similar sentiment.

There are no big disasters in The Age of Miracles. There are just small things that get a little larger - things that you wouldn't expect to bother you, but ... give them enough space and it's clear that they just might after all. I was sincerely moved as I journeyed through this story with its young narrator, and I found myself wondering what would happen if something similar happened to us.

There are no real answers in the book, so don't go into them expecting to receive a clear-cut one (hear that, Stephen King? No aliens needed). Rather, I think this book is made all the stronger for not having one because it opens the imagination and gives the reader something to think about, long after the pages are closed.

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What if we’re preparing for the wrong disaster? What if it isn’t global warming that spells doom for our planet but something altogether different? These are the questions posed by Karen Thompson Walker in her very intriguing debut novel. It’s also the coming of age story of the eleven year

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old narrator, Julia, who is suffering from sixth grade angst that leaves her feeling isolated and lonely.

Right from the first page, Walker uses foreshadowing in a way that lets the reader know that something incredibly dire is about to be imparted:

”We didn’t notice right away. We couldn’t feel it. We did not sense at first the extra time, bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath skin. We were distracted back then by weather and war. We had no interest in the turning of the earth. Bombs continued to explode on the streets of distant countries. Hurricanes came and went. Summer ended. A new school year began. The clocks ticked as usual. Seconds beaded into minutes. Minutes grew into hours. And there was nothing to suggest that those hours, too, weren’t still pooling into days, each the same fixed length to every human being.” (Page 3)

But what happened is defined by Walker as “the slowing,” a definite slow down in the rotation of the earth. Instead of each day being 24 hours long, it was somehow lengthening, the days and nights were growing longer and longer. This had implications for gravity and the environment. The growing of the food we take for granted was somehow, suddenly, not a given any more.

In the meantime, while the world adjusts to the new normal, Julia is trying to understand the world of middle school, while her mother is overcome with panic about ”the slowing,” and her father is, curiously, seen with another woman.

I’ve always admired people with active imaginations, maybe because I’m mostly devoid of this trait. Karen Thompson Walker has imagination in spades. And while her short staccato sentences initially successfully created that sense of doom, I found this YA writing style tiresome. This is a debut novel with the kind of flaws that you would expect in a first time effort, but hints that this author will be one to watch. I’m not usually a reader of dystopian fiction, yet I was drawn into the narrative; so a mixed bag. But that’s me. See for yourself.

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I LOVED this book. It was not perfectly perfect....the author couldn't quite decide if this should be mainly a coming of age story, or a "end of the world (as we know it)" disaster story, or a story about coming of age during the end of the world story. However, it's her first novel, so I'm more

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than willing to cut her some slack. The book is told through the eyes of a 6th grade girl. One day, she and the rest of the world are told that the rotation of the earth has been slowing down. No real reason is ever found for this, but the phenomenon continues. Days become progressively longer....30 hours....40 hours....etc. Ms Walker brings up fascinating points I never would have thought of: is gravity changed? Does society stick to 24-hour clock time for business hours, school, etc. since no two days are exactly the same length, or try to adapt to the changing hours of sunlight? What is "the wheat point"? What foods will continue to grow and which will die? How do animals respond? I LOVED thinking about these things as our narrator revealed them in an everyday sort of way. Would there be seasonal-affective mood disorders? Well, you get the idea. Again, it's not a perfect book, but it was fascinating to me and urge anyone with overactive imaginations and curiosity to give it a try.

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This short debut novel presents a fascinating scenario, that of the earth's rotation exponentially slowing so that each period between sunrise and sunset gets longer, days and nights lengthening. Juxtaposed with this global cataclysm is coming of age of our narrator Julia, a more personal, though

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equally disastrous event in her eyes.

The science behind such a scenario could make for a "World Without Us" type book, but is mainly glossed over here. Disruptions to plant and animal life cycles play background roles, enough to unsettle the characters, but remaining free from any analysis. This is to be expected as this novel is clearly not science fiction.

What is surprising is the equally glossy treatment of the coming of age story. Julia is slow to develop, gets picked on, gets ignored as her former friends sexually mature. The events of the narrative separate her from her best friend. Her parents' marriage grows more strained due to internal and external friction.

I wanted to like this more, but I felt like it wasn't finished. Both tracks, the science and the personal, needed to be more fully fleshed out. With the disappointment in the treatment of the plot, I was hoping for more dexterous writing, but was left feeling rather ambiguous by the author's style.

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As this post-apocalyptic coming-of-age story begins, eleven-year old Julia is a typical kid living in suburban California, struggling with junior high school and dreaming from afar of one boy in particular. Through her eyes we see the effects of a slowing of the earth’s rotation, adding

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noticeably to the minutes in each day, so that within a few months each day/night period increases to 30, then 40, then 50 or more hours long. The most interesting aspect of this is the divergence between those people who attempt to maintain a day/night schedule reflecting the increasing size of light and dark periods, hoping their circadian rhythms will adjust quickly enough, and those who obey the government and revert to a strict 24-hour day/night schedule, in which each day’s pattern of daylight and darkness varies. As the rotation slows further, this results in people not seeing daylight for “days” on end. Tidal highs and lows become more extreme. Longer light and dark periods bring increasing extremes in temperatures, and planetary and atmospheric magnetic fields shift, causing die-offs of birds, marine mammals, and crops. Human psychology and physiology begin to falter, and the best the characters can hope for is to adapt, whether through quick evolution or the development of food stuffs which will grow without regular sunlight. Rightly so, these attempts are presented as ineffective in the short time available.

There are some interesting questions raised here, but as a whole I found it hard to believe the effects of this fast a change wouldn’t be much, much worse. Perhaps because the story is told from a young girl’s point of view, the extremity of the human situation here never seems really terrifying, and the story, while depressing, doesn’t have the emotional wallop it could have had.

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I’m all for books about the end of the world, and everything that comes with that sort of exciting situation in fiction, but The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker was so much more than that. In her debut, the rotation of the Earth has begun to slow down and with it come the changes to the

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environment: the days continuously grow longer, tide levels increase, gravity changes, birds fall from the sky… Then comes the fear so deeply rooted in human nature: paranoia, chaos, and panic. The main character, Julia, watches as neighbors turn on each other, others fall ill to “the syndrome”, and food supplies grow smaller. It’s all very tumultuous and, perhaps with any other author, everything that takes place in The Age of Miracles could be too much; it could overwhelm the core of the novel. However, Karen Thompson Walker proved more than capable of writing a subtle, quiet, and very personal story amidst all the chaos.

Though technically under the adult fiction category, The Age of Miracles has a lot of crossover appeal for any young adult readers. Karen Thompson Walker’s prose is accessible and it offers depth in its themes and characters. As the world changes around her, much stays the same in Julia’s life: she’s a twelve year old girl enduring the ups and downs of friendships, crushing on boys, figuring out where she fits in at school, and dealing with the changes in her family. The fact that Karen Thompson Walker explored the themes of coming of age made this book so much more relatable. Yes, the world is falling apart, and it was easy to get wrapped up in those elements of the story, but Julia’s uncertainty as she grows up is universal and it’s what truly makes The Age of Miracles a haunting and gripping novel.

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The narrator relates the story of her early-adolescent years, which coincides with the beginning of Earth's spin slowing. This coming-of-age story set in a less-than-violent apocalyptic environment seemed full of possibilities.

The story reads as though the Earth's slowing spin will be the main

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narration, with the narrator simply commenting on people's reactions. But when the reader finds that the author never makes it to narrator's present time, one finds that it is just a generic coming-of-age story. The story does focus a little bit on the psychology, individually and culturally, of the slowing, as well as infrastructure adjustments; however, these almost seem like asides that wouldn't impact the memories of the narrator. Or maybe it's only because the "memories" are being related by a youth that they seem so unimportant. Additionally, since the story never reaches the narrator's present, there seems to be a lack of climax or ending.

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Growing up is hard enough when you are 12 years old, facing all the usual concerns of dealing with parental control issues, social cliques at school, body image worries, and unrequited first love. So, what if you wake up one day and find that the planet you live on has suddenly—and quite

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mysteriously—started rotating on its axis at a progressively slower rate than usual, altering virtually every other certainty in your life? What you have is the plot of ‘The Age of Miracles’, Karen Thompson Walker’s compelling and highly imaginative debut novel.

At its core, this is a coming-of-age story combined with end-of-the-world science fiction. Although I am not usually an ardent admirer of either genre, the author manages to weave these themes together so seamlessly that the result was a genuine pleasure to read. In the character of Julia, Walker has created a heroine who feels and sounds quite real, if a bit too precocious at times. Both the myriad joys and despairs that Julia experiences are conveyed in ways that are at once subtle and profound, leaving the reader with a compassionate portrait of an “Everygirl” who ultimately comes to stand for the entire human race.

At first, I thought that calling a story so sad and ultimately devoid of hope ‘The Age of Miracles’ was a curious choice. After further reflection, however, I think that is a perfect title. At one level, as the author makes clear, a person’s middle school years are indeed a time of miracles and wonders, when the physical and mental transformations that accompany the transition from childhood to adulthood take place. At another level, though, is the irony of living at a time when mankind has produced so many miraculous inventions and discoveries, but is unable to do anything to arrest its own grindingly painful demise. Indeed, the title is a brilliant metaphor for everything that is so appealing about this well-written book.

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The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel, is aimed primarily at the Young Adult market that has come to be so dominated by teen and near-teen female readers. Sadly, boys, who have only themselves to blame for the comparative lack of attention from publishers and writers they get,

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are not offered nearly the choices and numbers available to readers of the opposite sex. That said, The Age of Miracles might just appeal to both sexes, and it is certainly more worthy of their attention than the never-ending stream of vampire and witch novels that claim everyone’s attention these days.

Walker actually makes her young readers think. Her story might appear to be a straightforward one at first glance, but it leaves room for readers to decide for themselves the appropriateness of Julia’s actions and whether they might have handled things differently. Julia is a normal sixth-grade girl. She is growing up, and is suffering the usual insecurities, doubts, and embarrassments that are part of the whole coming-of-age process. Unfortunately for her and her friends, however, they are coming of age just when the world seems to be dying of old age.

It has finally become common knowledge that the earth’s rotation is slowing down and that the practice of dividing days into 24-hour periods less and less reflects reality. As the length of time separating periods of darkness and light steadily increases, and people realize that nothing can be done to stop the process, everything Julia has previously taken for granted about her life starts to fall apart. Food supplies are threatened; astronauts are stranded in space; birds are falling from the sky; some take to the desert to await the end of the world; and Julia catches her father in a devastating lie.

Strange and scary this is, Julia so seamlessly incorporates all of it into her growing-up process that it begins to seem normal to her. She still, after all, has to cope with the pain of losing her old girl friends to their new best friends; a new relationship with her first serious boyfriend; the knowledge that her parents are more fallible than she ever knew; and imagining her place on a planet whose long term future is far from assured. Julia and her new boyfriend Seth are there for each other just when everyone else seems to have forgotten them.

That relationship leads to one of the more moving final paragraphs of a book I have encountered in a long while. The Age of Miracles is, almost by definition of its genre, not likely to impact adult readers the way it will move younger ones and should not be judged by adult reader standards. But do the young readers in your family a favor – steer them towards this one if they will let you.

The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel, is aimed primarily at the Young Adult market that has come to be so dominated by teen and near-teen female readers. Sadly, boys, who have only themselves to blame for the comparative lack of attention from publishers and writers they get, are not offered nearly the choices and numbers available to readers of the opposite sex. That said, The Age of Miracles might just appeal to both sexes, and it is certainly more worthy of their attention than the never-ending stream of vampire and witch novels that claim everyone’s attention these days.

Walker actually makes her young readers think. Her story might appear to be a straightforward one at first glance, but it leaves room for readers to decide for themselves the appropriateness of Julia’s actions and whether they might have handled things differently. Julia is a normal sixth-grade girl. She is growing up, and is suffering the usual insecurities, doubts, and embarrassments that are part of the whole coming-of-age process. Unfortunately for her and her friends, however, they are coming of age just when the world seems to be dying of old age.

It has finally become common knowledge that the earth’s rotation is slowing down and that the practice of dividing days into 24-hour periods less and less reflects reality. As the length of time separating periods of darkness and light steadily increases, and people realize that nothing can be done to stop the process, everything Julia has previously taken for granted about her life starts to fall apart. Food supplies are threatened; astronauts are stranded in space; birds are falling from the sky; some take to the desert to await the end of the world; and Julia catches her father in a devastating lie.

Strange and scary this is, Julia so seamlessly incorporates all of it into her growing-up process that it begins to seem normal to her. She still, after all, has to cope with the pain of losing her old girl friends to their new best friends; a new relationship with her first serious boyfriend; the knowledge that her parents are more fallible than she ever knew; and imagining her place on a planet whose long term future is far from assured. Julia and her new boyfriend Seth are there for each other just when everyone else seems to have forgotten them.

That relationship leads to one of the more moving final paragraphs of a book I have encountered in a long while. The Age of Miracles is, almost by definition of its genre, not likely to impact adult readers the way it will move younger ones and should not be judged by adult reader standards. But do the young readers in your family a favor – steer them towards this one if they will let you.

Rated at: 4.0

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Lackluster ending to an otherwise interesting book.

I am just not sure how to evaluate this book. I enjoyed reading it, but I don't agree with all the absolute raves, and I fear I'm missing something. Its mixture of apocalyptic SF novel and coming-of-age story didn't quite work for me. The SF is the gradual slowing of the earth's rotation, leading

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to longer days and nights, the death of birds and food crops, radiation hazards and the inevitable conflict among humans about how to handle it all. The coming of age is narrator Julia's, an an ordinary 11-year-old thinking about things like lost friendships, first bras and first boyfriends.

It reads like a YA novel and has no inappropriate content; I wonder why it was marketed to adults as a literary novel. I only admired the writing at the very end, when the description of a dying planet was sad and chilling and beautiful. Otherwise, I was not deeply engage. I can see that the author was trying to juxtapose the ordinary with th extraordinary, but the ordinariness overwhelmed me.

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With the slowing of the Earth's rotation around the sun and days getting longer, Karen Thompson Walker's first novel invites the reader into a story of both fascinating and frightening possibilities. The nagging "could-this-ever-happen" question combines with a style of writing that keeps the pages

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turning. The unique premise of the book promises to be intriguing to a wide audience.

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I'm having a hard time reviewing this novel. At some points in the book I was eagerly lapping the pages up ...other times...not so much. It was one of those books that I found myself speeding through parts to get to the parts that kept me riveted and wanting more. In the end though, I just couldn't

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rate it a 5 star as there were to many times I set it aside. Wonderful book but only at scattered times the rest of the time...a yawner.

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This is a book about a natural disaster. But it is a rather slow disaster. The slowing Earth wreaks havoc with nature and causes all sorts of problems but there is no yelling and running. There is nothing to escape from. It is the kind of thing you can't even see. So people have time to think and

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ponder instead of just react. You see how they respond when their world slowly starts to fall apart around them, when there is no enemy to fight, when there is not even an explanation for what is happening. As the natural world starts to change society changes with it. As people try to make sense of it and the government tries to hold things together you can see people turn on some and come together with others, and how the stress illuminates and exacerbates problems that were already there along with creating new ones. And all of these things are seen through the eyes of a girl who is just trying to grow up. So the book ends up being about the disaster, about the lives and relationships of the people and about how society, government and individuals deal with a crisis, with a little coming-of-age thrown in. Since the story is told from the perspective of the girl that the narrator was it has a specific focus. To her the immediate consequences with friends and family are more important than the bigger picture so that is more of what we see. It is very easy to read so the story, although it has a leisurely pace, goes quickly. The end does leave you wondering. But not in a bad, the author didn't finish the book way. I can't even tell you exactly what I liked about this book. I just found it very enjoyable to read.

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Weakly science fictional and so bloody boring. Dreamy, dopey prose that did nothing for me except make me feel like my time was being wasted.

What I like about his book was the slowness of the catastrophe. You have a post-apocalyptic world that at first pretty much goes on as normal and then gradually unravels as the world slows and the days get longer and longer. We see this through the eyes of an 11 year girl. Julia is a quiet girl

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dealing with normal pre-teen things - friends, family, school, and boys - with the added stress of watching the whole world fall apart around her.

Having this one point of view made the story both frustrating and the story more realistic for me. Frustrating because I really wanted to know how the slowing down of the earth was affecting other parts of the world and we only get glimpses of this from what future Julia, who is narrating the story, tells us. But it did make things more real and frightening seeing it all from Julia's perspective. You get to know the people around her - family, friends, and neighbors - and therefore, it was more heartbreaking when awful or sad things happened to those people.

This post-apocalyptic story might not move quickly or have a ton of action, but the slow catastrophe is just as (and maybe more) frightening and sad.

ARC provided through NetGalley.

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I felt this story moved pretty slowly but the funny thing is that it was okay because it went along with the story line. As the earth starts to slow...the story moves slow with it. This wasn't a boook I had to read every day to find out what will happen next. I felt it picked up when Grandpa went

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missing and more so Julia & Seth became close. The end leaves you hanging a bit but that may mean book #2.

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A scifi premise enhances but doesn’t overpower this character rich story that’s impossible to put down

Earth’s rotation is slowing, days and nights are lengthening, natural disasters are increasing, and in this newly unpredictable world people are still living their lives while adjusting as

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best they can, including Julia, the narrator, who is recounting her thoughts and experiences as an eleven year old girl coping with a lost friendship, a first crush and the deterioration of her parent’s marriage when the changes begin. Initially the longer periods of darkness are most frightening, but then it’s the long, hot radiation filled days. Powerful and erratic tides have washed out all the expensive beach front homes in Julia’s California town, knocking down walls and depositing sand and sea creatures. A disruption in the magnetic field means that auroras, with their pulsating waves of green light, are no longer confined to polar regions, they now stretch all the way to the equator.

When scientists announce Earth’s slowing rotation most people react with panic, but everyone panics differently. Julia’s best friend Hanna is a Mormon and her family flees to Utah believing they know where Jesus will soon ascend, which leaves Julia feeling like she’s lost a limb. Hanna comes back in a few weeks, but the friendship doesn’t survive, more a victim of the shifting alliances of adolescence than the result of cataclysmic world events. Julia is left to eat her lunch alone in the library until her crush on Seth, a skateboarding loner, turns into her first experience with love and she has someone to explore and challenge the brave new world with.

The strange and changing circumstances they confront mean that at first people don’t know when they should go to school or leave for work, since light and dark periods are no longer predictable. Soon, however, most world governments agree that the economic markets need stability so it would be best if everyone lives by the old 24 hour “clock time” no matter where the sun is in the sky. Most people comply, but this is America so others rebel and try to adapt to the new day length, some moving off the grid and forming their own isolated real time colonies in the desert. The real-timers who stay are seen as dangerous and are ostracized, including Julia’s former piano teacher, a free-spirit who lives next door, and the friendly, formerly tolerated counter-culture couple down the street.


The Age of Miracles has a science fiction-like premise, but it’s scifi only in the way the Time Traveler’s Wife is. Set in our present time, it’s a beautifully written, deeply imagined, character-based coming of age story, filled with ordinary people dealing with extraordinary circumstances.

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A young adolescent girl, named Julia, experiences the awakening of her life in a world that is slowly dying. This is a great tale of what if the Earth's rotation starts to slow down. The days and nights grow longer. Sunlight or darkness all over the world 24 hours at a time, then weeks at a time,

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even months. How would the cycle of life on Earth be effected. The life of a young girl and her family becomes bleaker as the slowing advances dramatically turning hours into days, then weeks of darkness and light. Can Julia and her mother and father adapt? As everything changes around them, they try to change to meet the extremes of a dying world. Can what has occurred be undone? There will still be loss. There will still be regret, but will there still be hope. Can anything survive? Will Julia still experience love? Will families survive intact or be torn apart by the change. Will anything survive beyond the slowing. Book provided for review by Random House.

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I love when books can surprise you. I had a general idea of what to expect with Karen Thompson Walker's meandering, character and thought-driven novel about the end of the world, but I had no idea how bittersweetly she could spin this science fiction-adjacent tale of change, hope, young love, and

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death. I somehow assumed that this thoughtful exploration of the Earth's "slowing" would be a young-adult effort, but though protagonist and narrator Julia is a preteen, The Age of Miracles should not be confused for a simple young-adult story; don't be deceived as I was. Karen Thompson Walker proves herself more than adept at crafting a unique, easily-envisaged scenario in which for her characters to live or die here, and it is contemplatively engaging from the get-go. Though this is a debut author, there is clearly a lot of talent at play within this new author's fertile and expansive imagination — this is one novelist whom I will be sure to watch in the future.

I was struck by the author's writing within pages. Simple and spare, Walker and Julia are gifted with an easy but strong voice, alive with imagery. Walker has a gift for striking descriptions and a unique way with words, one easily lent to creating atmosphere and tension within the novel (from the ARC, page 8: "We did not sense at first the extra time, bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath skin.") Her style fits this loosely apocalyptic story; the focus is not on the extreme events that happen as a result of the slowing (like "solar superstorms" or "gravity sickness"), nor in finding/explaining the cause for the change, but rather on the effects of the aforementioned on Julia and her family. As the world and the things taken for granted fluctuate and stretch, so too do the inner lives and previously unassailable facts of life for Julia, her father and mother.

Julia grows up, and into her role as narrator, quite fast in a world where "dark days" and "white nights" are the norm, and her character is neither stunted nor fully-dimensional. Hampered, perhaps, by the very short length of this novel (only 212 pages in ARC form), I never quite connected to Julia. I was curious about whether the cards would fall as I predicted, but I never fully invested in her as character. Like the particularly apt reference to the Gary Paulsen novel Hatchet and akin to its protagonist Brian, young Julia finds her way alone in an unfamiliar, and hostile world. I rooted for her in her suburban catastrophes; I just didn't love her. All the characters, from dad Joel to hippie Sylvia, feel sketched-out, rather than fully drawn. Despite this, I was fully involved in the story unfolding throughout The Age of Miracles - the steady stream of new revelations, the twists and turns of the more mundane plotlines and above all, Thompson Walker's inimitable prose, kept my attention firmly affixed to the page.

Though quite short and not completely perfect, The Age of Miracles is a bittersweet and worthy addition to the science fiction/apocalyptic genre. Karen Thompson Walker's foray into writing is largely a success on many counts - it is original and compelling and distinctly written. It is, I hope, a pleasant harbinger of more to come from the debut novelist. I will definitely be tuning in as well as going forth and recommending this book for those seeking a slower-paced, more introspective take on the end of the world.

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I read a lot of books, and this one really impressed me. It was original, creative and beautifully told. I was drawn into the story from the start. I loved how the author would be telling parts of the story and then would include a foreshadowing of what the future holds...that really kept me

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turning pages fast.
This is the story of 12 year old Julia, who wakes up one morning to discover along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the Earth has gradually begun to slow. Each day that passes, the length of the day grows slightly longer. At one point, the days have swelled to 48 hours and more...
What makes this story so compelling is that Julia, who is in middle school, is struggling to fit in with her peers, her parent's marriage is strained, and her once best friend decides their friendship is not worth it. Meanwhile, the entire story is taking place as the world is slowing deteriorating due to the increased daylight and long, freezing nights.
My only criticism is that I wanted more closure at the end of the novel. But in a way, leaving questions for the readers as to what happens to some of Julia's friends and how exactly this catastrophe plays out, gives the novel a haunting, unsettling feeling that keeps you thinking long after it has ended.
This is the author's debut novel. I can't wait to read more from her. She is truly gifted and the story is mesmerizing. I highly recommend this book to young adult and older.

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Two great tropes that taste great together: "the end of the world as we know it" and "coming of age as a sudden outsider." All the birds die off, you can't play soccer any more because gravity is too darn strong, and your friends become weirdo sexpots overnight. That pretty much describes

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adolescence.

Age of Miracles is a good read if you don't think too hard about the science behind it. In fact, I think the science is beside the point, somewhat. The narrator is sympathetic as a tween, but when I realized she hadn't changed much by the time she reached adulthood, I felt a little icky about her.

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Inexplicably, a "slowing" occurs. The Earth's rotation decelerates and sunlight and nighttime become unbalanced. The government encourages its citizens to keep to "clock" time, rather than the natural tendancy to keep to circadian rhythms based on the presence of natural light. The author imagines

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a very interesting dystopian reality where panic and sickness spread and social interactions are tested. The novel focuses on young twelve-year-old Julia, who tries to be strong in the midst of such chaos, even as her family and friendships are unraveling around her. To me, I would have preferred a grittier adult perspective to perhaps add more drama; the novel definitely has a young adult feel to it. But it's engaging and wonderfully written in a subtle sort of way.

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One day, the world realizes the days and nights are growing longer, the periods between sunrise and sunset changing. Initially (and later) referred to as the slowing, scientists scramble to discover why the earth’s rotation has changed. Told from the point of view of sixth grader Julia, this

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story is unsettling, reflective and poignant all at once. Julia and her parents live in California, leading uneventful , normal lives until one Saturday morning when the news of the slowing is released. Julia continues to go to school, soccer practice and friends’ houses, following the mandated regular 24 hour clock schedule. As the days continue to lengthen, people leave town for colonies that will exist off grid, greenhouses pop up in backyards, and emergency stores are purchased. Because Julia is a middle-schooler, we see things through a narrator’s very youthful eyes. It’s more unsettling to have her best friend Hanna return from Utah a different person than wondering who goes out during all the daylit nights. She has a crush on Seth Moreno, trouble at the school bus stop, doesn’t know when to buy a bra…Julia’s worries mirror her age realistically and the unnerving news we read between the lines doesn’t bode well for most of the planet. Even though Julia is young, this is a sort of a grown-up version of Life As We Knew It, with similar coming of age themes during the time of a cataclysmic event. I was immediatley riveted by the story and managed to not read the end first! I was well rewarded with a great debut by Karen Thompson Walker.

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