The Age of Miracles

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was middle school, the age of miracles, the time when kids shot up three inches over the summer, when breasts bloomed from nothing, when voices dipped and dove. Julia is eleven, going on twelve and like every California girl in middle school, worries about puberty, boys, homework - but never about if the earth's rotation would slow to a crawl. Soon nights are longer, days shorter, the landscape - scorched, birds fall from the sky and humans begin to feel the loss of equilibrium. Julia's mother becomes a hoarder of emergency supplies and food and her father stays away from home for long periods of time. In the middle of all this fear and upheaval, Julia falls in love.

I agree with a few other reviews that suggest this book would be better billed for a young adult audience - even the cover, to me, screams YA. At some parts the writer gives it a dreamy quality, glossing over the scientific reasons of the slowing and focusing on family and peer relationships. Regardless, it was an interesting book, dystopian in nature - even at the end you're not sure if earth will continue with some kind of life.

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