The Age of Miracles in DC Public Library

May 24, 2012 Meg - A Bookish Affair rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi-speculative, fiction

4.5 stars. This is what "The Age of Miracles" makes me think of:
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but with a whimper"
- From T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men

I kept thinking about the ending of this poem over and over and over again. I really like the poem and I really liked the book. Julia is 11 years old when the world starts to slow down. No one knows why it's happening. Days get longer and longer with no reason. Even thoug 4.5 stars. This is what "The Age of Miracles" makes me think of:
"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but with a whimper"
- From T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men

I kept thinking about the ending of this poem over and over and over again. I really like the poem and I really liked the book. Julia is 11 years old when the world starts to slow down. No one knows why it's happening. Days get longer and longer with no reason. Even though the entire world is changing, Julia is very much plagued with some of the things that so many of us face during middle school. First crushes, growing up, wanting acceptance, and friend issues all make an appearance here. It was interesting to see all of these relatively normal issues juxtaposed with the completely weird issue of the world slowing down.

This is definitely an original story. Although the main storyline is Julia's coming of age with the slowing of the world as a backdrop, the slowing of the world aspect was very interesting to me. I liked all of the detail and world building about what it would be like for things to end or slow down this way.

It was unclear to me as to whether Julia was narrating the story as an older person looking back or whether she was narrating it in the present. The points of view seemed to change a little bit depending on the topic being discussed but the prose throughout is very much mature and therefore may not have fit well with an 11 year old telling the story.

The ending was weird for me. I was expecting the world to end by the end of the book especially considering how quickly things happened in the first months of the slow down. The book ends and Julia is in her 20s and planning to go to college so it almost seems like after the slow down, nothing really happened. I wanted to know more about why the slow down slowed down. And this is where the whimper comes in...

Overall, I really enjoyed this book for its originality. I haven't read a lot of adult dystopian but I thought this one was very well done! ...more

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May 10, 2014 Tony rated it liked it

Shelves: teen, novels

I read this in two sittings when it first came out, enjoying it while reading, and then promptly forgetting it. I decided to listen to the audiobook version to try and recall both why it had held my attention and why it didn't linger. The answer to the former is a combination of the story's simple but strong premise, and Walker's writing. The answer to the latter is probably the overall tone or genre that it seems to fall into by the end.

The book is narrated by Julia, an adolescent girl living a I read this in two sittings when it first came out, enjoying it while reading, and then promptly forgetting it. I decided to listen to the audiobook version to try and recall both why it had held my attention and why it didn't linger. The answer to the former is a combination of the story's simple but strong premise, and Walker's writing. The answer to the latter is probably the overall tone or genre that it seems to fall into by the end.

The book is narrated by Julia, an adolescent girl living an unremarkable life in a cookie-cutter Southern California suburb. However, when the Earth's rotation slows down and creates days of variable length, her world is tossed into turmoil. It's a very simple tweak to our world, but one with severe consequences to health, food supply, electricity, and most importantly, relationships.

While the practical consequences of this are certainly interesting to think about, it's when tackling the relationships that the book really shines. Julia's parents don't have the strongest marriage, and the schism between "real time" and "clock time" people threatens to destroy all sense of community. While the social implications of this can get a touch heavy-handed (it can feel a little too much like an old Twilight Zone parable at times), when it comes to observing the one-to-one interactions between people, the book is spot on.

However, behind the bells and whistles of social upheaval, this is ultimately a fairly straightforward teen or tween book about the pains of being an adolescent. I never read Judy Blume, but it's what I image Judy Blume to be like. There are the popular girls at school who ignore Julia, there is the childhood best friend who suddenly drops her, her parents disappoint her in certain ways, and, of course, a love interest with a nice boy -- there's even a scene involving an awkward bra purchase. No matter how good a touch a writer has with this material, it's too familiar, and without the backdrop of this environmental disaster, it just wouldn't be very compelling. ...more

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Jul 04, 2012 Tracy rated it liked it

Shelves: read-it-and-was-okay, ya-apoc-fiction, i-ve-heard-so-much-about-you

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Julia is a pre teen adolescent living with her parents in southern California. Her dad is a doctor and (I believe) her mom is a drama teacher-know this, mom is nothing but drama in the book.
The days start to get longer and as the days get longer, Julia notices not only changes within her but with the people around her. As the book goes on, she realizes that things are not permanent, but they don't have to be miserable. People she thought were her friends, change dramatically. One refuses to sp ...more

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Sep 19, 2013 Maryann J-D rated it liked it

a nice book and an easy read, but I feel like it had potential to grow into something so much better than what it actually was.

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Aug 01, 2012 Alison rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, z-md-elibrary

Apparently this review did not actually save, which stinks because as I recall I actually wrote a good review for once. In any case, I quite enjoyed this. The basic conceit is that the Earth's rotation starts to slow, and so the days and nights get longer. The protagonist is a young teenage girl, and so we experience this change through her point of view, and it is intertwined with her own sort of normal teenage experiences. I quite enjoyed this - it was a very absorbing read. ...more

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