Book Review: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker (Random House; 288 pages; $26).

Forget armed conflict, viruses, terrorism and nuclear war. The people in Karen Thompson Walker’s elegiac, dark and gripping debut novel, “The Age of Miracles,” have other, more important things to worry about — namely, the effects of “the slowing” of Earth.

Walker, a former Simon & Schuster editor, combines science fiction and speculative fiction with a coming-of-age story. The effect is somber yet dazzling; I had never read anything like it.

(To read more of this book review that I wrote for the Mobile Press-Register, please go here.)

 

Spotlight on Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles

Today is the publication day for former Simon & Schuster editor Karen Thompson Walker’s debut novel The Age of Miracles.  Critics and readers are calling it THE summer read.  I wholeheartedly agree.

I have read it and am lucky enough to be reviewing this book for the Mobile Press-Register.  Walker combines science fiction and speculative fiction with a coming-of-age story.  The tale is really one huge flashback in which an adult woman named Julia narrates what happened the year she was 11.  Time slows.  At first, it is only minutes; then, it is hours; then, it is days; and, finally, it is weeks that are gained.  The world is in a tailspin, and so are its inhabitants.

Julia tries to navigate her way in a radically changed world.  It is not easy.  Walker takes a somber tone in this dark, gloomy, and very human story.  Julia’s account is an elegy of a lost way of life and of an irrevocably changed world.

The Age of Miracles is my recommendation for the week.  We are talking must-read here.