Ciska's Book Chest

The authorKaren Thompson Walker was born and raised in San Diego, California, where The Age of Miracles is set. She studied English and creative writing at UCLA, where she wrote for the UCLA Daily Bruin. After college, she worked as a newspaper reporter in the San Diego area before moving to New York City to attend the Columbia University MFA program.A former book editor at Simon & Schuster, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work—sometimes while riding the subway.She is the recipient of the 2011 Sirenland Fellowship as well as a Bomb Magazine fiction prize. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband. If you want more information on Karen Thompson Walker you can visit http://www.theageofmiraclesbook.com/The synopsisOn a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 11-year-old Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life—the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues. The reviewThis book caught my attention because of the beautiful cover combined with the very pretty and poetic title. When I read the synopsis I knew I had to have this book on my bookshelf.I read this book in 3 hours. Despite the fact a lot of things happening the story is not dark, depressive or difficult to read. The author does a great job in pulling you in. She starts when hardly anything is wrong and slowly lets the protagonist explain how things change making it something that can happen easily tomorrow. I also got the feeling she did enough research on the science parts to make it realistic. I read this book on a rainy summer day where the sky went black three times while reading this book giving the whole story an extra dimension.The characters are a bit vague. The story is jumping trough time and even though the protagonist tells about various experiences in her life I do not get a clear view of her. There are a view of her characteristics pointed out but she is very busy describing what is happening to the world. As you see her parents and her friends trough her eyes too you get little detail on them too. This makes it a bit hard to really connect to the characters but the whole happening is so overwhelming I did not really have a problem with that. If you really need character engagement to enjoy a book try and get it at the library cause it might not be for you but this book is surely worth a try. I very much enjoyed it and it gets an extra star for the very pretty cover.