Those opening lines to The Age of Miracles introduce you to Julia, a sixth grader, who narrates for us and let's us see the new world through her eyes. What was once a twenty-four hour day is no more. The earth is slowing and the news people go crazy. Julia's mother is in a frenzy, her father isn't fazed. It's interesting to learn how various people, teachers, the school, neighbors,etc. react. Amidst the new trauma, Julia, at age eleven, is trying to survive pre-teen stuff, puberty, boys, and life.
The book blurb uses the words haunting and luminous. I agree. I loved this book and read it in one weekend, with a Wow as it ended. This portrait of a family against a backdrop of uncertainty, an altered world, is gripping. Folks decide if they are going to live by the twenty four hour clock, or go off time - just live with the sun rise and set and that changes daily. Sometimes there's darkness right in the middle of a day. It's unsettling and does make one think about the future, our planet, and life in general.
The Age of Miracles is well written and engaging with a light touch, humor, and drama. It's a quick engaging read - written with a deft touch. I'm jealous of the writer's skill.
Here's another excerpt (p. 29): Later I would come to think of those first days as the time when we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layers, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and swine flu. But I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown.
