The Age of Miracles

Karen Thompson Walker

Random House Incorporated, 2012 - Fiction - 272 pages

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
People ∙ O: The Oprah Magazine ∙ Financial Times ∙ Kansas City Star ∙ BookPage ∙ Kirkus Reviews ∙ Publishers Weekly ∙ Booklist

With a voice as distinctive and original as that of The Lovely Bones, and for the fans of the speculative fiction of Margaret Atwood, Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles is a luminous, haunting, and unforgettable debut novel about coming of age set against the backdrop of an utterly altered world.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

“It still amazes me how little we really knew. . . . Maybe everything that happened to me and my family had nothing at all to do with the slowing. It’s possible, I guess. But I doubt it. I doubt it very much.”

On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 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.

Praise for The Age of Miracles
 
“A stunner.”—Justin Cronin
 
“A genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary, with impressive fluency and flair.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
 
“Gripping drama . . . flawlessly written; it could be the most assured debut by an American writer since Jennifer Egan’s Emerald City.”—The Denver Post
 
“If you begin this book, you’ll be loath to set it down until you’ve reached its end.”—San Francisco Chronicle
 
“Provides solace with its wisdom, compassion, and elegance.”—Curtis Sittenfeld

What people are saying

Review: The Age of Miracles

User Review  - Mark - Goodreads

I received a proof of the book and was particularly interested in reading it straight away as the concept of the Earth's rotation slowing down and its consequences on the human race sounded excellent ...

Review: The Age of Miracles

User Review  - Cathleen - Goodreads

4.5 stars. A story full of wonder and impact. This is a remarkable book, and I found myself enveloped right from the start. The premise is imaginative, the developments perceptive, and the narrator ...

About the author

Karen Thompson Walker is the author of The Age of Miracles, which was a New York Times bestseller. She was born and raised in San Diego and is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program.  A former editor at Simon & Schuster, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work--sometimes while riding the subway. She currently lives in Iowa with her husband. 

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Age of Miracles
• Author: Karen Thompson Walker
• Publisher: Random House Incorporated, 2012
• ISBN: 0812992970, 9780812992977
• Length: 272 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Coming of Age; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Science Fiction / General; Fiction / Visionary & Metaphysical