The Age of Miracles - Hardcover

Thompson Walker, Karen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857207237 ISBN 13: 9780857207234

Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK, 2012

Synopsis

'It is never what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different - unimagined, unprepared for, unknown...'

What if our 24-hour day grew longer, first in minutes, then in hours, until day becomes night and night becomes day? What effect would this slowing have on the world? On the birds in the sky, the whales in the sea, the astronauts in space, and on an eleven-year-old girl, grappling with emotional changes in her own life..?

One morning, Julia and her parents wake up in their suburban home in California to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth is noticeably slowing. The enormity of this is almost beyond comprehension. And yet, even if the world is, in fact, coming to an end, as some assert, day-to-day life must go on. Julia, facing the loneliness and despair of an awkward adolescence, witnesses the impact of this phenomenon on the world, on the community, on her family and on herself.

About this title

Review

A beautifully observed coming-of-age tale in the great American tradition ... nimble, delicate and emotionally sophisticated --Edward Docx, Observer

Hauntingly believable ... an impressive and quietly terrifying book --Alison Flood, Sunday Times

A surprisingly quiet, tender book with which many will fall in love --Ed Wood, welovethisbook.com

A powerful, mesmerising read --Woman & Home

This is not a bombastic disaster movie in book form, but a precise, localised view of dramatic change ... Thompson Walker skilfully marries the epic and the everyday: her young female narrator and Middle American setting brought to mind Alice Sebold s The Lovely Bones --The Times

A luminous, magical coming-of-age novel --Marie Claire

Gripping from the word go --Easy Living

A brilliant tale of a youngster growing up under extraordinary circumstances --Heat

A staggeringly impressive debut --Reader s Digest

Stunning in its originality, devastating in execution. The Age of Miracles is one of the most exciting debuts I ve read --Vogue

A quietly powerful and original novel --Psychologies

I asked my editor if I could give this books 6 stars out of 5. My favourite book of the year so far --Sunday Express

The book that will make you look good on the bus 5 stars, --Heat

Blending global catastrophe with a touching coming of age story, Karen Thompson Walker has created a truly remarkable novel you won t be able to stop thinking about --Good Housekeeping

The Age of Miracles spins its glowing magic through incredibly lucid and honest prose, giving equal care and dignity to the small spheres and the large. It is at once a love letter to the world as we know it, and an elegy --Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

What a remarkable and beautifully wrought novel. In its depiction of a world at once utterly like and unlike our own, The Age of Miracles is so convincingly unsettling that it just might make you stockpile emergency supplies of batteries and bottled water. It also thank goodness provides great solace with its wisdom, its compassion, and the elegance of its storytelling --Curtis Sittenfeld, author of American Wife

Miracles indeed. Karen Thompson Walker s debut novel is a stunner from the first page an end-of-the-world, coming-of-age tale of quiet majesty. I loved this novel and can t wait to see what this remarkable writer will do next --Justin Cronin, author of The Passage

A genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and the surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair... her novel will remind many readers of Alice Sebold s 2002 novel The Lovely Bones... it, too, creates an elegiac portrait of an ordinary world, forever rocked by terrible events. Ms Walker has an instinctive feel for narrative architecture, creating a story, in lapidary prose, that moves ahead with a sense of both the inevitable and the unexpected... Ms Walker maps [the characters ] inner lives with such sure-footedness that they become as recognizable as people we ve grown up with... one of this summer s hot literary reads --Michiko Kakatuni, The New York Times

'This is not a bombastic disaster movie in book form, but a precise, localised view of dramatic change ... Thompson Walker skilfully marries the epic and the everyday: her young female narrator and Middle American setting brought to mind Alice Sebold s The Lovely Bones' --The Times

'A luminous, magical coming-of-age novel, set in a world where time becomes meaningless and the ordinary extraordinary' --Marie Claire

'Stunning in its originality, devastating in execution. The Age of Miracles is one of the most exciting debuts I've read' --Vogue

'A quietly powerful and original novel' --Psychologies

'I asked my editor if I could give this books 6 stars out of 5. My favourite book of the year so far' --Sunday Express

'The book that will make you look good on the bus' 5 stars --Heat

'A curious tale that s gripping from the word go' --Easy Living

'Blending global catastrophe with a touching coming of age story, Karen Thompson Walker has created a truly remarkable novel you won t be able to stop thinking about' --Joanne Finney, Good Housekeeping

'A perfectly contemplative read' --Cosmopolitan

'A powerful, unsettling but mesmerising read' --Woman & Home

'Vividly captures the changing world of a 10 year old girl, which is brilliantly mirrored by the apocalyptic changes in our world. An imaginative, haunting and gripping book by a very exciting debut author' --Observer

'A genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and the surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair... her novel will remind many readers of Alice Sebold's 2002 novel The Lovely Bones... it, too, creates an elegiac portrait of an ordinary world, forever rocked by terrible events. Ms Walker has an instinctive feel for narrative architecture, creating a story, in lapidary prose, that moves ahead with a sense of both the inevitable and the unexpected... Ms Walker maps [the characters'] inner lives with such sure-footedness that they become as recognizable as people we've grown up with... one of this summer s hot literary reads' ----Michiko Kakatuni, The New York Times

'A genuinely moving tale that mixes the real and the surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair... her novel will remind many readers of Alice Sebold's 2002 novel The Lovely Bones... it, too, creates an elegiac portrait of an ordinary world, forever rocked by terrible events. Ms Walker has an instinctive feel for narrative architecture, creating a story, in lapidary prose, that moves ahead with a sense of both the inevitable and the unexpected... Ms Walker maps [the characters'] inner lives with such sure-footedness that they become as recognizable as people we've grown up with... one of this summer s hot literary reads' --Michiko Kakatuni, The New York Times

About the Author

Karen Thompson Walker is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program. A former book editor, she wrote The Age of Miracles in the mornings before work. Born and raised in San Diego, California, she now lives in Brooklyn with her husband.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0857207237
• ISBN 13: 9780857207234
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384