This is a combination dystopian/coming-of-age novel.
The story is told by an adult who is recalling the year she was 11, when the earth started slowing. That is, the days became longer until they were finally about 48 hours long and many animals and plants died. Food production was moved into greenhouses, and the additional energy consumption of these greenhouses led to electricity shortages and rolling blackouts.
A lot of folks, including folks in the book group I read this with, really liked this novel.
I didn't like this novel. I found the characterizations flat, or perhaps simply not original enough.
For instance, the one commenter noted that the California setting was informed by the author's own California childhood. I didn't derive a strong sense of place from this novel.
During the first year of the slowing, the narrator falls in love and observes her mother's illness and the stress it places on her parents' marriage.
I think I felt that the novel was full of recycled elements: I'd call it To Kill a Mockingbird meets Nevil Shute's On the Beach.
This is this author's debut novel, and I thought the prose was well written. I understand that she wrote the novel at home in the mornings before she went to work and on the subway. In short, it's a tremendous achievement that she was able to finish the novel. She says that it was inspired by learning the 2004 tsunami slowed the earth's rotation by a few microseconds. Of course, as global warming creates ever more extreme weather, it seems likely that something like that could happen again, perhaps periodically.
She says that she did not write the book about global warming and that it was not inspired by global warming, but it reminded me of the very great fear I have that we are not doing anything yet about global warming and there is no advantage to waiting.
The "age of miracles" to which the title refers is the onset of adolescence.
The story is told by an adult who is recalling the year she was 11, when the earth started slowing. That is, the days became longer until they were finally about 48 hours long and many animals and plants died. Food production was moved into greenhouses, and the additional energy consumption of these greenhouses led to electricity shortages and rolling blackouts.
A lot of folks, including folks in the book group I read this with, really liked this novel.
I didn't like this novel. I found the characterizations flat, or perhaps simply not original enough.
For instance, the one commenter noted that the California setting was informed by the author's own California childhood. I didn't derive a strong sense of place from this novel.
During the first year of the slowing, the narrator falls in love and observes her mother's illness and the stress it places on her parents' marriage.
I think I felt that the novel was full of recycled elements: I'd call it To Kill a Mockingbird meets Nevil Shute's On the Beach.
This is this author's debut novel, and I thought the prose was well written. I understand that she wrote the novel at home in the mornings before she went to work and on the subway. In short, it's a tremendous achievement that she was able to finish the novel. She says that it was inspired by learning the 2004 tsunami slowed the earth's rotation by a few microseconds. Of course, as global warming creates ever more extreme weather, it seems likely that something like that could happen again, perhaps periodically.
She says that she did not write the book about global warming and that it was not inspired by global warming, but it reminded me of the very great fear I have that we are not doing anything yet about global warming and there is no advantage to waiting.
The "age of miracles" to which the title refers is the onset of adolescence.
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