The Age of Miracles

Is Emily Janice Card's slow, measured narration a deliberate reflection of the slowing of the Earth's rotation that forms the backdrop of this novel? Card speaks even more slowly when she's portraying Real Timers, people who are trying to let their bodies' circadian rhythms adjust to the new longer days and nights, and it's incredibly effective. The story unfurls like one endless summer day as protagonist Julia enters her own age of miracles, balancing on the cusp of young adulthood and watching her family's ordinary dramas unfolding in extraordinary times. Card's mild, young voice suits Julia, and it softens some of the horrors she and everyone else on the planet experience--mysteriously dying birds and whales, the sun's radiation let loose, a wholly uncertain future. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

Starred review from January 30, 2012
In this gripping debut, 11-year-old
Julia wakes one day to the news that the earth’s rotation has started slowing. The immediate effects—no one at soccer practice; relentless broadcasts of the same bewildered scientists—soon feel banal compared to what unfolds. “The slowing” is growing slower still, and soon both day and night are more than twice as long as they once were. When governments decide to stick to the 24-hour schedule (ignoring circadian rhythms), a subversive movement erupts, “real-timers” who disregard the clock and appear to be weathering the slowing better than clock-timers—at first. Thompson’s Julia is the perfect narrator. On the brink of adolescence, she’s as concerned with buying her first bra as with the birds falling out of the sky. She wants to be popular as badly as she wants her world to remain familiar. While the apocalypse looms large—has in fact already arrived—the narrative remains fiercely grounded in the surreal and horrifying day-to-day and the personal decisions that persist even though no one knows what to do. A triumph of vision, language, and terrifying momentum, the story also feels eerily plausible, as if the problems we’ve been worrying about all along pale in comparison to what might actually bring our end. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME Entertainment.