The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

I usually check Amazon for new books and books about to be published. Having done so I was familiar with this book when I saw it at the library last week. Knowing that the main character was a twelve year old girl I picked it up for either my daughter or wife to try.

As these things happen though, I found myself tired of the LBJ biography I am reading, a great book but did Caro have to write them so long, needing a break from David Copperfield, and caught up on The New Yorker, so I picked this up and read the synopsis on the book jacket.

Turns out this book has a bit of an end of the world plotline and I have a hard time resisting those so I picked it up. Ten pages in I was hooked.

The book opens quickly, " the news broke on a Saturday." Somehow, inexplicably, over a couple of days the revolutions of the Earth that create night and day have slowed. Day and night are now taking longer, that is the Earth's spinning is slowing. Julia and her parents are in shock, her Father a physician says that everything will be fine, while her Mother a drama teacher is less sure. Some people react with fear, hoarding food, and proclaiming the end of the world. Julia's friend Hanna, her best friend, leaves with her large family to go to Utah to await the end that is near.

The end does not appear to be near though. The days and nights keep expanding. Soon up to 30 hours. No one knows how long a day will be. This creates problems with clocks which become useless the periods of light and dark soon do not match any prescribed expectations.

Finally as the days continue to stretch the President and Congress say that people should and that the government and businesses will continue to operate on a 24 hour day. This means that people will at times go to bed in the light and go to school and work in the dark.

More is at stake however. As the days lengthen to 30 and 40 hours the issue of food becomes an issue. The wheat point is passed, a point where wheat can no longer be grown. Unbeknownst to me crops need sunlight on the rhythm they expect, twenty hours of sunlight does not make up for the same in darkness.

Some people refuse clock time and insist the body can change it's circadian rhythms. They succeed for awhile but they become outcasts, people do not trust them, they when it is light at the " prescribed night time" are out and about while everyone sleeps.

For those not like me, and who need more than this angle the story also tells the tale of Julia. A normal, geeky, twelve year old girl who is still struggling with junior high, boys, her parents, a secret she knows about her father and the lady down the street, the ever expanding list of people in her life who have disappeared as the days lengthen, her mother's gravity sickness and her grandfather's conspiracy theories.

There is a great deal of story in this book of less than 300 pages. Not a book I would ever presume to read but a very good book. The praise it is receiving is well earned.

Now it's back to LBJ.