The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

The Age of Miracles

Karen Thompson Walker

This traditional coming of age tale is set against an end of the world scenario with an imaginative premise - the catastrophic slowing of the Earth’s rotation. If you can suspend your disbelief about the physics behind this concept, the depiction of adolescent angst is touchingly realistic and the apocalyptic storyline will leave you with a new appreciation of the daily miracle of sunrise. It will especially appeal to a young adult audience.

Extract
And it seems to me now that the slowing triggered certain other changes too, less visible at first but deeper. It disrupted certain subtler trajectories: the tracks of friendships, for example, the paths toward and away from love. But who am I to say that the course of my childhood was not already set long before the slowing? Perhaps my adolescence was only an average adolescence, the stinging a quite unremarkable stinging. There is such a thing as coincidence: the alignment of two or more seemingly related events with no causal connection. Maybe everything that happened to me and to 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.
Parallels
  • The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers
  • Straight to You by David Moody