15 Apr Book Review: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

The Age of Miracles takes a beautifully strange premise—the slowing of the Earth’s rotation—and filters it through the eyes of a young girl trying to navigate not just a changing planet, but the everyday heartbreak of growing up. It’s one of those quiet, contemplative dystopian novels that doesn’t rely on big action scenes or societal collapse to unsettle you. Instead, it lingers in the stillness, the awkward pauses, the days that seem to stretch just a little too long. It’s part coming-of-age story, part environmental parable, and it’s all infused with a kind of melancholy awe.

What’s it about?

The story is told through the perspective of Julia, an eleven-year-old girl living in suburban California. One morning, she wakes up to the news that something is wrong with the Earth’s rotation. Days and nights are getting longer—not metaphorically, but literally. What used to be twenty-four hours is now creeping into twenty-five, then twenty-six, and so on. This phenomenon, called “the slowing,” throws the entire world into a state of confusion and mild panic.

Scientists can’t explain why it’s happening, and no one knows when—or if—it will stop. Gravity shifts subtly. Migratory patterns of animals are thrown off. Crops begin to fail. People start to get sick from something called “gravity sickness.” But what’s so eerie is that this doesn’t all happen in a cataclysmic wave—it’s slow, quiet, and disorienting.

Against this surreal backdrop, Julia’s life continues, though not unchanged. Her friendships begin to strain under the pressure of adolescence and this creeping existential dread. Her best friend moves away. She develops a crush on a boy named Seth Moreno. Her parents’ marriage begins to fracture in subtle but significant ways. Her grandfather becomes obsessed with conspiracy theories. Some neighbors begin living according to the “real time” of the sun, while others cling to “clock time,” a government-imposed standard schedule that no longer matches the sky.

Julia’s narration is reflective and subdued, as if she’s looking back on a childhood that was marked not by one big disaster, but by a slow unraveling. The slowing becomes a metaphor for everything that changes when you’re twelve years old and realizing that nothing, not even the ground beneath your feet, is permanent. What makes it hit so hard is that the novel doesn’t need to go full apocalypse. It shows how fragile our routines, relationships, and assumptions really are—even before the world starts coming apart.

The novel follows Julia through the next several months as time becomes increasingly fractured. Days stretch to forty-eight hours. Plants and animals start dying. Some people leave to form survivalist colonies. Others pretend nothing’s changed. And through it all, Julia just keeps going to school, navigating mean girls, first love, and the terrifying realization that adulthood might not come with any more clarity than childhood.

What This Chick Thinks

A quiet kind of dystopia

I loved how understated this book is. It’s not about society collapsing into violence or chaos. It’s about a world that’s out of sync—where the days feel wrong, and so does everything else. The weirdness of the premise seeps into every corner of Julia’s life, and the book makes you feel that unease without shouting about it. It’s dystopia by degrees, and that slow-burn approach really worked for me.

A gentle but honest coming-of-age story

Julia is such a thoughtful narrator, and there’s a wistful tone to her voice that makes even the ordinary moments feel meaningful. She’s not precocious or overly insightful—she’s just trying to understand things as they happen, and sometimes failing. Her experience of growing up is deeply relatable. The small humiliations, the aching crushes, the confusion when adults disappoint you—it’s all there, and it’s rendered with so much empathy.

What really hit me was how the big sci-fi premise never overshadows the personal story. If anything, it amplifies it. The uncertainty of the world makes every choice, every friendship, every mistake feel more urgent. And yet, life goes on. People still bicker over dinner, fall in love, get left behind. It’s a reminder that even as the world tilts off its axis, we’re still human.

A beautifully eerie atmosphere

Karen Thompson Walker’s prose is clean and poetic without being overly flowery. She creates an atmosphere that’s just the right mix of dreamlike and grounded. The imagery of the sun hanging too long in the sky, of shadows stretching unnaturally across lawns, of kids sneaking out during “dark hours” to skateboard—those moments stayed with me.

There’s also this sense of helplessness that’s hard to shake. No one knows how to fix what’s happening, and eventually people stop trying. That resignation is almost scarier than outright panic. It’s a different kind of apocalypse—not a bang, but a long, drawn-out sigh.

Final Thoughts

The Age of Miracles is tender, strange, and quietly devastating. It’s not a book of big moments, but of slow realizations. If you’re looking for action or answers, this probably isn’t your story. But if you like introspective, emotionally rich narratives with a touch of speculative weirdness, you’ll find a lot to love here. It’s a story about change—global, personal, inevitable—and it lingers long after the last page.

Rating: 9/10

Try it if you like

• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel – Another beautifully written post-apocalyptic novel that focuses more on people and meaning than on survival.
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro – A haunting, character-driven story where the sci-fi elements are secondary to the emotional weight.
• We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach – A more YA-focused take on teens grappling with the end of the world, full of angst, wonder, and connection.