Book Review: The Age of Miracles

The Age of Miracles: A Novel by Karen Thompson Walker (New York: Random House, 2012. 269 pp)

Karen Thompson Walker is a graduate of UCLA and has received the 2011 Sirenland Fellowship as well as a Bomb Magazine fiction prize. She is a former editor for Simon & Schuster. The Age of Miracles is her first novel.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Random House Publishing. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”

The End is Nigh!

The year is 2012, and, as many have heard, the world is going to end, or so the Mayans predicted. Nostradamus also proclaimed something similar, didn’t he? When you think about it, some Bible-thumping nut far too “knowledgeable” in the ways of eschatology is predicting the end of the world seemingly every five minutes. Even crazy zealots once predicted that the end was nigh when the the Hale-Bopp comet graced the night skies. But, we will never really know when the end of the world is going to occur—a thought perhaps more frightening for some than the end itself. Karen Thompson Walker, in her first novel The Age of Miracles documents the tale of a young eleven-year old girl and what happens as the world begins to end.

On a seemingly ordinary sunny day in a small Californian suburb, eleven-year old Julia is encountering the pains of growing up. Coping with the everyday disasters and transformation of the teenage years, she struggles with her parents’ marriage, her emergence into adulthood, and her own first love. But, her life isn’t the only thing transforming, so is the world around her.

“We didn’t notice right away. We couldn’t feel it. We did not sense at first the extra time, bulging from the smooth edge of each day like a tumor blooming beneath skin” (3).

A Slow Change

Photo by NASA

The rotation of the earth has begun to slow. The days become longer and longer, and if that shift wasn’t disturbing enough, the social and ecological ramifications are many. What piqued my interest in the novel is that the author chose to focus deeply on how the world would change socially if the earth slowly stopped rotating. She describes the change in such harrowing, sorrowful detail in a way that makes the story feel strikingly real.

“In the hours that followed, we would worry and wait. We would guess and wonder and speculate. We would learn new words and new ways from the scientists and officials who paraded in and out of our living room through the television screen and the Internet. We would stalk the sun across our sky as we never had before. My mother drank Scotch over ice in a glass. My father paced in the living room” (17-18).

Unnoticed Changes

Photo by Justin Berger

As the hours slowly and painstakingly add themselves onto the earth’s day, the effects of the slowing are many. Some however, are unnoticed. Some around her, including her own mother, begin to suffer from an unnamed illness called the syndrome, a byproduct of a change in gravity. As the world constantly changes, the old earth seems like a thing of fantasy to the eleven year old girl, something that could never exist outside of a dream.

“Some say that the slowing affected us in a thousand other unacknowledged ways, from the life expectancy of lightbulbs to the rate at which ice melted and water boiled and human cells multiplied and human cells died. Some say that our bodies aged less rapidly in the days immediately following the start of the slowing, that the dying died slower deaths, that babies took longer to be born...All the while, the clocks continued to tick. Wristwatches went right on beating faint beats. My grandfather’s antique clocks chimed their ancient chimes...How quaint the old twenty-four-hour clock began to look to our eyes, how impossibly clean-cut, with its two twin sets of twelve, as neat as walnut shells. How had we believed, we wondered, in such simplistic things” (69-70).

Unnerving Prose

As little Julia grows up through the novel, the reader experiences her world; she goes to soccer practice, meets boys, and goes through moonlit strolls at the “noon” hour. Though The Age of Miracles is a coming-of-age story, it’s only so in the simplest sense. More than a girl growing up, the novel acts as a requiem for a lost world, a thing of memory. The author juxtaposes the pains of growing up with the pains of a dying world, and the unknown in both circumstances.  

Karen Thompson Walker truly takes the reader on a fantastical journey, so fantastic that the reader is unnerved at every turn. The prose is so poetic and poignant that you are forced to lament with Julia as the requiem unfurls throughout the book, pointing the reader to a future that is frighteningly realistic. The Age of Miracles hits shelves today, and you should get a copy very soon.

Verdict: 4.5 out of 5
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Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

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Book Review: The Fallback Plan

The Fallback Plan: A Novel by Leigh Stein (New York: Melville House, 2012. 219 pp)

Leigh Stein is a first-time author. She lives in New York where she works in children’s book publishing and teaches musical theatre. Her upcoming release, Dispatch from the Future is a collection of poems to be released in June 2012.

Prolonged Adolescence

As a musically-minded individual teaching choir, I’ve always wondered: what is my fallback plan? What would I do if I couldn’t get a job? I’ve luckily never been thrust into that scenario, but many holding an arts degree are. The sad truth is that the arts degree doesn’t do much in the marketplace. Sure, it helps hone one’s craft; it helps someone to become a better musician, painter, or actor. However, no art gallery, bar scene, or theatre will say “you have a degree, you’re hired!”

A lucky few find a job with the aid of their degree, while others succumb to corporate life or barista-hood. Some, however, choose not to deal with the problem and move in with their parents in order to usher in an era of prolonged adolescence. Leigh Stein paints such a person, Esther (a pseudonym for herself), in her novella The Fallback Plan.

Esther Kohler is a recent college graduate, and like so many others, completely unemployed with no prospect on the horizon. She ends up living with her parents, much to her disdain. She slides through life in the doldrums whilst drinking with her friends, Jack and Pickle. In contrast to the rest of the world, absolutely nothing happens in her life.

“In June, the monsoons hit Bangladesh. Chinese police discovered slaves in a brickwork factory who couldn’t be sent home because they were too traumatized to remember anything but their own names, and Dr. Kevorkian was released from prison. In other news, I moved in with my parents” (3). 

Like so many graduates of the arts, she is forced to rely on a fallback plan, or at the very least, figure out what it would be.

The Joys of Getting a Job 

As a graduate with the not-so-sought-after emphasis in theatre, Esther has no hope in the world for a job. So, she decides to get a job in babysitting. Well, she doesn’t so much decide to do so—it’s thrust on her by her parents.

“I couldn’t believe I now had a job. My job was going to be playing with a four-year-old? Part of my brain immediately attempted to calculate the amount of money I’d get to spend on screenwriting books after I paid my parent’s rent, part of my brain said, You’re stoned, about to go on a drug run, and someone is going to trust you with their small child, and part of my brain cast me as Marry Poppins in an adaptation directed by Stanley Kubrick” (23).

But, in the process of babysitting, she befriends the mom (her employer) and the daughter. The mom lost her first child, and by looking into her life, finds that depression can be deeply seated. Esther herself has been struggling with depression, both during and after college, and is having trouble coming to terms with her feelings.

“I knew I was depressed, but my hope was that maybe there was a brain tumor at the root of all this, something that would show up on a map of my cerebrum, something excisable. And then I came across the word weltschmerz” (69).

Weltchmerz is defined as a mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state. It’s a mood of sentimental sadness. Esther, no doubt a mirror image of Leigh Stein, has to work through this sentimental sadness and figure out how to make life work. Forced to come to grips with her situation, this coming-of-age story is inextricably intimate and funny at the same time.

The Fallback Plan paints a depressing and accurate picture regarding the status of the liberal arts degree in the United States. But by no means am I advocating for the lack of arts in schools, nor am I painting them as worthless. I teach the arts, have two degrees in music, and find them completely worthwhile. In fact, arts and music make your brain work harder on analytical pursuits. Some businesses are even hiring music majors in lieu of those with business degrees because of their creative brains. The point I’m trying to make is that if you’re pursing arts, don’t expect your degree to work for you. Rather, work for your degree.

Anyone who likes author David Sedaris, or even something like Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan would enjoy this work of fiction. It’s honest, witty, and works through some pretty deep issues. I think that the book could have been longer and explored some of the stories a little more deeply, but all in all The Fallback Plan is a good read.

Verdict: 3 out of 5

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Posted by: Andrew Jacobson

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