Karen Thompson Walker - The Age Of Miracles

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Brilliant idea and wonderful writing, but badly flawed development

In many ways I thought this book was quite brilliant. It is not at all like the effects-driven disaster movies we may be used to, but a subtle exploration of the effects of gradually increasing natural disruption. It is exceptionally well-written in quiet, beautifully poised prose, I became very engrossed in it and the story carried me along very well. Karen Thompson Walker manages to produce wonderful evocations of character, atmosphere and place with a few beautifully chosen phrases. The narrator, Julia, is an adult describing events as she approached her twelfth birthday and I also thought that the general sense of disruption and uncertainty was subtly but powerfully paralleled by Julia's similar feelings about entering puberty and sense of awkwardness and alienation.

This has the quality of imagination and writing to be a five-star book, but there is a big problem with it: the science is hopelessly confused and just plain wrong in many places. The Earth mysteriously slowing down in violation of known laws of physics is fine here because it is a sort of fantasy and an ingenious plot driver. However, the book is riddled with mistakes and absurdities on which the plot depends and which have nothing to do with the basic fantastical premise. There are some which are fairly trivial, like failing to grasp the basic notion that, no matter how slowly the Earth turns, in the Northern hemisphere days in November will be shorter than nights. However, there are also absurdities which make important plot developments a nonsense - two examples being the idea that there is an increase in gravitational strength due to "centrifugal force" and, more seriously, a complete lack of understanding of the difference between the type of solar radiation which gives us warmth, light and sunburn, for example, and the ionising particles which are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field and which would most certainly not be kept out by drawing curtains and whose biological effects are most certainly not just serious sunburn.

I think this is a terrible shame. I realise that the science isn't the point of the book: it is an examination of the effects of major disruption on society and on the individuals who compose it and in that it is quite brilliant, so the basic errors may not bother some readers. For me, though, it isn't just nit-picking - the wrongness of it kept throwing me out of the story because things just could not be like that. It is a grave (and avoidable) flaw in an otherwise excellent book and means that I can only give this a qualified recommendation.