The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker read by Emily Janice Card

 

When I choose a piece of fiction to listen to I look for books that will take me to a place I haven't been or event that seems a bit different than I have read before. Such is the case with Karen Thompson Walkers' The Age of Miracles.


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The Age of Miracles is a story told through the eyes of an 11-year-old girl named Julia as her family and friends living in a California suburb adjust to the earths rotation slowing down.

Before starting the book I wondered how the author would handle this unique plot device. It's not as if the world slows down everyday. (Though there are days when I wish it would). So I was intrigued to find out how she would handle the event. How it would effect the world, the people and the storyline. Will there be aliens, meteors, a disaster of 2012 magnitude? No, nothing like that.

As you quickly learn from Julia, "The Slowing" just started happening. The days and nights grow longer and no real reason is given. The author let's you find out from T.V. reports and minor events how the world slowing down affects everyone on the planet in a big picture sort-of-way.

The true essence of the book though is seeing the change happening through Julia's eyes. You feel what she is going through and it makes you care about her and the people in her life.

                                              (The Age of Miracles Promo Video)

I'm a 52 year old male and have never been an 11-year old girl, but the author's writing style as well as the narration by Emily Janice Card (who I'll talk about a little later),  put me inside Julia's head. Listening to the book and hearing Julia's story, told in the first-person narrative made me smile, laugh, cringe (when she tries on her first bra at a store) and even a little frightened as the events in her life unfold around the changes in the world caused by the slowing. To me, great writing is shown when you can make me feel something that stays with me long after the book is over.

On a personal note I do have two sisters that I grew up with. Listening to Julia talk about her feelings, about how she felt when friends leave, experiencing the pangs of finding your first love and dealing with parents adjusting, sometimes in a negative way, to the events of the world made me think about my sisters and how they would handled such things. I now have a deeper insight into what they may have gone through during their adolescence.

Real emotions run throughout this book as Julia deals with possible world ending doom as well as dreading her impending 12th birthday. Like life, this book it is filled with highs and lows and never knowing why things happen and learning how to deal with it.

Narrator : Emily Janice Card
Like any audio book, it lives or dies on the strength of the reader - in this case, Emily Janice Card. This is my first time listening to her and she does an outstanding job telling Julia's story. She becomes Julia, handling the telling of her story as an adult in a simple pleasing voice but then lightens up her voice when Julia is speaking. It is as if she recalls how she spoke at that age and brought it back to let us hear it. Evey little inflection and nuance is perfect and delivers emotional reading that for me made the characters come alive. Besides this book, she has also narrated a recent book by Lisa Gardner titled The Neighbor.

I highly recommend listening to The Age of Miracles and consider it one of the best audio books of 2012.

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