Author: Karen Thompson Walker
Genre: YA, Dystopia
Subject: Coming of age, environment
Publisher: Random House
Release date: January 2012
Length: 269 pages
I got this book: borrowed it from the library
From Goodreads:
"“It still amazes me how little we really knew. . . . Maybe everything that happened to me and 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.”
On a seemingly ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, 11-year-old Julia and her family awake to discover, along with the rest of the world, that the rotation of the earth has suddenly begun to slow. The days and nights grow longer and longer, gravity is affected, the environment is thrown into disarray. Yet as she struggles to navigate an ever-shifting landscape, Julia is also coping with the normal disasters of everyday life--the fissures in her parents’ marriage, the loss of old friends, the hopeful anguish of first love, the bizarre behavior of her grandfather who, convinced of a government conspiracy, spends his days obsessively cataloging his possessions. As Julia adjusts to the new normal, the slowing inexorably continues."
Personal opinion:
I thought this book had a very compelling element because this is something that I can imagine that could just happen. The slowing of the Earth just felt realistic to me and that made me feel uneasy at times. Yet because life continues as normal as it gets, it doesn't feel like that all the time. There are glipmses of joy in the book, but not too many. Overall everything is kind of sad. This book gives a good insight of how a crisis can thorn up the life we know slowly but surely on every aspect. Next to adjusting to new circumstances, it also affects family, school and social life. This story shows that everything is connected and that happy endings are not as common. Yet life continues. This is a story that got under my skin slowly because all the things, big and small, can change life forever.
Purchase links: The Book Depository
Challenges: Dystopia Challenge
Other reviews: The Book Brothel,
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