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| ★★★★ |
On an ordinary Saturday in a California suburb, Julia awakens to discover that something has happened to the rotation of the earth. The days and nights are growing longer and longer; gravity is affected; the birds, the tides, human behavior, and cosmic rhythms are thrown into disarray. In a world that seems filled with danger and loss, Julia also must face surprising developments in herself, and in her personal world: divisions widening between her parents; strange behavior by her friends; the pain and vulnerability of first love; a growing sense of isolation; and a surprising, rebellious new strength. With crystalline prose and the indelible magic of a born storyteller, Karen Thompson Walker paints a breathtaking portrait of people finding ways to go on in an ever-evolving world.
***
Review: I'm surprised by the amount of dislike for this book. While YA doesn't require simplicity or molly-coddling, it was never going to be a hard sci-fi story, and the point of it isn't to understand the science. (It probably helps that I didn't immediately google 'what would happen if the world's rotation slowed', so I have no idea what would happen and was able to enjoy the 'science' as, if nothing else, speculation).
Aside from that, it's a beautifully written book. I read the author's other book, The Dreamers, and loved the writing in that too, but was frustrated by the lack of explanation and ultimately was quite disappointed by it. It lacked a certain depth, seeming to skirt around ideas moreso than really exploring them, and this book is a little guilty of that too. This is not a book, however, that requires explanation. It's not about the science of how the earth might die, it's about the human experience of living in the end times, which I actually think would very much happen like they do in this book - the population at large is the last to really know what's happening and by the time everyone REALLY understands, it's too late, and all you can do is accept it.
You could rewrite this book with another set of ideas and an narrator talking about how she remembers seeing fewer bees and butterflies, which was a shame, because she had fond memories of catching them in nets during school summer break years before. How she remembers the summers getting hotter and lasting longer, but the adults laughing off the conspiracy talk because the winters were getting colder. How animals were found straying hundreds of miles from their natural environment, before dying out altogether. How poorer countries, like in this book, were the first to feel the effects of desertification and increased spread of disease, while later coastal cities would become underwater relics, as rising sea levels drove the first en-masse migrants of the wealthier nations further inland.
You could write the book I just mentioned, and I really believe that the human experience would be exactly the same - people noticing changes, writing it off as being okay, gradually adapting, and eventually realising that they've hit a point of no return, that we've gone from overcoming every challenge thrown at us to living on borrowed time.
I think thats why I loved this book so much. I feel like Julia at the beginning of this book, right now, in the real world, and I think that's why the book carries so much weight for me. But also, I think human experience is the best lens through which to explore the end of the world in fiction. We can't answer everything. We can't know everything. All we can do is adapt and persist, until there's nothing left.
Minus one star for kind of flat characters
Rating: 4/5
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