The Age of Miracles/Karen Thompson Walker: Reflections

A few months ago, at the Push to Publish conference, Kerri and Marc Schuster were emphatic:  Read The Age of Miracles.  I bought the book at once, but it has taken me this long (oh, life) and another completely sleepless night to finally give my full attention to a story that is, in fact, important, wise, and profoundly well told. 

We talk a lot (I talk a lot) about crossover young adult books—those books that star a young hero or heroine but appeal to adults who remember, adults with capacious hearts.  The Age of Miracles is an adult book, a coming-of-age story, that crosses right back over toward teens—that will be found in high school classrooms, that should be read by those who still have a chance to change this world. The Age of Miracles is a warning.  It is a call (never pedantic, never shrill, never arrogant) to environmental arms.

Walker's heroine is in middle school in California when the rotation of the earth begins to slow.  Days grow longer and so do nights.  Real timers and clock timers emerge.  Grass singes.  Birds die.  The sun cruelly burns.  Whales die.  Tides shift.  Shelters are built.  Peanut butter is stockpiled.  There is a syndrome.

And we readers believe all of this, we hardly question the premise, because the repercussions of Walker's slowing earth are so aligned with, are but merely a slight exaggeration of, the consequences of our own failed living, and because Walker writes with such calm authority.  Her heroine tells her story from the remove of but a few years.  We know she has somehow survived these catastrophic conditions, and we sense that time is running out, but nowhere does Walker play her scenario for its sensationalism.  Walker creates this fictional world with deep tenderness and a clear love for all that we ourselves are systematically destroying.

Walker also cares clearly for her characters, for her young Julia, whose father is distant and whose mother is self-involved, whose best friend abandons her, whose new best friend is also a first love.  Julia is lonely.  Julia is unsure.  Nothing in Julia's life is certain.  The Age of Miracles renders old-world pangs within a new-world crisis with very simplest of language.

The effect is stunning.

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The Grievers/Marc Schuster: Reflections and Blurb

When Marc Schuster slipped a copy of his new book my way a few weeks ago, I looked at the cover (lovely), considered the title (The Grievers), and read the first line of the jacket copy:

The Grievers is a darkly comic coming of age novel for a generation that's still struggling to come of age.

This Marc Schuster, I thought to myself, has a sense of humor.

Having just this afternoon finished my read of this slender book (due out on 5/1/12 from the Permanent Press), I feel the urgent need to correct myself.  This Marc Schuster has a gigantic sense of humor.  I kept trying to think of comparators as I read.  The Big Chill meets Old School.  A Separate Peace or Dead Poets Society, if either had been authored by Jon Stewart.  Waiting for Alaska, except for adults, and with a different plot.

Honestly, I'm so bad at that sort of thing.

Here's the set-up. I don't think any of you have ever seen me place actual jacket copy front and center, but since I suspect that The Sublimely Funny Schuster wrote this copy, I just have to share it as is:

When Charley Schwartz learns that an old high school pal has killed himself, he agrees to help his alma mater organize a memorial service to honor his fallen comrade.  Soon, however, devastation turns to disgust as Charley discovers that his friend's passing means less to the school than the bottom line.  As the memorial service quickly degenerates into a fundraising fiasco, Charley must also deal with a host of other quandaries including a dead-end job as an anthropomorphic dollar sign, his best friend's imminent move to Maryland, an intervention with a drug-addled megalomaniac, and his own ongoing crusade to enforce the proper use of apostrophes among the proprietors of local dining establishments.....

Yes.  That's right.  An anthropomorphic dollar sign.  It has glitter, people.  It sheds.  Charley Schwartz hobbles around inside it, conducting this memorial-making business by phone. The phone?  It too is a character in The Grievers.  I'm now quoting from the book itself:

Through no fault of my own, my cell phone played the theme from The Jeffersons whenever I received an incoming call, so when Neil got back to me, the sweaty silence of my big, boxy costume was broken by the sound of a gospel choir singing about moving on up to the East Side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky.

Seriously. 

Marc was hoping I might be able to blurb his book, but as you can tell, I'm having too much fun quoting from it.  I will stop for just a moment then, and conclude this blog post like this:  The Grievers is a work of astute perception, high-octane imagination, and utterly supple prose. Raging cluelessness has never been this funny or, in the end, this compassionate.

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In the stillness of now

I try not to let things get beyond me in this life, but the last few weeks were dense with work and pressure.  I paid no attention to clocks, working as much as I could to complete a corporate project that has meant a lot to me.  I wrote a few talks, prepared a workshop session, took care of some magazine work for clients.

In between was a certain book stock crisis,  Google's announcement that my account (translation: my blog) had been violated and was no longer accessible, a lost camera, and lost glasses.  Piles grew tidal around me (which is not a happy thing for a neat freak).  The refrigerator emptied (save for a bottle of milk and a quarter stick of butter, perhaps a square of cheese, jello made in a moment of hunger).  Bills sat unpaid. I wore clothes from another era because the right-era clothes were, shall we say, indisposed.  I answered emails many days late, with what, I am sure, was an humiliating array of mistakes.  There should be a book:  Beth's Email Mistakes.  The sequel:  Beth's Blog Mistakes. 

And books—at least a dozen books—came into the house and were placed in a growing teeter on the living room table.  Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. Diana Abu-Jaber's Birds of Paradise.  A.S. King's Everybody Sees the Ants.  Peter Spiegelman's Thick as Thieves.  Philip Schultz's My Dyslexia.  Benjamin Markovits's Childish Loves.  Marc Schuster's The Grievers.  Ann Hite's Ghost on Black Mountain.  Anna Lefler's Chicktionary.  Roy Jacobsen's Child Wonder.  Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones.  Dana Spiotta's Eat the Document.  Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding.  More.

Can I just tell you how much I have missed reading books? Finding my way into the thick of a story?  Decoding the music others make?

Today, on this freakishly autumnal snowy day, I will join my family of dance friends in the city to celebrate the joint 70 year old birthdays of a still-swinging couple.  We'll stay overnight and brunch the next day with beloved friends in a white city, then head to a museum.  I'm going to take one of these books with me.  And then, come Sunday night, leaning into Monday morning, I am going to lie on a couch and do nothing but turn pages and return to the reader I am.

Thank you for putting up with all the recent launch news of You Are My Only.  I'm eager to once again spend my time here talking about the books of others.  That is why I created this space.  That is what makes me happy.

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