Karen Thompson Walker
Karen Thompson Walker
The Age of Miracles is the debut novel of American writer Karen Thompson Walker, published in June 2012 by Random House in the United States and Simon & Schuster in the United Kingdom. The book chronicles the fictional phenomenon of 'slowing', in which one Earth day takes longer to complete...
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amazing fears future gift influence might time
Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.
disappointment age would-be
How much sweeter life would be if it all happened in reverse, if, after decades of disappointments, you finally arrived at an age when you had conceded nothing, when everything was possible.
earthquakes ideas haunting
Shortly after the 2004 Indonesian earthquake, I read that the earthquake had affected the rotation of the earth, shortening the length of our 24-hour day. Even though the change was extremely slight - only a few microseconds - I found the idea incredibly haunting.
ordinary pleasure ordinary-life
There's a pleasure in being reminded of the value of ordinary life.
editors reader
An editor is like a professional reader, and as I became a better reader, I also became a better writer.
scary-stories newspapers ifs
If I read a scary story in the newspaper, I find I'm haunted by it.
father lying fall
I've become a collector of stories about unlikely returns: the sudden reappearance of the long-lost son, the father found, the lovers reunited after forty years. Once in awhile, a letter does fall behind a post office desk and lie there for years before it's finally discovered and delivered to the rightful address. The seemingly brain-dead sometimes wake up and start talking. I'm always on the lookout for proof that what is done can sometimes be undone.
decay sometimes certain
Sometimes death is proof of life. Sometimes decay points out a certain verve.
father storm eras
I kept quiet, but the knowledge gathered like a storm. I could see the future: My father wasn't coming back. And this one fact seemed to point to other facts and others still: Love frays and humans fail, time passes, eras end.
closets dangerous happened
Nothing has happened to me out of the closet that was anywhere near as dangerous as being closeted.
books combine favorites love sort stylish
The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or stylish writing. Some of my favorites are 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy, 'The Virgin Suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides, 'The Interpreter of Maladies' by Jhumpa Lahiri, and 'Blindness' by Jose Saramago.
best carriers good jobs meaning sentences sound surprise tone
These days, I like to think of sentences as workers. Only one of their jobs is to look and sound good. Sentences are the carriers of plot. They're the conjurers of images, the conveyors of tone and meaning and voice. The best sentences surprise us.