Age of Miracles (Walker) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[A] moving tale that mixes the real and surreal, the ordinary and the extraordinary with impressive fluency and flair.… Ms. Walker has an instinctive feel for narrative architecture, creating a story, in lapidary prose, that moves ahead with a sense of both the inevitable and the unexpected.… Ms. Walker maps [her characters’] inner lives with such sure-footedness that they become as recognizable to us as people we’ve grown up with or watched for years on television.… [A] precocious debut…one of this summer’s hot literary reads.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


If you begin this book, you'll be loath to set it down until you've reached its end.… The Age of Miracles reminds us that we never know when everything will change, when a single event will split our understanding of personal history and all history into a Before and an After.
San Francisco Chronicle


The perfect combination of the intimate and the pandemic.… Flawlessly written; it could be the most assured debut by an American writer since Jennifer Egan's Emerald City.
Denver Post


Simply told, skillfully crafted and filled with metaphorical unities, this resonant first novel [rings] with difficult truths both large and small.
Kansas City Star


Both utterly realistic and fantastically dystopian.… The big miracles, Walker seems to be saying, may doom the world at large, but the little ones keep life worth living.
Minnesota Herald Tribune
 

Walker’s tone can be properly [Harper] Lee-esque; both Julia and Scout grapple with the standard childhood difficulties as their societies crumble around them. But life prevails, and the stunning Miracles subtly conveys that adapting.
Time Out New York


Part speculative fiction, part coming-of-age story.… The Age of Miracles could turn Walker into American literature's next big thing.
NPR
 

Walker creates lovely, low-key scenes to dramatize her premise.… The spirit of Ray Bradbury hovers in the mixture of the portentous and quotidian.
The New Yorker

(Starred review) [Walker] matches the fierce creativity of her imagination with a lyrical and portentous understanding of the present.
People


Quietly explosive.… Walker describes global shifts with a sense of utter realism, but she treats Julia’s personal adolescent upheaval with equal care, delicacy, and poignancy.
O, The Oprah Magazine


This haunting and soul-stirring novel about the apocalypse is transformative and unforgettable.
Marie Claire


(Starred review.) [G]ripping…. [F]iercely grounded in the surreal and horrifying day-to-day and the personal decisions that persist even though no one knows wha. t to do. A triumph of vision, language, and terrifying momentum.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [S]tunning…. Walker captures each moment, intimate and universal, with magical precision. Riveting, heartbreaking, profoundly moving.
Kirkus Reviews