Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Trailer Park Tuesday: The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker


Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies.  Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex.  And that's a shame because a lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and video.  So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these videos go viral.



I missed this trailer for Karen Thompson Walker's novel The Age of Miracles when it was released by Random House back in December, but I'm glad I finally caught it.  Now that the novel has come out in paperback, the trailer reminds me this might be a good time to finally read one of the most talked-about books of 2012.  The Age of Miracles is built around a simple premise: the rotation of the Earth goes all out of whack, throwing off daylight hours, triggering catastrophes, and sending the rhythm of life into disarray--including that of 10-year-old Julia who struggles to make sense of this new, soon-to-end world.  The trailer is haunting, beautifully-filmed, and features a strong voice-over narration (which, I'm assuming, is text lifted straight from the book):  "Later, I would think of those first days as the time we learned as a species that we had worried over the wrong things: the hole in the ozone layer, the melting of the ice caps, West Nile and swine flu and killer bees. I guess it never is what you worry over that comes to pass in the end. The real catastrophes are always different—unimagined, unprepared for, unknown."


2 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed reading this book and just bought the paperback for a young teen. (It's interesting that this book is marketed as adult literary fiction when these days, the young narrator would typically give it the "YA" label. But I think it crosses over nicely for both teens and adults.)

    Dive into it and enjoy!

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  2. I agree with Laura that you would think this would be marketed as a YA book, but I'm so glad that it wasn't. I feel like it's getting such a larger audience this way, which it totally deserves...and now adults can share it with teen readers. It's so charming, I adored it.

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