The moment I read People's review of this book in last weeks issue, I was intrigued enough to rush out to buy my very own copy.
This book was so beautifully done. Written from the perspective of 11 year old Julia, we get a taste of what our world would be like if something like the Slowing were to really transpire. What I loved about this book was the premise, that the world begins to rotate ever more slowly, lengthening our days and nights. With December 12th on the horizon, we're far from short of theories and stories about how it will go down, but they all have something in common: the world goes out with a bang. In this novel, it's a gradual and slow decay. It's a perspective that we've never considered. Some may argue that this book is slow to start or sluggishly paced throughout but I have to disagree. Thompson writes with such simplicity, but it's so beautifully wrought that you feel everything. This is not a novel of big twists and turns but everything is thought out and timed so perfectly that you don't need any smoke and mirrors. It's terrifying in its reality because every plot point that Thompson introduces rings true in a sense that were this Slowing really to happen, it feels that humans would react to it exactly as she has written.
You have the government ordering American's to continue to follow "clock time", that is, the 24 hour day, even though the days begin to stretch towards 50 hours. Children go to school under the cover of night because their clocks read noon, and families shutter their windows from the bright sun because it's bedtime. And then you have the radicals that shun clock time and decide to live in real time, staying awake for as long as the sun shines, which, near the end of the book, can be as long as 30 hours.
There are other, more drastic changes that occur as the Slowing persists, but it's something you need to see/read for yourself. I sometimes found myself putting this book down and being momentarily stunned upon realization that we were not in this dilemma, I was so engrossed. Definitely not one to miss.
