'The Age of Miracles' by Karen Thompson Walker

The Age of Miracles, Karen Thompson Walker (3.0)

Based on its basic premise this book could easily be categorized as a Science Fiction story, but I found it to be more of an anthropological study: how would society react if the earth started to spin more slowly?  The various effects this plays on flora, fauna, and people remain unexplained, while the effect on psyche of the characters is followed closely.  One of the simplest conundrums is do you stay on the 24 hr clock, or do you follow the sun, staying up longer and longer during the stretched daylight hours and sleeping equally long during the seemingly endless nights?  Does your choice change when days start lasting 72 hrs? A week?  The story follows a teenage and how this all affects her and her family, on top of the usual issues a teenage would have. This book got very good reviews, but I felt there could have been more to it.  Maybe it’s my scientific bent, but I wanted some more meat to the technical explanation (any!) so that I could possibly make sense of any anthropological decisions made by this distressed society.  It is a very good and unique premise; I just felt a little something was missing.