Once Removed - K. B. Walker

'Like unlocking the valve of a pressure cooker, opening her skin released the dementing force.'

Abby (Abriella) Garside is a newly qualified secondary school teacher in a small town in Yorkshire. Beth is a pupil at the school. Abby notices Beth involved in an incident with a craft knife. She resolves to keep an eye on Beth and tries to help integrate her more in her lessons. Beth comes to trust Abby.

Abby has a difficult relationship with her family throughout her life. Thinking back to when she was just a girl, she admits to a deep loneliness, to feeling pushed aside; 'I knew even then I didn't fit in my family, didn't really belong.' The feeling of feeling as if she doesn't quite fit in is one which lingers in her mind; 'Once at a distant relative's wedding, I'd been introduced to a cousin once removed. The phrase intrigued me and seemed to describe my position in our family.' She has a relationship with a man called Jeff, but as we learn more about them, it appears she is settling for him rather than it being a healthy relationship. Beth similarly suffers from a sense of isolation, feeling a 'screaming loneliness'. She cuts herself, and describes how she feels afterwards, as 'A satisfying pain pierced through the noise in my brain, giving voice to my silent cry.'


The first person narratives from both of the main two characters run alongside each other and give us an intimate depiction of the daily lives and struggles of them both as two separate individuals, and also as two people whose paths come together. Short passages in italics at the start of some chapters hint at one person's secret history and draw us further into the narrative. The characters are well drawn, from Abby and Beth, Aunt Frieda and Ryan, down to the minor characters like Mrs Billington. Abby has mannerisms which she repeats and this added to the realism of the character for me. There is real growth and development in plot and characters.


There is an intelligent exploration here of the notion of someone who feels like they don't quite fit, like they are different, and struggling both to be accepted by others, and to accept themselves as they are. I felt the pain being endured by both Abby and Beth really came across in the writing. Abby feels inadequate and out of place at times, lacking in confidence.


The book deals well with how people have little confidence, sometimes because of past hurt, and the strength that can need to be found to continue, to believe in oneself and realise that you are deserving of kindness and love, from others, but most importantly from yourself. It was wonderful to read a story dealing with this. The book also follows through and looks at what happens when someone tries to help and it is misconstrued, resulting in rumour, speculation, incorrect judgments formed without knowledge of the truth, and retribution.


The story kept me thinking whilst reading and each time I put the novel aside I was thinking about the characters.  The author shows insight into what is going on here, within destructive or cruel family relationships. The plot developed in a satisfying way. I empathised with Abby and was angered by how members of her family behaved towards her. It is a believable portrayal of sadness and hurt and although there are distressing moments and there is unhappiness, there is also friendship, joy and hope.

I found this a very moving, emotional book, and I felt that the sensitive and challenging subject matter, including self-harm, was carefully handled by this author. Empathy is created, the friendship between teacher and pupil is believable and it is carefully and beautifully portrayed. 

I would recommend this book and I will be looking out for future work by this author.

Published by Crooked Cat Publishing

You can follow the author on twitter @kbwalkerwrites and visit her blog here.

Thanks to the publisher for kindly sending a copy of this ebook to read and give an honest review.

The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker

'This, of course, is the day we all remember. There'd been a change, they said, a slowing...'

The premise for this novel is intriguing and frightening. What if our days here on Earth started to get longer and longer, first by minutes, then by hours? 

Narrated in the first person by eleven-year-old Julia, we see this shocking and unprecedented event, referred to as 'the slowing', through her eyes as she looks back on it. She sees the expensive beachside homes on the Californian coast disappear under water, she sees little birds dead and dying in front of her eyes, whales beached and dying, and she sees neighbours ostracized by others because they choose to accept this new day rather than keep to the clock time decreed by the President.

Whilst this happens and affects all aspects of her life, she is nevertheless still a young girl dealing with everything that growing up entails, and she is moved by a boy she likes helping her out, she is hurt when her old best friend turns her back on her, she is beginning to see her parents in a new light, noticing that they have flaws. Her friendships change, she becomes lonelier and unhappier. 'I had grown into a worrier, a girl on constant guard for catastrophes large and small, for the disappointments I now sensed were hidden all around us right in plain sight.' 

Living on clock time, Julia experiences nights full of sunlight, and days at school when the world is in darkness, and it seems like anything could happen now: 'This was a time in my life when things were happening every day that would have seemed impossible only the day before...'

I kept thinking about this book after closing it, and I felt the need to discuss the ideas in it. I was fascinated by the way the people became divided between those following 'clock time' and those following 'real time', so that the rest of the population real-timers as 'freaks'. I was also fascinated by how there were eventually two clock days for every one real time day. I was curious to consider how quickly people adapted to the changes, so that what had gone before soon came to feel more unusual than how they were living now. It's very possible that that is just how we might come to feel if this were to happen for real.

I felt an overwhelming sadness at the thought of what their world had lost; no more birdsong, foods that they would never again eat, people becoming ill or driven mad by the changes in time. This novel isn't heavily laden with scientific theory and explanations of the changes, nor does it give us a view from the masses about what is happening, which some readers may prefer, so if that is the book you are looking for, look elsewhere. Instead it presents to us how one young person's life is altered, and what that person sees happening to those close to them, offering one view of this new reality and how her life goes on with all of this happening around her. Despite all that happens in the world, her life is still in certain ways the life of any young girl, for whom 'no force on earth could slow the forward march of sixth grade.' In focussing on this one perspective, we are given a restricted view of the slowing, and rules out other areas of exploration into this change

The Age of Miracles is such an intriguing book and definitely an eye-opening, thought-provoking read. This is a brave, momentous subject to tackle in a debut novel, to write about an imagined, speculative future of mankind, and then further, to show this through just one young girl's eyes. For the most part, I enjoyed experiencing this through Julia's eyes. Perhaps a little more space devoted to the reaction of the world at large would have been welcome, but too much of that, combined with more scientific proof,  would see this become another book from the one the author has evidently chosen to write. It could provide a great talking point amongst young adult readers, though it is most probably older readers who in a lot of cases are more in need of a shift in attitude towards their use of the earth's resources. To my mind this is an ideal book for book group discussion because there is so much raised, discussion could go off in multiple directions spurred on by this book and these topics. 

Published by Simon & Schuster on 21st June 2012.

Thank you very much to the publisher for kindly offering a review copy of this novel at their book blogger event.


You can visit two websites related to this novel - The Slowing and The Age of Miracles


Below is a video featuring the author introducing the novel.