THE AGE OF MIRACLES by Karen Thompson Walker

And you thought global warming was bad.  What if the earth's rotation rate started to decelerate, and we're not talking about a few seconds a day.  In this imagining, the days are lengthening at such an alarming rate that, within a year, a day has doubled in length.  The population quickly splits into two factions:  those who want to remain on the old 24-hour clock and those who want to match their sleep/waking patterns to the darkness/daylight.  However, the latter group starts to dwindle when they can no longer maintain sleep or wakefulness for 24 hours straight.  The impact on agriculture is devastating, and our 12-year-old narrator notes the occasion on which she eats her last piece of pineapple and her last grape.  Coupled with increased radiation from the sun and a sickness known as slowing syndrome, the outlook for humankind is pretty bleak.  Fallout shelters built in the 1960s are being provisioned for a different kind of apocalypse, and greenhouses are sprouting up everywhere.  This isn't a science fiction novel; it's more a coming-of-age novel in an unreal, but not necessarily impossible, setting.  People become more impulsive rather than reflective as things progressively worsen, and, seen through the eyes of a young girl, the situation seems a little less terrifying somehow.  Teetering on the brink of adulthood while most of the existing adults are having meltdowns is almost as scary as adapting to a planet that is losing its viability.  Almost.   I think I'll go enjoy another chunk of pineapple while I still can.