Even as humanity faces the dire reality of Earth’s deceleration, the usual awkwardness, cruelty, and curiosity of adolescence pervades Julia and her preteen companions’ lives. With the backdrop of an extreme natural disaster like “the slowing,” the author emphasizes that there is nothing that can stop the march of progress toward adulthood. Regardless of whatever is happening in the world, some experiences are universal, and the trying nature of growing up is one of them.

One of the many adolescent pains that Julia endures has to do with socializing: “Maybe it had begun to happen before the slowing, but it was only afterward that I realized it: My friendships were disintegrating. Things were coming apart. It was a rough crossing, the one from childhood to the next life. And as with any other harsh journey, not everything survived” (92).

There are parallels between “the slowing” and the way Julia’s adolescence unfolds, particularly how slight changes go unnoticed at first. Julia reflects on how orderly life seems until the disruption: “How extraordinary it would seem to us eventually that our sun once set as predictably as clockwork. And how miraculous it would seem that I was once a happier girl, less lonely and less shy” (102).