I read Madeleine L’Engle’s classic, Newbery-award-winning book A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet) for the first time only because it was the assigned book for bookclub.
Unlike my husband, I wasn’t assigned to read it in school. Despite being a voracious reader growing up. Despite loving the fantasy genre, I never voluntarily read it as an adult.
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. I liked the character of Meg quite a bit. I liked her younger brother Charles Wallace well enough. I didn’t feel like I got to know Calvin that well, but he was an interesting character. However, nothing about the book got me super excited to find out more about the characters, and what happened to them in later books in the series.
I felt like there were too many occasions where instead of really explaining something, L’Engle instead had one of the “wiser” characters express frustration that the concepts just couldn’t really be explained in words. Jumbled bits of half-explanations were almost given, with the caveat that “There’s some things we just aren’t meant to understand.” It’s okay though, Charles Wallace has such a prodigious intellect that he understands and tells Meg that it’s allright. (yes, that’s sarcasm.)
Some of my frustrations with the book may just be because it was so groundbreaking, things I like and take for granted now were something rare and special, like having a girl be the main character and hero in a science fiction/fantasy novel. Maybe it only seemed so formulaic to me because it set the formula that many other books have followed?
L’Engle includes one of my most-loathed contrivances in children’s literature, the wise adult dismissing children with the equivalent of “you aren’t old enough/mature enough to understand, but meanwhile go off and save the world because you’re the only one(s) who can. You just won’t know what you’re facing.” But of course the wise adults have super-powers and can magically appear just when they’re most needed and/or provide some sort of prop with special qualities that can save the heroes.
There are so many times when I read books that are wildly praised and wonder what’s all the fuss, and this is definitely one of those times. The book was ok, but in no way is it even close to being one of my favorite books of all time, and I know of many people for whom that is the case.
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