Quick note: I won’t be doing a Free Books roundup for 17 August. Didn’t have time today.
I’m not sure exactly when I first read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time. Even though I purchased this paperback copy in 1999, I’m pretty sure I didn’t re-read it when I bought it or after, until today. Very quickly, it all came back. But it didn’t hold up as well as I thought it would.
As the story opens, Meg Murry is a misfit child teased by classmates, teachers, and even her principal about her missing father. Everyone assumes the reason he’s disappeared is that he’s taken up with another woman. But for a couple of years Meg and her family haven’t given up hope. Then Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which appear in the neighborhood, taking over the local haunted house, and promising Meg and her precocious little brother Charles Wallace that soon they will all attempt to rescue their father.
What held up really well was the coolness of the places the children get to visit, as well as the method of transport. And the world of Camazotz is still one of the creepiest places in children’s literature. (I won’t spoil why, but you’ll see when you get there.) The explanation of folding space as well as a two-dimensional world is fun. I’m pretty sure it was my first introduction to Einstein’s theories about space, though I’m not sure how it works in the story fits with the actual theory.
What didn’t hold up was some of the plotting. The three Mrs. make the children wait before going after their father, and there was never an explanation as to why. Neither was there ever an explanation as to why they could only help the children so far. It was cheap drama building on this go-around. The other thing that didn’t hold up was the moral of the story. Individuality goes with love goes with good. Conformity goes with hate and pain which goes with evil. Love can defeat evil because evil doesn’t know love. It’s all about as two-dimensional as you can get.
With this reading I still think the positives outweigh the negatives. I think it still might hold up even better for teen readers who might not have read more nuanced moral tales. For this well-read adult it did lose a bit of its luster.
Title: A wrinkle in time
Author: Madeleine L’Engle
Cover creator: Cliff Nielsen
Series: Time quintet; 1
Imprint / publisher: Laurel Leaf / Dell / Random House
Format: Mass market paperback
Length: 198 p.
Publication date: 1997
ISBN-10: 0-440-99805-0
Subject: Science fiction — Juvenile fiction
Subject: Space and time — fiction
