Neil Fein's Blog

A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeline L'Engle

I took a course in college on Chaucer, one of the most explosive, imaginative, and far-reaching in influence of all writers. And I’ll never forget going to the final exam and being asked why Chaucer used certain verbal devices, certain adjectives, why he had certain characters behave in certain ways. And I wrote in a white heat of fury, “I don’t think Chaucer had any idea why he did any of these thing. That isn’t the way people write.”

—Madeline L'Engle, Newbery Award Acceptance Speech, August 1963

This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. here there was nothing to feel.

—Madeline L'Engle, Wrinkle in Time, 1962

The characters of Ms. L'Engle's masterpiece A Wrinkle in Time, Meg Murray, Charles Wallace, Calvin O'Keefe, are all lightly sketched figures. I noticed this far more sharply on this reading of one of my favorite childhood books.

However, generalities are the strength of this book. A nebulous force of evil, which turned a planet into authoritarian group-mind hives, and even now shadows our Earth. Similarly, the supporting characters are mere outlines. However, it's a balance that works very well; I was cheering for Meg to win through even as I knew, in detail, what would happen on the next page.

There are several messages that can be read into A Wrinkle in Time, but the theme of individualism bring the greatest prize we have, is probably the simplest and most obvious. There are religious overtones, but they aren't nearly as overt as they are in, say, A Swiftly Tilting Planet or Many Waters.

Despite my worrying I would find the book simplistic, I enjoyed it very much on this rereading. Highly recommended.

Tags: books