Another novel discussion thread: A WRINKLE IN TIME (spoilers likely)

Cafe Society
21

God, I hated A Wrinkle In Time. It was given to me, as an adult, as one of a friend’s favourite SF books. I just found the religious elements, and the child prodigy thing too, far too annoying. Completely put me off reading the rest of the series. Maybe if I’d been at a more brainwashable age. Or if the religion thing was more subtle, like LoTR.

I dislike Lewis’s Narnia & Space Trilogy stuff for the same reason. Oddly, I really like the His Dark Materials and The Dark is Rising series, even if those both have religious elements to them. I guess because they don’t seem like tools designed to brainwash young minds.

22

While I can see her feeling that she’s ugly when maybe she really isn’t, I think her mother is suppossed to really be beautiful. In the fifth book I mentioned (An Acceptable Time, I remembered the name), Meg’s daughter Polly is visiting her grandparents, and is thinking both about how beautiful her grandmother used to be, and how she still is. I do think that a lot of Meg’s awkwardness is just typical teenage stuff though–she has trouble in school and is self-concious about her looks (and really, who isn’t at that age?) but she grows out of it. One thing I do like about her though is that she’s neither here nor there, so to speak. She’s not quite normal, but she’s not completely special like Charles Wallace is either. So she always winds up being a bit of an outsider.

23

:slight_smile: Well, she didn’t say it was good, just that it was somewhat amusing, if stupid.

He’s also rich.

24

I remember that one—even as a kid, I thought the anti-nuclear element was a bit over the top.

And I’ve always pretty much been a heathen, so the religious themes in her books were always kinda “meh” at best, and mildly uncomfortable at worst. Or I simply didn’t “get” anything aside from that the author was trying to make a point or allegory about some philisophical concept that was too far from materialism for me.

(Though, come to think of it, I think I only read “Swiftly Tilting Planet,” Wrinkle, and the preflood “Many Waters”—not bad, that one. Depressing as hell. Inspired me to build my first Sci-Fi world, though.

No, wait…I read “A Wind in the Door,” too. Let’s see…dragons…nothing-monsters…mitochondria…some schoolteacher who seemed to be crazy or an idiot. That’s all I remember.)

25

I was wondering about this too since I barely remember any of the book. The Wikipedia entry cites “centaur-like beings” on the planet Uriel singing something that translates into some verses from the book Isaiah, about singing a new song to the Lord. Looks like there are a couple other Bible references and quotes in the book as well. Way, way more subtle than, say, the Narnia books.

26

I definitely have a fond spot for this book. Not sure exactly how to explain why. Certainly there are always parts that always annoy me, (the punny Happy Medium, for instance,) but I have a soft spot for good YA fantasy and ‘Wrinkle’ is up there. None of the other L’engle books seem to quite measure up. And I always identified with Charles Wallace’s insufferable brightness. :smiley:

Now, I know that this is taking discussion away from the book a little, but has anybody seen the recent movie version of it, and what did they think? I’m a big fan… it was a good adaptation and ‘updating’ of the source material for the 21st century. I actually got a chance to see the debut at the Toronto children’s film festival, watched some of it on the ABC disney movie night or whenever it was shown, and rented the DVD hehe. Favorite modern moment was when we catch a quick glimpse of Meg ‘googling’ the word tesseract - I’d done the same thing myself a few days before going to the film festival, and at the time, a ‘wrinkle in time’ reference was in the first five links. :wink: Now, apparently the rankings have shifted, though there’s still a L’engle bibliography at the bottom of the first page of hits.

One thing that I’ve definitely taken away from the movie is identifying meg/calvin as Katie Stuart and Gregory Smith - their faces and voices have become inextricably entwined with those characters now. I guess I just really like how they played off each other. Oh, and a lot of the scenes on Camazotz definitely drove home the ‘conformity run amok as a face of evil’ theme in a way that the book never did.

Okay, I’ll shut up now about the movie. :slight_smile:

27

For once I’m not going to answer the questions, and just sort of run with it.

I loved this book - still love it, as an adult. It can’t be the same thing of course but there is something about this book that stays on with you.

“Tesseract” - the description of tesseract is the first time I ever remember having an epiphany:

I read it and read it and read it, never getting it and then suddenly - wham! For a moment it all came clear to me, exactly what she was saying. I think that was the first time I also understood time to be another dimension.

Even as a kid I thought Charles was kind of annoying but at the same time I felt his pain too - I was no genius but I was an oddity among my schoolmates in that I really cared about doing well and getting good grades, and even getting the teacher’s attention. And I felt like an outcast because of it. Was picked on a lot for it, too.

I read all of the other books but I only remember Many Waters. I remember thinking, once I realized it was a Noah’s Ark story, that I would hate it. I think Noah’s Ark is one of the stupidest stories to ever come down the pike…sorry, but that really is how I feel. But I was surprised at how engaging the story was, and how involved I really got into it, and it also kind of opened my mind to the fact that a lot of people - Christians, even - thought maybe the Noah’s Ark thing had been a local flood, which made a whole lot more sense. This also drove me off to study more about local floods in the era.
In Wrinkle particularly, the unusual characters made the book. And I also am faintly creeped out by that weird pulsating brain.

28

This might be bad form, but I’m going to answer the questions first and then read everyone else’s responses. It’s been a number of years since I’ve read Wrinkle, but it’s one of my old standbys that I return to over and over.

1. If you were a fan of this story, what about it attracted you to it?
It’s got it all: adventure, approachable science, loving family, aliens and monsters and witches (complicated ones!), and a dog named Fortinbras. I also liked that the heroine was a geeky, gawky girl with glasses and braces. I… could relate to that.

2. Charles Wallace: fascinating little hyper-genius or insufferable little prat?
In *Wrinkle[/], I’d go with little hyper-genius. Later, insufferable little prat. It was fine when he was simply a misunderstood and very smart little boy who didn’t get along well in the world. But later (other books), he transforms into a rather self-absorbed and too-important little shit who was supposed to be sympathetic but instead just defied being related to. I’ve known a few uber-smart people (who, as far as I know, were not responsible for saving the world more than once), and so I do think his character is realistic. He’s just not very likeable.

3. How does Wrinkle stack up against its three sequels.
Best of 'em. It has a strong message without being preachy (Swiftly Tilting Planet, I’m looking at you). The Murray family is well-established, with reactions to their various adventures which are believable and well-earned. The mundane leads into the fantastic and back again in sequences which surprise without being jarring, and the bittersweet triumph at the end rings true.

4. Do the fantasy elements add to or detract from the emotional content of the story? What about the religious elements? Would the novel have been better served by being more overt or more subtle?
This is one of those books that succeeds because of its fantasy elements, IMO. Aunt Beast, the Happy Medium, even the two-dimensional world all work to place the coming struggle in a context of strength vs. cowardice, individuality vs. conformity, and beauty in all its forms vs. strict regimentation. If the book depended on being entirely realistic science fiction, it would lose the wonder, unpredictability and emotional resonance.

The religious elements were fine with me as a child (being raised in a churchgoing family), and though my views on God have changed dramatically over time, those elements still work for me. They jibe well with how – IF there IS a God – I think God’s presence and agents would play out.

5. Madeleine L’Engle actually said in an interview that Da Vinci Code doesn’t suck. Does that mean she’s senile?
Nah. I read that book in about a day, and enjoyed it. So there! Yes, I knew it was badly written. Yes, the plot is ridiculous. But it’s good fun in just the same way that really bad movies are good fun. I’ll give her a pass.

29

I loved the book as a child, but didn’t even know about sequels. When my husband bought me the boxed set a few years back, I was ecstatic, but so disappointed in the first that I think I got about 20 pages into the second before putting it aside. It felt very preachy and I really hated the idea of Charles Wallace.

I tend to like the books I loved as a child, so no idea what happened here.

30

I’m sorry to say that I am not a fan of the book. Although I know I read it more than once, it just didn’t work for me. However, I am rejoicing mightily to see that **Skald’s ** novel-of-the-week thread lives on! Though I didn’t care for this week’s book, it’s fascinating to read other Doper’s impressions of it, and maybe find out what I was missing.

31

I loved this book as a child, and didn’t even know until 10 minutes ago when I opened this thread that there were sequels! I guess my piddly library didn’t have them.

Anyway, I didn’t particularly identify with Meg, but I think I was drawn to her as a well-defined outsider personality. That is, I liked it that she had faults and struggled with them. I could visualize her as my friend. I loved the idea of a super-smart family and, as the oldest child, I could relate to the mothering type feelings that younger brothers can inspire.

I date my love of science fiction to this book, also. I liked it that it was a well-though-out universe, one that made sense within its own context, and that is the standard I still cling to today, in my sci-fi, fantasy and horror reading. I’ll buy anything, as long as it makes sense in its own context.

I’ll also put forth the idea that this might have been the best-written book for young people that I had read. I was thrilled with the semi-difficult ideas that it proposed and thrilled with myself by being able to semi-understand them. :smiley: I suppose it gave me the idea that I, too, just might be a smart kid. Not long after, I’m pretty sure I graduated myself from books for kids into mainstream literature.

32

*“Cherubim is plural.”

“Well, I’m practically plural.”*

I used to be a rabid L’Engle fan. I was given (I think) a copy of Wrinkle when I was about ten or eleven, and devoured most of her books over the following few years. They were fantasy, and I’d just fallen in love with fantasy. I read them (the first three) at about the same time as A Wizard of Earthsea and The Dark Is Rising. I liked Meg as a teenager, and mostly got bored of her as an adult, but still liked Planet a lot. Never hit it off too well with Polly.

Charles Wallace never bothered me. It may be because I haven’t re-read them in years. I never liked Sandy and Dennys much, because they were normal, and not isolated in the way that Meg was. As a socially isolated book nerd, the normal kids didn’t interest me.

I think Wrinkle was the best. The series sort of fell apart before An Acceptable Time.

I’m finding it a bit difficult to write about just one of her books, because a) I haven’t read any of them in years, and b) her writing as a whole, fiction and non-fiction, had a tremendous influence on me from ages 10-20. Her nonfiction was a gateway into a world where Christianity was literary and not just Sunday School, where intelligent people discussed good, evil, creation, sin, and beauty. Because of her I read The Revelation of Divine Love, by Julian of Norwich, C. S. Lewis’s apologetics, The Practise of the Prescence of God, George MacDonald. Without her formative influence I probably wouldn’t have read Thomas Merton or Kathleen Norris. It’s like trying to describe the outside of a room from the inside, or to give a verbal defense of civilization.

I should re-read-Wrinkle tonight, and get back to this thread later.

33

[Comic Book Guy]
Best. Angelic. Wisecrack. Ever.
[/CBG]

That’s one of the things I like best about L’Engle at her best–a frustrating of expectations of the typical view of God.

Good. I was afraid I was annoying people. Next week will be…

well, you’ll find out next week. Unless I finish the OP manana. I’m getting away from children’s fantasy, though, and moving to sort-of-contemporary southern fiction.

34

Drat. I can’t find my copy. Maybe Mr. Lissar ate it.

Honestly, when I was a kid I didn’t notice any religious elements in Wrinkle or Wind. Of course, I don’t think i really grasped the allegorical nature of Narnia until I was in my teens, so it would have taken a whole lot less subtle religious slanting to even get my attention.

Is this thread dead? Did I kill it?

35

Many Waters was… strange. I’ve always loved the other three books, so I picked up this one thinking “oh, man, this is gonna be great!”

It’s not terrible. There’s some great evocative descriptions in there and the plot is mildly interesting. But as the final book in a really well-plotted, well-written quartet, it’s hugely disappointing:

a) The idea of the nephilim and seraphim fighting was sort of intriguing, but the characters lay flat, two-dimensional. Nephilim = scheming and evil. Seraphim = virtuous and good. That’s it. L’Engle’s done the concept of angelic beings before, and much better–Whatsit, Who, and Which in Wrinkle, Proginoskes and the Echthroi in Wind, Gaudior in Planet. This was a total let-down.

b) Sandy and Dennis are clever, wise-cracking smart-arses who work great as supporting characters; they’re meant to be foils to Meg and Charles Wallace. They’re not strong enough to carry an entire book on their own.

c) The whole thing lacked the sense of compelling urgency you found in the last three books. Wrinkle = save long-lost Dad (and Charles Wallace) from the mind control of evil alien beings. Wind = save Charles Wallace from a deathly illness. Planet = save the whole world from a cataclysmic nuclear war.

Waters = …um…

(Also, given their experiences with the tesseract, you’d think the Doctors Murray would be a little gunshy in constructing a time machine, wouldn’t you?)
Sorry for the rant, but Many Waters was really a come-down for me.