This book contains so many problematic elements in its message and structure that I could go on for pages, but for the sake of brevity here are the two biggest issue I have with this story:

Problem #1: Polly O'Keefe's incredibly unhealthy relationships. A sixteen year old should not be going out with a hospital intern in his late 20s. Him having sex with her when she was in a vulnerable place was statutory rape (and he knew it which is why he was so freaked out later and said it could never happen again). A sixteen year old should not be encouraged by her parents to spend all her time with a middle aged lesbian couple that gives her champagne and sends her home tipsy. A sixteen year old should not go off with a random stranger that she meets while she is alone in a foreign country and who makes suggestive remarks to her the entire time they are together. A sixteen year old should not have to deal with the boundary breaking behavior of a married man who justifies his actions with the sentiment of "there are many ways to love someone". Yet, in one book, Madeleine L'Engle includes all of these scenarios and makes it seem as if each one is fairly normal and healthy by having Polly continue to engage in a warm friendship with adults who should know better. Just typing this all out makes me feel disgusting all over again.

Problem #2: L'Engle's distorted message of true love. Over and over again in her books, L'Engle comes back to the highly problematic message of all you need is love. She elevates love over truth and the consequences are plain to see. Truth would compel Polly's parents to protect their child from situations that are beyond her maturity to handle. Truth would proclaim the rightness of distancing oneself from people who engage in predatory behavior. Truth would actually give Polly the confidence to stand up for herself and what she believes in. But L'Engle throws that away in favor of forcing Polly to love people that are harming her physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That's not love, that's abuse.

This book ultimately puts on full display the cracks at the center of Madeleine L'Engle's worldview. In reading her work, I have found that she is very much a universalist (Christianity is good but there's more than one way to salvation) and very weak on truth and scientific facts. She does give us some beautiful writing and a few endearing characters, but I cannot recommend any of the books that follow the initial Wrinkle in Time trilogy.

Zachary Gray is a giant dick. he almost ruins this book and makes me not want to read Acceptable Time

This came very close to getting a one star rating. I found myself as annoyed as I was the last time I read it by how drawn out and agonizing the revelation of why Polly felt so wounded and victimized. When the big reveal came, I was annoyed by how minor the incident was in reality. Then I remembered the way someone, a respected person, had tried to kiss me when I was in my mid to later teens, and another man of a similar age to the first had saved me and quietly reprimanded the overly tipsy guy. However I certainly wasn’t as agitated as the heroine was.
Finally it dawned on me what the story was about: forgiveness! It is a detailed look at how hard it can be to move through the feeling of victimization and hurt until one is able to forgive. That changed my entire view of the story. While L’Engle did make the climatic scene of the injury to the girl from someone she greatly admired way too drawn out and that the injury was so much less than it could have been, the theme of forgiveness is a rare one outside of religious preaching. That torturous revelation is largely responsible for this being more like 3.5 stars. The theme of forgiveness raises it to 4 stars. As usual, L’Engle rather abruptly ends this story. Recommended for anyone who needs a reminder of the need for forgiveness. Otherwise recommended for Polly O’Keefe fans. This series should probably be read in order even though it can stand on its own. Postscript: I am surprised people apparently consider this book homophobic. The parents quite strongly tell the kids to knock off the malicious gossip about the couple. Certainly there is no explicit statement saying we disapprove of homophobia. This wasn’t the place for such a statement. The parents firmly and repeatedly state that the couple in question are their friends and are to be treated with respect. By refusing to confirm or deny the kids’ statements and questions about whether the couple had a relationship or not, the parents were showing their children that they refuse to engage in gossip, something they considered much more pernicious than sexuality.

This review also appears on my blog, Read-at-Home Mom.

Polyhymnia “Polly” O’Keefe has been given an unexpected opportunity. Maximiliana “Max” Horne, an older woman who lives near Polly’s home on Benne Seed Island, has taken a special interest in mentoring her. As part of this mentorship, Max has arranged for Polly to visit Greece, and to work as a go-fer at an international literary conference on Cyprus. While in Athens, Polly becomes acquainted with Zachary Grey, who is as charming and as undesirable as ever, and she does her best to work through her feelings about the terrible way Max betrayed her before she left home.

Throughout the time I have been reading each of L’Engle’s Austin/Murry/O’Keefe books, I have favored Vicky over Polly. Though both girls are portrayed as somehow special, Vicky has always seemed more believable and relatable, while Polly has always struck me as too perfect and too unrealistically good. This story is the first one where Polly has actually seemed like a human being. I was pleased by this for the sake of this particular story, because I enjoyed spending time with a main character who had some layers and some emotional depth. When considering the continuity of the overall series, however, the Polly of A House Like a Lotus is not the same Polly of the earlier books. Polly actually reminds me a lot of Vicky in this book - which is fine with me, because I like Vicky, but somewhat odd when one views the entire series as a unit. I read one interesting blog post where Mari Ness of Tor.com speculates that L’Engle may have actually set out to tell this story about Vicky, not Polly, and then changed her mind when she realized it would be difficult to cause pain to a character she identifies with so closely. That argument makes a ton of sense to me, and as Ness points out, it would explain why we’re forced to put up with Zachary Grey again.

Ness’s post and many others that I read also share another common interpretation of this book that I have to admit I totally missed. We are told in the book that Max is a lesbian, a fact which causes varied reactions from Polly, her parents, her siblings and the kids at Polly’s school. At the critical moment where Polly feels so horribly betrayed by Max, it seems that everyone - Wikipedia, Goodreads reviewers, and authors of scholarly articles - believes Max has made a sexual pass at Polly. I did sort of expect something like that to happen, based on how upset Polly was and how long it took her in the narration to get around to describing the night of her betrayal, but I have read the passage where it happens at least ten times, and I still don’t see definite textual evidence that Max did anything to Polly other than drink too much and scare her. It makes sense to assume that more happened, but had I not read anything about this book before posting this review, I never would have realized that Max made any sort of overture toward Polly.

Despite its weirdness, though, I really loved this book. I enjoyed catching up with the O’Keefes, and learning of the latest additions to their family. I thought Polly’s relationship with Renny was sweet, though a bit strange given their age difference. The flashbacks to the growth of Polly’s friendship with Max were very effective, and I enjoyed moving back and forth in time as Polly reflects on what has happened and does her best to forgive. I also appreciated the obviously Christian message about forgiveness. Polly desperately wants to forgive Max, but she must first work very realistically through her layers of grief. I appreciated that there is never any doubt as to whether Max should be forgiven, but that it is still difficult for Polly to get in touch with her again. I also thought the second part of the book, where Polly attends the conference was a bit touchy-feely, but also moving in its own way. Most of the characters didn’t seem realistic, but there was still something interesting about the way these people from so many different places became like a family to Polly and to each other.

A House Like a Lotus has its problems and its critics, but I would place it in my top five of the L’Engle books I have read so far, and I would say it is my favorite of the O’Keefe series. I am actually looking forward to seeing Polly again in An Acceptable Time, and I’m eager to finish this reading exercise, hopefully by the end of this summer. Only three titles left - Many Waters, An Acceptable Time, and Troubling a Star.

My second-least-favorite of L'Engle's children's or young adults' books, although it wasn't torture to finish (as, if my memory serves, The Moon by Night was). In fact, I thought it was one of L'Engle's adult novels, because I remember reading it (or trying to) many years ago and finding it completely uninteresting; my memory of it was that it was an adult novel, and a boring one at that; so imagine my surprise when I found that it's part of the O'Keefe chronicles.

A House Like a Lotus is a book of ideas, of conversations, of relationships . . . but it's lacking in the compelling plots of her other books for young people (I can't speak to her novels for adults). I completely agree with much of what L'Engle offers as good ethical standards for young people, but at times this book felt really didactic; the "this-is-a-good-family and here's-how-good-people-act" aspects are in all of her books, to some degree, but here it can be heavy-handed. Still, I definitely enjoyed it enough to finish it, although I was anxious to finish it so I could move on to the last book in the O'Keefe family books.

Polly O'Keefe, who is 16 (but soon to be 17, we hear numerous times) is going to Cyprus to be a sort of intern at a conference. She was referred to this "job" by a good friend, Max (female), who also paid her airfare since the family of 7 children and 2 parents doesn't have lots of extra cash. So this is her journey, with lots of flashes back to the year prior to her leaving. Unfortunately, the plot just isn't exciting enough. We learn early on that Polly feels betrayed by someone, but it turns out that the "betrayal" is sort of silly and way overblown. It's not easy when the defining event in a book seems so insubstantial.

It doesn't help that some of the characters just aren't that appealing. Polly has a questionable relationship with Renny, a doctor, for goodness' sakes. This was 1984 and she is 16. [Raised eyebrows.] And then there's Zachary Grey, a glamorous, good-looking boy, but he's just not likeable enough that we can feel from the inside why Polly likes him so much.

I do admire that L'Engle grapples with the topic of gender identity in A House Like a Lotus, and she does fairly well, although there's a telling moment when Mr. O'Keefe seems to want to make sure that Polly is, using a phrase unknown at the time, cisgender, which takes a little of the positive impact away.

Some things just didn't seem believable to me. Polly knows way more than, I would argue, any 16-year-old would know about art, philosophy, science, human relationships, etc., etc. In one scene, when she first arrives in Athens, Polly remembers "the ugly Americans Max had talked about," and then takes note of the "junky gift shops, phony icons, sleazy clothes and pictures of American credit cards on the glass fronts of the doors." OK, she's travelled a lot. That's not completely out of the realm of possibility. But then: "One souvenir shop had a sign reading, "Welcome, Hadassah," and was recommended by some Jewish Association. I wouldn't have been surprised to find a shop window with a commendation by the Pope, or another by the World Council of Churches. I didn't like it. But that was judgmental of me. I still didn't like it" (22).

In addition to everything else, Polly knows of the World Council of Churches, which seems unlikely to me; this sounds like an older adult jaded by travel, not like a teen girl.

And then sometimes L'Engle wants to have her cake and eat it too:

Max was, theologically, heterodox. Religion, Max said, is divisive, and went on to cite the [religious] horrors going on between [everybody of every religious group]. If we could forget religion, Max said, and remember God, we might have a more reasonable world.
[But then:] Max liked reading aloud, and had read to me from books written in the very early days of Christianity, works by Gregory of Nyssa and Basil the Great and Clement of Alexandria, because their world was like ours, changing rapidly, with the Roman Empire falling apart around them." (23)

Am I the only person who (1) sees a contradiction (or, at least, I just don't see a seriously "spiritual but not religious" person reading Gregory of Nyssa and Clement of Alexandra out loud, to a 16-year-old, no less. Again, we have L'Engle inserting the kind of conversation she'd love to have with someone, but she was definitely not young when she wrote this.

OK, let's move on: Polly is in Athens, and can see the Parthenon from her room:

I looked at the ancient stones and wondered what all those centuries did to our own troubled time--put it in more cosmic perspective perhaps? But even if the Acropolis speaks of he pettiness and brevity of our mortal lives, while our lives are going on they matter. (48)

Good point, except coming out of Polly, not credible. Later, she asks "Did healed scars ever break open again? Get adhesions? Could one get adhesions on the soul?" (175) Her father is a scientist, not a doctor, so she knows lots of science; that's good. But I can't think of even a handful of 16-year-olds who would know what adhesions were, since, for the most part, even their grandparents probably wouldn't have dealt with post-surgical adhesions, and if they did, they wouldn't burden their dear grandchildren with it.

When Polly is reading a book and then makes observations informed by those books, it's more believable, but still feels a bit didactic. When her uncle Sandy uses the word "pusillanimous," same thing. Believable, possibly, but way too obviously a tidbit to educate her readers. Which all good literature does, I believe, but you just don't notice it.

All that said, I liked much of the "speechifying." "Dreams are messages," Max said. "But don't get faddy about them. Take them seriously, but not earnestly. It can be a form of self-indulgence if you overdo it." 174. I like that. Or when Polly defines the soul to Max (again, rather hard to swallow, even if it is a good definition that I might steal some time).

"'Do you believe in the soul, Polly?' Max never hesitated to ask cosmic questions out of the blue.
'Yes.' I thought maybe she'd turn her scorn on me, but she didn't.
[Max]'So, what is it, this thing called soul?' [Don't forget, this is Max asking a 16-year-old.]
[Polly] This scarred thing, full of adhesions. 'It's--it's your you and my me.'
[Max] 'What do you mean by that?'
[Polly] 'It's what makes us us, different from anybody else in the world.'
[Max] 'Like snowflakes? . . .'
[Pplly] 'More than snowflakes. The soul isn't--ephemeral.' [blah blah etc. etc.]
. . . 'So it's us, at our highest and least self-conscious.'"182-183

Great material; really, it's an interesting definition of the soul, which I have a hard time defining. I wish Max had asked Polly what the Trinity is; I could use it next Sunday in my sermon, I'm sure, since Polly is wise and has read Wikipedia, from start to finish. Once you've read the church fathers and all the other theology ever written, you've got to find something else, right?

For die-hard L'Engle fans, I'd definitely recommend A House Like a Lotus. You kind of have to read it. It's part of the O'Keefe books! But be warned: this book does a great job of filling out some details about the O'Keefe family, of Polly in particular, which is good since she is central in the O'Keefe books. And it's got some great philosophy, theology, ethics, history . . . but you aren't going to race through it like some of M.L.'s books.

I'm sure I read this as a young adult, but I have no memory of it from that age. And I'm positive I couldn't have possibly appreciated it as a teenager; my worldview was too small. So I'm glad I'm re-reading it as a more progressive adult who doesn't get hung up on the perceived pitfalls I'd have seen as a conservative Christian young person.

That being said, I still dislike Zachary Gray and cannot give five stars to any book with him in it. His presence in the book just irritates me. That is all.

Madeline L'Engle writes books for teens and adults. One of the best characteristics of her books is that the characters are often complex and contradictory. I feel that this book is one of the most complex of the YA genre. It deals with heroes who have feet of clay and that is something young people (and some old) need to come to terms with. This makes it a great choice for kids from about 7th grade and up. Some of the things introduced in this book allow young people to gain skills in recognizing inappropriate actions of beloved adults and explore their own reactions to the situation vicariously.

This said, it is a great book and one that should be interesting and helpful to a wide variety of kids.

Honestly and truly, to say that I am rather majorly conflicted with regard to Madeleine L'Engle's 1984 A House Like a Lotus is certainly and definitely a bit of a massive understatement. For while from the three (of the four in total) Polly O'Keefe novels I have read to date, I have indeed enjoyed A House Like a Lotus the most thus far (and that for me novels one and two of the Polly O'Keefe books, that both The Arm of the Starfish and Dragons in the Water do indeed and absolutely rank far far behind A House Like a Lotus with regard to personal reading pleasure) there are also in my humble opinion a number of potential issues with Madeleine L'Engle's featured text, with the way A House Like a Lotus unfolds, and that some of the thematics and contents of A House Like a Lotus do make me kind of shake my head and growl with frustration and annoyance (and actually more than just a trifle).

And first and foremost (and kind of rather textually tainting everything for me to an extent with regard to A House Like a Lotus if I am to be brutally and fully honest), considering that I totally do not at all like the character of Zachary Gray, that I indeed tend to find it majorly cringeworthy how often and in multiple series Madeleine L'Engle has him, has Zachary appear, and yes, that his presence in both The Moon by Night and A Ring of Endless Light has not only rather ruined both novels a bit for me but has also made me totally annoyed and frustrated with Vicky Austin (and her constantly linking up with Zachary Gary, making excuses for him and obviously also seriously enjoying Zachary Gray's company), to have Zachary appear in A House like a Lotus and to have him act pretty well in the same manner towards Polly O'Keefe (and with her, with Polly being similarly taken with and fascinated by Zachary Gray as Vicky Austin had been), yes, this almost does make me want to scream and it has also totally and hugely lessened reading joy and pleasure (and not to mention that Zachary Gary also seemingly ends up as a main protagonist in the last of the Polly O'Keefe novels, in An Acceptable Time, and yes, that this most definitely makes me not look all that much forward to reading An Acceptable Time).

Furthermore, with regard to the "betrayal" of Polly O'Keefe by Max in A House Like a Lotus, sorry, but after having read A House Like a Lotus (and even though Max and Ursula are clearly meant to be represented as Lesbians by Madeleine L'Engle) I really DO NOT consider what is being textually described as a case of Max trying to sexually seduce Polly. And while I can certainly understand and commiserate with Polly O'Keefe being rather frightened by Max's drunken strangeness, the fact that there is not (in my opinion) any textual hint of sexual impropriety shown in A House Like a Lotus (by Max towards Polly), this certainly makes both Polly feeling "betrayed" by Max and everyone rather considering Max's Lesbianism as almost some kind of a disease uncomfortably homophobic (and yes, even for 1984).

And while in A House Like a Lotus, Polly O'Keefe finally as protagonist and first person narrator begins to feel (to my reading self) like she is a real person, like a real teenager and not cardboard thin and on the surface (and like Polly ALWAYS appears in both The Arm of the Starfish and in Dragons in the Waters), this pretty much all encompassing personality change and that Madeleine L'Engle has Polly O'Keefe in A House like a Lotus bear very strong resemblances and similarities to in particular Vicky Austin, while this has definitely been very much personally appreciated and has made A House Like a Lotus readable, realistic and a lovely coming of age story in many ways, sorry, but the character, the personality differences between the Polly O'Keefe of The Arm of the Starfish and Dragons in the Water to what Polly is like and how she thinks, feels and acts in A House Like a Lotus, they are so profoundly changed and altered that for me it also and rather frustratingly feels as though Madeleine L'Engle has textually created an entirely new, a totally different Polly O'Keefe for A House Like a Lotus (and that there is thus also no real continuance from the first two O'Keefe Family novels to A House Like a Lotus and in particular with regard to Polly O'Keefe).

Finally, and perhaps I am being just a bit overly critical here, I do find it a bit strange and problematic that in A House Like a Lotus, Madeleine L'Engle seems to consider it textually acceptable for Polly O'Keefe, for a teenager, to travel alone to Greece and then to have to explore Athens on her own as well because her aunt and her uncle have somehow been delayed and are in the USA and not able to pick her up at the Athens airport. For honestly, I was expecting at the very least a bit of criticism by l'Engle within the pages of A House Like a Lotus, as I personally do not think that Polly O'Keefe is old enough and mature enough to be traipsing around Athens on her own, and I guess that her meeting up with and being courted by Zachary Gary kind of shows this (but well, that Uncle Sandy and Aunt Rhea are not at the Athens airport to meet Polly, this does seem to be rather universally accepted by Madeleine L'Engle in A House Like a Lotus, and emotionally speaking, this really manages to bother me quite a bit).

Well-written, and typical L'Engle in some ways, but felt immature in others. It reached for weighty topics and dealt thoroughly with few of them. I've never thought that L'Engle suffered from a need to please everyone at once, but this coming-of-age story that strives at points to be hesitantly progressive struck me as a far cry from her usual effortlessly balanced beat.

If you like the character of Polly O'Keefe, it's worth the read. If not, I'm not sure I'd recommend it.

Oh My God.

Everyone keeps hitting on a literal child what even is this book?

Is this an 80s thing? Like, gay people are weird, but guys in their 20s being all over a 16 year old is just kind of a thing that happens? 2018 is so different.

Overall, I like the descriptions of Greece and Cyprus, I like the plot of sheltered teens figuring out that gay people exist, and I like the positive portrayals of lesbian partnerships and teens exploring their sexuality.

However, I also have some major reservations.

The "betrayal" foreshadowed from the first pages does not really deliver on the buildup. It's over very quickly and doesn't involve any egregious behavior. Essentially, the mentor figure Max gets drunk (because she's self-medicating for pain) and maybe kind of reaches for the teen protagonist in a sexual way but mostly she's just drunk and looking weak. While I can totally understand a teenager being upset at seeing an adult get sappy drunk, it's very clear that Max was not 100% in control of her actions and didn't do it deliberately. It's not a betrayal.

I wanted Polly to come on to Max. There are so many Greek references in this book, that it's not hard to make the leap that Max is the philosopher Socrates "corrupting the youth" and subverting the pursuer/pursued dichotomy to take advantage of inexperienced teens. More, I wanted Max to say some really cutting things, to go back on all the hopeful things she had told Polly before and really go hard with "Life sucks and then you die," echoing self-serving philosophy Polly would later hear from Zachary.

Also, basically everyone Polly encounters lectures her on "forgiveness" and "letting people get complicated" until I just wanted to tell them to STFU. Yes, what happened wasn't that bad, but that's a different narrative issue. Polly was the one who got hurt, and she needs to process her feelings in her own time. She doesn't need other people to pressure her or tell her how she's supposed so feel.

There are a lot of lectures in this book. Sometimes L'Engle can do this really well, where the dialog just sounds like highly introspective people having a chat, but sometimes people just ramble on about random shit at the least provocation and you just want them to stick to what's actually going on in their lives.

Also the brown people. Madeleine L'Engle manages to strike this balance where I'm pretty sure her "yay brown people" rhetoric is going to piss off both hard right and hard left. You either think "Ugh why are brown people good and white people bad" or you think "Uhhhhh can we please not exoticize brown people?" You can't win.

While I did enjoy this book, I think I enjoyed hating the characters a lot more than I think I was supposed to (I'm looking at you Omio, you perv). This has got to be the book that made me think "SHE LITERALLY 16" the most times while I was reading it.

This novel was so weird. It was not what I was expecting at all. As a kid, I loved The Arm of The Starfish and Dragons in the Waters (as well as The Wrinkle in Time books and most of the Austin books.) So when I found out that this series continued, I was very pleased and eager to read more.

Little Polly is now 16 and lives with her parents (Meg and Calvin from a Wrinkle in Time) and many younger siblings on a small barrier island off of South Carolina. She is bookish and intelligent and doesn't fit in with the dumb, provincial clods at her high school. This part of the story is all told in a long flashback that goes throughout the book. A rich and sophisticated older woman named Max takes Polly under her wing and showers her with attention. It seemed to me like she was grooming her. Then Polly learns that Max and her "friend" whom she lives with are lesbians. She is terribly shocked and appalled, but her parents counsel her that people have many different sides to them and not to be too judgmental. Polly manages to get over it and continue her friendship with Max, who declares that Polly is like a daughter to her.

The origin story of Max being a lesbian is that her father tried to rape Max's beloved sister, who ran away out into the rain and caught pneumonia and died. This all seemed pretty silly to me but I figured, these books were written in the 1960s so having lesbian characters was pretty progressive for the time. But there was a lot of talk about a rare and mysterious blood disease. This talk is from the fully-grown, adult man that Polly is dating. He's a doctor that Max introduced to Polly. So it's not too surprising when it turns out that Max is dying of the mysterious and rare blood disease. Then I started thinking, hang on, isn't this an AIDS metaphor? I checked and the book was written in 1983, although The Arm of The Starfish really was from the 1960s. This made me think less highly of the whole book, because I was around in the 1980s and though the representation of gay people was obviously not great, you still got better than this from some other YA writers. Then my brother reminded me that in A Wind in the Door, Charles Wallace also has a mysterious blood disease, so it's probably not an AIDS metaphor.

One night Polly is all alone with Max in Max's isolated gothic plantation mansion, and Max gets drunk and lecherously chases after Polly. Polly runs away out into the storm and cuts her foot on a seashell. In the morning she hitches a ride back to town with one of the local high school oinkers who insinuates that Polly is a lesbian too because she doesn't want him pawing her thigh. Polly gets the doctor guy to tend to her foot and then they go to a nurse's house where he gently and beautifully deflowers her, but then tells her it can never happen again. Everyone starts leaning on Polly to forgive Max before she dies, because Max is only human and Polly was putting her on a pedestal. Half these people don't even know what happened, they just know Polly is mad at Max and doesn't want to see her anymore.

This brings us up to the present where Polly is on a trip to Greece. (In the narrative, the past and present cut back and forth.) In Athens she meets Zachary, that same horrible guy from A Ring of Endless Light. I thought, oh no, I don't want to go through all that again. But on the positive side, Zachary is somewhat closer to being the correct age to be macking on Polly because he's college-aged. Polly's uncle has been delayed so she's all alone, and Zachary takes her around and shows her various beauty spots such as the Parthenon. The present day part was my favorite part because I enjoyed seeing Greece. It was beautifully described and sounds like such a wonderful place to visit. Then Polly goes to Cyprus to work at a small international peace conference. This part is lovely but basically I felt like everyone is still gaslighting Polly, especially "Omio" who is a handsome Polynesian/Micronesian/never-specified man from the made-up island of "Baki." He is kind of half-Magical Negro who is dispensing wisdom about the love of Christ and the meaning of life, and half exotic love interest. Zachary shows up and takes Polly on a kayaking trip and carelessly capsizes the boat. They are going to drown, but Omio rescues them. Ultimately after kissing Polly on the eyelids and hugging her all the time, Omio says he thought he told her that he was married and that his interest in her is only a beautiful friendship. Polly realizes the wonderful power of friendship and makes an overseas call to Max to tell her that she loves and forgives her, and the book comes to an end. Basically the whole book is about learning to love people who aren't perfect, which, yes, absolutely, but also there's no obligation to love or forgive your abusers.

I'm glad I didn't read this book as a kid because it was pretty creepy and coupled with Madeleine L'Engle's beautiful language and storytelling and spiritual vibe, it probably would have warped my mind. Or maybe I would have fond memories of it, who knows? I was initially wondering why this book was not in my school library growing up, and now I think it's because our wonderful librarian (who was very LGBTQ-positive before it was cool) probably didn't think it was a good addition to the collection. I don't remember it being in the NYPL either or I would have read it. I really do love Madeleine L'Engle but even Homer nods--so I guess from this book I learned to love people who aren't perfect! I looked at the description of the final book in the series (An Acceptable Time), and it looks like YAY there's time travel but also Zachary AGAIN and also human sacrifice, so I think I'll pass.

This novel discussed sexuality more than I am comfortable with. I think it's supposed to be a young adult novel, but I wouldn't want my kids reading it until they were in their late teens.

The writing was superb.