Somehow I ended up reading this first book in the journal series, last. This one felt like sitting on a porch swing listening to a wise, deep thinking, slightly scattered, dear friend. It was full of much wondering, reminiscing, wisdom and reflections on growth. I wish more modern writers would reflect and share at this level.

I love this book and the way it came into my life in this particular season. While I appreciate it for what it is, a collection of edited journal entries by an author who was closer to the beginning stages of her walk with Christ. So my rating isn't about whether or not I see eye-to-eye with all of her working but rather that I thoroughly enjoyed spending this time with her.

Originally published in 1972, this meandering journal has sections that are definitely dated, even obsolete. And like much of Madeleine's work, especially her non-fiction, it is overly mystical and in-your-face Christian for my tastes. (She doesn't even get the number of days of Chanukah right!)

Nonetheless, it is a lovely, sweet read, about parenthood and marriage and communities both large and small. About our responsibilities to those who came before and to those who come after. About the repeated rejections of Wrinkle before it was finally published -- and won the Newberry. About aging and about staying in touch with the child one was.

Definitely a must-read for anyone approaching (or in) middle age, and for writers dealing with rejection slips.

Technically did not finish the whole thing— might some time in the future! But read the majority so filing it away as “read.” Take that!!

This book was both delightful and frustrating at times. It’s a “journal” but combines some fictional elements— That’s what would irritate me sometimes. I read a few articles about L’Engle and found out that many who were close to her (like her children) recognize clear fabrications in some of her details. There’s even a scene in which she has a “conversation” which a character from one of her novels.
And yet, I DO see that these embellishments are not without purpose. At one time, she told the reader a fictional story about her small town— and she explained that while it was fictional, it served as a perfect insight as to how people in her town act.

And so I found that the paradox of Madeleine L’Engle is that to accurately show, not tell, she reaches for fiction to display truth. And I think I can get behind that.

I've grown up reading Madeline L'Engle's writing. I don't remember exactly when I first read A Wrinkle in Time, but I think it's safe to say I was in elementry school, both exhilarated by life and by learning, and uncertain of where I fit into anything, especially with my peers. I'm just now realizing that for most of my life until the past few years, I've felt like my existence in this world was somewhat of a mistake.

I've turned to Wrinkle and the other books in the Time Quartet over the years whenever I feel frustrated, restless, lonely, ugly, or even just bored. These stories alway help me feel braver and stronger - that my existence here is definitely not a mistake, that there is something bigger than me, that I have a purpose and a place in the universe.

I started A Circle of Quiet today on my lunch break, and I'm about halfway through after a few hours of reading tonight. Even in her non-fiction, L'Engle inspires me and helps me reach my center. She raises questions about subjects that have been heavy on my mind recently - love, faith, art, responsibility, creativity - and yet I never feel inadequate for not having good answers to any of my questions, or to hers. She reminds me to have faith in the world around me and in life.

I have a feeling this is another book I will be turning to time and time again.

Madeleine L’Engle, beloved author of such Newbery winners as A Wrinkle in Time and A Ring of Endless Light, begins her series of four memoirs with A Circle of Quiet.

n  Aboutn: Wife-mother-writer. This is how Madeleine refers to herself, and it’s just one of many things that make this book feel so relevant. I can hardly believe A Circle of Quiet was published almost half a century ago; and I am so glad Open Road Integrated Media is republishing it as an ebook.

L’Engle is an irresistible study in contradictions: episcopal and agnostic. An American born, European bred New Yorker who loved her country home in rural Connecticut. A writer, theoretical physicist and theologian (unofficially, those last two). An apolitical, but concerned environmentalist. A successful author married to a successful actor. It is she who first encouraged me (through her books; I wish I could have met her! She died in 2007) to seek harmony between modern science and my own faith (although my thoughts on the subject fall more in the realm of C.S. Lewis's conclusions, in The Abolition of Man, than in hers).

I wrote a paper on her poetry for one of my final BA projects—I studied literature and creative writing, which is why I generally stick to reviewing novels instead of nonfiction. But when A Circle of Quiet popped up on Netgalley, I turned in my chair to look at my book shelves and spotted the pristine, unread copy that I'd bought at a library sale a few years before...

I knew the time had come. I picked it up and drifted away, happily bemused, in the current L’Engle’s quietly explosive ruminations.

A Circle of Quiet breezes through the decade Madeleine spent at her rural “commune” of Crosswicks, raising her children and writing books that publishers refused to buy. I say the book “breezes” through this period because I felt light, reading much of it, as I already have wrestled with many of her concepts in her other works; but for readers new to her bewildering assortment of convictions, the experience of reading a L’Engle memoir may be less of a breeze and more of a gale.

A Circle of Quiet examines creativity, cosmology, science, God—all the big questions. But Madeleine is especially taken with the concept of ontology, in this volume. The study of existence and being.

When speaking with troubled teenagers, her thought was,

“They really don’t want me to answer their questions, nor should I. If I have not already answered them ontologically, nothing I say is going to make any sense.”

She sides with rebellious teenagers on most things, at least in her heart, which might be why her books have always been so appealing to young people. Her ideas about ontology did give me a calming peace, as a teenager. Take a look at the stars and breathe. It's okay. That kind of thing.

She also talks a lot about how mythological truth is different from provable fact. Whenever she wrote (fiction, memoir and everything else), she drew directly from her own experience, perhaps more so than most writers I’ve read before; but she doesn’t stick close to the facts. She tells a story to make her point. While a long, important story in her memoir perfectly communicates her feelings about a certain city couple (the Brechsteins) who have moved into her rural community, she openly acknowledges that the exact facts—their names, the locations, the words spoken in their encounters—are not exact.

"Thinking about the Brechsteins, attempting the not-quite possible task of separating fact from fiction in this sketch, teaches me something about the nature of reality. On one level, one might say that the Brechsteins are not real. But they are. It is through the Brechsteins, through the world of the imagination which takes us beyond the restrictions of provable fact, that we touch the hem of truth."

The truth, not the facts, are what concern her. Creative writing is not journalism, she harps.

But even as she tackles heavy topics, she illustrates them with highly entertaining anecdotes, such as this one about entering church for the first time in a while, after moving into Crosswicks:

Madeleine to the minister:"'As long as I don't need to say any more than that I try to live as though I believe in God, I would like very much to come to church—if you'll let me.'

So I became choir director."

n  Overalln: While the memoir can occasionally feel childish in its emotional coloring, it is more often delightfully childlike—a distinction she herself makes—in its wonder and joy for life itself. She's a sharp observer, even if her observations may, at times, be suspect. I really enjoyed A Circle of Quiet for the illumination of her life, convictions and writing habits. And I already have a copy of book II! Yay!

n  Recommendationn: If you enjoyed the theoretical and emotional tones to Madeleine L’Engle’s stories, or if you’re just curious about this career and family woman, you might very well enjoy any of her memoirs or other nonfiction works. (I personally adored Walking on Water.)

If you liked this review, you can read more of my speculative fiction reviews on my blog

A Circle of Quiet is a rambling quasi-memoir on various aspects of life in general, but with a significant amount of musings on writing and artistic life. The latter was the element that I enjoyed the most. The broader philosophies that L'Engle wades into I didn't find quite as satisfying, probably because the brand of "faith" that she describes doesn't seem solid enough to base a clear worldview on. L'Engle identifies as both Anglican and agnostic, but while she affirms belief in a loving God as creator of the world, I didn't get any sense of true orthodox Christian theology in her beliefs. While she makes often perceptive, pithy observations about life, culture and relationships, as well as a few clear-eyed comments about the failings of the modern Christian church, in the philosophical sense I always felt there was a bit of a missing piece somewhere.

The real highlights, though, are L'Engle's reflections and reminiscences of the writing life. Here I was able to instantly identify with many of the experiences and feelings she describes, and to draw a good deal of amusement and encouragement from them. (The anecdote about her reaction to learning she had won the Newberry Medal is hilarious.) I also appreciate the way she identifies herself as writer, wife and mother all in one, and expresses equal dedication to all those aspects of her life. I'm copying a few of my favorite passages on writing here, as much for my own benefit as anyone else's:

I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their validity, no matter what.

...I am often, in my writing, great leaps ahead of where I am in my thinking, and my thinking has to work its way slowly up to what the "superconscious" has already shown me in a story or poem. Facing this does help to eradicate do-it-yourself hubris from an artist's attitude towards his painting or music or writing. My characters pull me, push me, take me further than I want to go, fling open doors to rooms I don't want to enter, throw me out into interstellar space, and all this long before my mind is ready for it.

...A great painting, or symphony, or play, doesn't diminish us, but enlarges us, and we, too, want to make our own cry of affirmation to the power of creation behind the universe. This surge of creativity has nothing to do with competition, or degree of talent. When I hear a superb pianist, I can't wait to get to my own piano, and I play about as well now as I did when I was ten. A great novel, rather than discouraging me, simply makes me want to write. This response on the part of any artist is the need to make incarnate the new awareness we have been granted through the genius of someone else.

A commentary on the time she was living through... Well written of course! Encouraging and honest too! However, I was led to believe that Madeleine L'Engle was a Christian. There is enough in this book to doubt her faith in Christ.

A Circle of Quiet, by Madeleine L'Engle, 
#1 in the 4 of her Croswicks Journals
Published in 1971, ★★★✫

I saw that my friend Anne White read and recommended this book, and when I saw it at the last book store sale, 6 months ago or so, for $1.00, I was excited. This book and  Flannery O'Connor's Complete Short Stories were the major hits that sale. Which reminds me that I truly have many exceptional great titles I need to read. This reminds me of a title that has mixed reviews among my friends and acquaintances, Howards End Is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home. I read from my shelves, but I keep buying books. My book spending is not problematic or out of control. If it were, I'd stop or slow it down to a reasonable pace. And I often go through my books, and pick those I'm not interested in anymore for some reason, and turn them in at that same local bookstore for credit. I truly pay very little for the books that interest me, I'm privileged to find them at very good prices. I also use the library for audios or Kindle books. Enough. Back to the book. It's difficult to review it since it's thoughts and anecdotes. This is just a short and informal record of my impressions.

I liked the book, its confidential tone. It was like sitting down for a coffee with Madeleine every time I opened it. In it, she shares as much as she can share about her home life, her relationship with her husband, -a theater actor-, with her children, friends, and community. Crosswicks, the name of this series of three books from which A Circle of Quiet is the first title, is the name of the place in NJ where she had a summer home.

What I appreciated the most in this book were her thoughts about art, writing, youth. How she speaks about science versus myth, how myth and fantasy relate to faith, and the mysterious. I found this two year old article of an English teacher who speaks of what L'Engle and C.S. Lewis meant to her. She talks about the whole Crosswicks series. One of them is devoted to her courting, marriage, and life with her husband, the actor Hugh Franklin. The article gave me a good insight of something I felt while reading this book and others similar to it, (such as The Life Giving Home, by the Clarksons), the problem with books that tell about our lives. I like Jeanette Walls's approach to this issue in her novel The Great Castle. When I read it, knowing that it was based on her own life, I had to forget about that. It's hyperbolic in some places, it wouldn't work if we keep comparing it to reality. I agree then, that it's easier to 'write about ourselves through fiction'. Sometimes, as the article remarks, we find the fictionalized characters of an author to be very real, while the real people portrayed in the books appears fictional.

I've noticed that when talking to others about my past, or my family in Madrid, etc. During our vacation, my parents, siblings and I had a very intense talk. We all related how their parenting felt for each of us. While we have some common experiences, and there's a degree of objectivity in any situation, but a book or memoir it's not a compilation of facts, neither does fall one hundred percent into fiction. Probably, L'Engle did what I do when I talk to others about my extended family, I do focus on the positive, I place problems or bad experiences into a wider context, I find meaning. What I appreciate about books like this, it's that the ideas, concepts, the world views the author presents, are nicely tangled up with personal anecdotes into a peculiar life narrative. Frankly, I'm not the one to check what's mentioned in the book against facts or second opinions. But I warn you, many times the children of the author, or those around, don't see the match between how a relative, or some events are told by the author, and the reality they lived.

After all, even the idea of realism in literature is a controversial one. Many authors speak eloquently about that. I never tire of reading Nabokov's thoughts on what's real in literature in his essay Good Readers and Good Writers, and this is something that, in return, reminds me of the polemic Dostoevsky versus Tolstoy, who's the greatest? Even Borges declared there's objective benchmarks to judge both their abilities. In that brainy and difficult to follow heated argument, I end up believing that while we can come up with an objective pattern, that pattern already favors one of the two. In one word, I still don't believe one to be greatest for the simple reason that literature can never be detached from its readers. C.S. Lewis, in his An Experiment in Criticism, poses a different premise, -a different kind of question if you wish. L'Engle also speaks beautifully as to how we don't live to answer questions, (Dorothy Sayers speaks to that in her The Mind of the Maker), maybe, she proposes, it's more important to ask ourselves, "are we asking the right questions?")

All of the sudden, instead of more typically reviewing A Circle of Quiet, I'm just disparaging about many books and a mix of ideas. But this is what good books provoke. They exhort you to make connections, to see themes that cut through many authors, (what does a writer do, how do we live, what's real, what's missing in our life), themes that occupy the mind of a reader.

A final word. This book is not brainy, it's philosophical, but it's also emotional. It's, I would say, a clever conversation with a fellow life sojourner. Madeleine L'Engle writes about the beauty and the meaning in her life. Maybe she has something to tell YOU too.

Expanding my thoughts on my purpose. Ontology

Gave this 5 stars for giving me some thoughts on God, the world, life, etc and how to experience them all to the fullest. I love her testimony of how she was converted to Christianity. She states that she wasn't convinced intellectually, but because of the love from an unlikely believer.
I connected with her in this quote: "When I do something wrong I tend to alibi, to make excuses, blame someone else. Until I can accept whatever it is that I have done, I am only widening the gap between my real and my ontological self, and I am thus excluding myself so that I begin to think that I am unforgivable. We need to be forgiven:"

Powerful!!! Wonderful writings about God, our lives, and art. I’m learning from MLE about how to be.

Wow. I had a whole new view of L'Engle after reading this. She was one of my childhood idols, as A Wrinkle in Time is my all-time favorite book. I read it so many times when I was a kid. She had not written the sequels when I was young, but the stories about the Austin family were out, so I read those.

This is a very humanizing view of L'Engle. I saw her in 1994 when she was our Mythcon Guest of Honor, and she was quite ill at the time and very fragile. I got the impression that she was much older than she actually was. She must have just been ill as pictures in the book show her looking better a few years later.

These are remembrances of her early days as a wife and mother. I had no idea that she had been an actress (that's how she met her husband, who was an actor) or that she had gone to boarding school. It was a much more exciting life than I would have thought. Yet these reminisces are primarily of her life in Crosswicks, a rustic old house in a small town where she and her husband ran a small general store. She writes of neighbors and the church choir and all the domestic little things. I think of her as being very religious, but she wasn't always. She touches on that in this book, her struggle with faith. Even if you're not a fan of her books, you might like this. I certainly want to read the rest of these journals.