A Wrinkle in Time begins in a deceptively normal way: on a night with wind-tossed trees and a howling rain storm. From there, award-winning author Madeleine L'Engle takes readers literally to the stars and beyond in this extraordinary coming-of-age fantasy novel.

I first read about the adventures of Meg, Charles Wallace and Calvin when I was eleven or twelve years old. It was during my early bookworm phase, when I was still learning there were genres that I enjoyed more than others.

I was swept up in the adventure part of this story- facing down the shadows and 'It' in my subconscious mind and heart. I remember thinking the Aunt Beast portion of the story was boring and being disappointed Meg's father was a real man with flaws rather than a superhero who could solve all of her problems.

Looking back on that interpretation now, I see my own burgeoning psychological development and the belief that my parents were some kind of godlike beings- something that most if not all children pass through at some point or another. When did you discover that your parents were real and fallible, just like you?

However, listening to the audiobook as a fully grown adult with a daughter of my own, I was struck by Meg's strength and bravery. It takes a great deal of inner resolve to face down society's expectations and the numbing experience of living soullessly every day, following someone else's school or work schedule and agenda. (A real life version of the pulsing, all-encompassing brain of L'Engle's fantasy world.)

How many days have I awoken only to race off to the hamster wheel of the work week- toiling away so the highly-paid minds of the CEOs could rest easy, knowing that the company was producing product (whatever industry that may be) and providing value for the shareholders? More than I'd care to admit, before I discovered the safe haven of the librarian's world.

In my own effort to find my calling, I was reminded of Meg's struggles to survive her encounter with It, not just survive but decide how her body and mind should function. In some ways, the modern work experience feels like someone else dictates how many breaths you should take per minute or what rhythm your heart should beat.

I had the good fortune of listening to an audiobook that has L'Engle speaking a brief introduction and then an afterword read by one of L'Engle's granddaughters.

The granddaughter (I'm embarrassed I don't remember her name) shared the details and struggles of L'Engle's life- including the rejection of her manuscript by numerous publishing houses and the shade some readers threw her way for their own interpretations of her story. Some claimed the book was too overtly Christian while others thought it promoted witchcraft. Her granddaughter said L'Engle was baffled by the hate mail.

Curious how a reader's lens of perception shapes the experience you have with a book. As I mentioned earlier, as a child I thought this book was a grand adventure. As an adult, I see it as a metaphor for living in the modern world.

I'm keen to have my own reluctant reader try this book and share what she thinks about it.

Recommended for everyone but especially those who find themselves a beat or two out of step with the proverbial Its of the modern world. This book reminds you that you're not alone.

Meg Murray misses her father. He disappeared years before when her younger brother Charles Wallace was a baby. Meg feels a bit lost. At school she feels left out and stupid. At home she feels left out and stupid. Her older brothers are athletic and smart. Her younger brother is a genius. But she is just Meg. Where does she fit in? Out of everyone, Charles Wallace is the one person who understands her. Then one night Charles Wallace mentions his three strange friends who live in a strange house in the woods -- Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which. The three strangely magical beings will lead the children on a quest to rescue their father and teach them lessons about life, the universe, and love.

When I heard they were making a new movie version of this book, I decided I needed to read it again. I loved this book when I read it as a child. It mirrored a lot of my own feelings about myself. I liked the discussions of poetry, mathematics, the universe, God....plus the strange creatures and worlds they explore. As a child some of the philosophy and insights in the story were over my head. Re-reading this as an adult, I caught more of the wisdom and lessons from this book than I did as a third grader. I never read the rest of the series when I was younger. I'm glad that I now have the entire set and can read the rest of the story.

Now that I've re-read the book I'm waiting patiently for the movie to be released on DVD. I wonder if it follows the book, or deviates substantially? There is a lot of discussion about God in A Wrinkle in Time. I'm curious to see how much might have been removed in the movie version. I'm equally as curious about the mathematics, physics and science woven into the story. I can't wait to see the movie to see how they might have changed the characters, story and ideas.....and whether the tale still retains its magic in the film version.

A Wrinkle in Time is the first of five books in the Time series featuring the Murray family. I never read the complete series, so I'm excited to finally have the rest of the books. I also want to read the Austin Family Chronicles, another series written by Madeleine L'Engle.

Lately I’ve started reading books without realising they have religious content or connotations until half way through. This book is one of them.

The start was very promising and then I felt it went downhill. It also felt rushed to me and didn’t all come together or make enough sense.

4/10/12 Okay, this is the longer review. The added bit follows the dashed line ---

I learned about this outstanding book and its brilliant author from
Catie’s wonderful review  and blog post. Yes, I should have known about it many years ago, but this was a gap in my experience. To make up for lost time, I now have the boxed-set series of 5 books for my family.

This is a wonderful adventure story for children - one that speaks to them as adults, and conveys a bundle of important life-concepts without getting weighed down by them.

It is also a great book for re-acquainting adults with the potentials of life - and the critical importance of faith - even as we deal with hard and often scary realities.

My review won’t be nearly as good as Catie’s - in part because she has read the book from both a child’s and an adult’s perspective, and in part because she just writes fabulous reviews (not to mention the artist renderings!). However, I will follow Catie's suggestion and focus mainly on my perspective as an adult, reading this for the first time.
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At one level, this is a delightful - but harrowing - children’s adventure in a science fictional setting. The story is centered around a strong, smart girl named Meg, and her intuitively wise and precocious younger brother, Charles Wallace. The interplay between these two is a beautiful thing to see.

Charles Wallace: “It’s being able to understand a sort of language, like sometimes if I concentrate very hard I can understand the wind talking with the trees. You tell me, you see, sort of inad—inadvertently. That’s a good word, isn’t it? I got Mother to look it up in the dictionary for me.”

The narrative very cleverly promotes timeless values of family, loyalty and love. It also edges the reader toward a growing realization - that perseverance is critical to success in any difficult endeavor. It is the kind of book that you really want your kids to read and understand, and to come back to as they get older.

Meg: This has been the most impossible, the most confusing afternoon of my life, she thought, yet I don’t feel confused or upset anymore; I only feel happy. Why?

At another level this is a story for adults, but told from a child’s perspective. The adult story, when you step back and think about it, is a circle of ideas that are connected and interdependent. Within that circle are knowledge - what we know and what we don’t; reasoning to solve problems, even when you are too scared to think clearly; the importance of faith - that there are answers, even when you can’t see them; and a related kind of faith, that you can and must act without knowing some of the most critical facts.

Charles Wallace got his look of probing, of listening. I know that look! Meg thought suddenly. Now I think I know what it means! Because I’ve had it myself, sometimes, doing math with Father, when a problem is just about to come clear...

This is all grownup stuff, the sort of thing that philosophers have trundled on about for millennia. But the lessons here are concepts for living, simply stated, and at their core are simple truths that are easily lost in the day-to-day. We humans know a great deal, about a great many things, and (like Meg) we can reason our way through tough challenges to a brighter future. But arrogance about our knowledge can lead us to think we are masters of all around us. In the book, experiments with tesseracts are a great example. The experiments are in a noble cause, but they lead down a very dark path. In the bigger picture we know pathetically little, and all our knowledge is but a tiny scratch on the surface of what IS.

What she saw was only the game Mrs Whatsit was playing; it was an amusing and charming game, a game full of both laughter and comfort, but it was only the tiniest facet of all the things Mrs Whatsit could be.

And here is the critical point that is so well expressed in the narrative. We have to take our pathetically limited knowledge, and our dangerous arrogance, and get on with it. And when we fail, or things go wrong, we get angry and point fingers, just as Meg does here. As our brains scream about fears and anger, and point us in a lot of wrong directions, we have to pull ourselves together and move forward, using our limited working knowledge and accepting that we have to find answers as we go along. All of this involves faith, of different sorts and in shifting applications.

“What can I tell you that will mean anything to you? Good helps us, the stars help us, perhaps what you would call light helps us, love helps us. Oh, my child, I cannot explain! This is something you just have to know or not know.”

“You mean you’re comparing our lives to a sonnet? A strict form, but freedom within it?” “Yes.” Mrs Whatsit said. “You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself.”

In short, all of us must proceed into the darkness and reach for the light. For me, reading as an adult, that is what this book was all about.

Very Highly Recommended.

"But why me?" asked Madeleine. "Do I have to do it?"

"You must," said Mrs Whatsit. "Your world is in grave danger. Very, very grave danger. You have to warn them."

"But I don't know how!" exclaimed Madeleine angrily. "What is this danger? How am I going to explain it? It's impossible!"

"Certum est quia impossibile est," said Mrs Who. "It is certain, because it is impossible. Latin. Tertullian."

"Wwe wwill hhelp yyou," interrupted Mrs Which. "Iff onlyy yyou ddidn't iinsist on uusing wwords..."

"You see!" said Madeleine. "You tell me I have to write a book, and you don't even know what words are! You're horrible! I hate you!" Tears filled her eyes.

"Now, now," murmured Mrs Whatsit. "It's much better than you think. The words are all there inside you already, you just have to find them. If you don't mind, my dear, I will just take a little look through your memory."

Suddenly, Madeleine had the strangest feeling. All the books she had ever read were lined up inside her mind like a huge library. And there was Mrs Whatsit, moving through the shelves with her, pulling down a book here and a book there...

"You see?" asked Mrs Whatsit after a time. "That was quite easy, wasn't it? I'm sure Out of the Silent Planet will be useful, and of course That Hideous Strength. Good old C.S. Lewis! And Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. We want that lovely dance of the stars, don't we? Then we'll take Charles Wallace out of Odd John, and I think some Robert Heinlein and just a little bit of Plato, and now all you have to do is put them together!"

A moment later, Madeleine found herself sitting in front of her typewriter. The words poured out of her, as she covered sheet after sheet. More quickly than she would have believed possible, she found there was a thick manuscript on the desk. Dazed and astonished, she picked it up and began to read through what she had written.

"But it's terrible!" she said, in bitter disappointment. "So sloppily constructed! Such a lack of feeling for the English language! And it doesn't even make sense! None of it sticks together!"

"Goddag, yxskaft," agreed Mrs Who. "Hello, ax-handle. Swedish. Saying indicating lack of coherence."

"You must have faith," said Mrs Whatsit serenely. "You may think it's terrible, but millions of children will love this book. They won't worry about the words. They will see the truth behind them."

"On ne voit bien qu’avec le cœur. L’essentiel est invisible pour les yeux," said Mrs Who. "You only see truly with the heart. What is important is invisible to the eyes. French. Saint-Exupéry."

"It won't work," muttered Madeleine. "I'll send it to the publisher if you like, but they'll just reject it. They'll say it's silly."

"Then send it to another publisher," said Mrs Whatsit. "And another, and another, until you succeed. Listen, Madeleine. The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called, but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. Now do you understand?"

"No," said Madeleine uncertainly; but she found that her fingers, all by themselves, had taken an envelope, put the manuscript into it, and addressed it to a publishing house in the city.

"Ggood ggirl," said Mrs Which. "Nnow wwe hhave tto ggo. BBut wwe'll bbe bback."

**** I read this at a time when I needed a big surge of joy, magic, and distraction. I see I only remarked in writing that I would be surprised if there had not been a film of this 1962 extravaganza. I verbally noted to my spouse, Ron and he remembers: if anyone tried to portray these peculiar and dynamic ranges of events in a film, it would be difficult. We did not have long to wait! ****

“A Wrinkle In Time” is an adventure I knew I would love. I embraced it wholly and am glad three novels succeed it. There is an element that is science fictive but I call this youth fantasy, with a complexity appealing to grown-ups that is probably aimed at us. I had no inkling about premise nor characters thus this adventure was entirely new; the way I love stories. There is surreal exploration, discovery, and strong emotions. The easiest description is that the Murrys are special and as it goes in fantasy, hold a pivotal role in their universe. We spotlight all of them but sympathy follows elder sister, Meg.

She is a square peg at school, unlike popular brothers Dennys & Sandy. She underperforms but not for lack of intellect. She is a mathematics whiz and her parents are notable scientists. Their Dad’s government work is secret, they haven’t been permitted to know where he is, and fear trouble when contact halts. Her five year-old brother Charles is an eloquent genius, with extrasensory perception too revved up for him to hide. He introduces Meg and a similarly special school chum to a trio of ladies, who scarcely bother to conceal that they aren’t of Earth. They know Mr. Murry needs help and only these three children are in a position to deliver it.

Madeline L’Engle’s creation is thought-provoking, memorable, and could only be born of the most outstanding imagination I’ve ever seen. The planets the rescue party traverse such as a two-dimensional one, the biological make-up of the ladies and other parties they meet, the sights.... are unparalleled and must already comprise a film! Learning about a dark, unidentified threat to their galaxy and that their Dad’s captivity plays a part, is overwhelming. Madeleine deserves every literary award in existence.

This is still a crazy book...
Meg and her brother Charles meet a stranger one night who tells them about a tesseract (wrinkle in time). Come to find out their father is trapped on a distant planet and together with a band of new friends they must embark on an epic journey to rescue him from the evil "IT" (and no, we are not talking Stephen King here). Can Meg find the courage inside her to save her father?
I read this book years ago in school and found it super strange and boring but I wanted to give it a reread as an adult to see what my thoughts would be.
This book starts off well but during the second half it starts to get a little boring and I found myself skimming through most of the way.
This is one wild book! The characters are a bit confusing and hard to follow. Also things seem to happen out of nowhere which is a bit confusing for the reader (whether young or older) and I also remember it being very confusing as a child. If I remember correctly there was actually a point where I just had no idea what was going on anymore in the book and I was completely lost.
This book is a classic though and I do respect it as such however, like many classics, it is a little difficult to enjoy to its full extent. Of course it could be the writing style, it could be the characters, or the crazy world that the author has imagine for us. It also may be simply because we've been so modernized (even in our reading) that books like this just don't seem to jive anymore.
Then again it could simply be that this book is not for everyone. Like To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye I find this book along the same lines, a respected classic but just not for me.
I would recommend this book for the classic that it is. Definitely to younger readers but I don't think this book would be enjoyed as an adult as much as it would as a teenager or preteen.

Supposedly this is an award-winning children's book. It's considered a classic. And since I'd never read it, and it had all of those wonderful things going for it, I selected it for our next lunchtime read.

And I. Hated. This. Book.

The story is about three children. The first is Meg, who is a cranky, bitchy, rebellious, horrible middle school girl. She spends the entire book demanding attention, throwing temper tantrums, and clinging to people. She's supposed to be mildly 'gifted', but we never see ANYTHING more of that in the book, so it's just ridiculous. There's not one good thing about this child, and I hated her.

Then there's her little brother Charles Wallace, who is four or five years old but acts 38. It's WRONG. He's got some sort of brainy superpower that is never fully revealed to the reader, we're just supposed to believe he's 'special' and that when he's concentrating, something is happening (that never manifests to the reader). It's just STUPID.

And last there's Calvin, who just kind of shows up out of the blue several chapters into the book, and is the only actually gifted person in the bunch - but all he can do is be more eloquent than the siblings. So much for THAT gift. He's supposedly vaguely acquainted with Meg from school (he's a few years ahead of her), and based on that, they can hug and hold hands and we're supposed to think the blossomless 'relationship' between them is natural. It is NOT - it's too pat, too quick, and makes no sense, based on her 'ugliness' and crabbiness, alone.

If that weren't enough, the gov't sends the sibling's father into time/space and the family is left for two years to think he just disappeared on a business trip. The gov't would have a better story than that, hello. Just *SHODDY* writing.

The kids meet three 'women' (who are actually stars, or angels, or... we're never sure). They can go to any planet but they can't help the children in situations the author decides are taboo for no reason. They can give gifts, but they can't tell you what you need to do, or give advice, and they can barely even talk... It's just... WRONG! The whole book was a mess. It made no sense. It was preposterous and illogical and no amount of shoddily thrown in verses is going to change that.

When we finally ((FINALLY)) get to the crux of the plot, we find out that there's a disembodied brain trying to destroy planets with 'darkness' and 'evil' (both vaguely referenced as 'cold' and 'horrible'), and that to defeat it, all you need is LUVVVV. You're KIDDING. All of that slop just to get to THAT?!

Read something else. ANYTHING else. It was horrible.

So... this story actually begins with "It was a dark and stormy night". Awesome!

I love everything about this book ─ I love that the dialogue is old-fashioned, having been written in 1960 by a woman who was born in 1918; I love that biblical scripture was woven seamlessly throughout a story that relied upon quantum mechanics as it relates to time travel; I love that it deals with good versus evil and explains it as light versus dark in a simplistic fashion that makes it clear to children; I love the quirky characters; and, finally, I love the Murry's struggle against conformity. In an unrelated comment, it made me want to name a child after Charles Wallace, Meg's five-year-old child prodigy genius little brother ─ his comments on everything were precious. ;)



I also appreciated the pearls of wisdom that were dropped here and there...

n  "Though we travel together, we travel alone."n

n  "But, of course, we can't take any credit for our talents, it's how we use them that counts."n

n  "There will no longer be so many pleasant things to look at if responsible people do not do tsomething about the unpleasant ones."n

n  "Sometimes we can't know what spiritual damage it [evil] leaves even when physical recovery tis complete."n

There is a reason this book received a Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award. It's that good.

“The truth is, I’m not a fan of science fiction, and my math and physics gene has always been weak. But there’s plenty in the book for those of us predisposed toward the humanities as well.”
- Introduction by  Anna Quindlen

Hmm… Ms. Quindlen’s introduction to this book is—on the whole—not bad, but the above passage traveled deeply up my nose. The implication seems to be that sci-fi is generally lacking in humanities, when in fact sci-fi, at its best, is one of the most humane genres of fiction. A further implication (or my further inference) is that this book is “sci-fi for people who don’t like sci-fi”. If you don’t like sci-fi, it is quite alright, no need to struggle so hard to like some of it!

Ah! Enough with the grumpy intro, this is a delightful book after all. A Wrinkle in Time is generally considered a classic sci-fi book and often appears in “all-time great sci-fi” list, though “science fantasy” seems to be a more appropriate description given the many fantastical elements with no real science behind them. The narrative is mostly seen through the eyes of Meg Merry, a rather temperamental thirteen-year-old girl who has trouble fitting in at school. Her father, a scientist working for the government disappeared some years ago while on a secret assignment. Meg lives with her mother (also a scientist), her twin brothers and the youngest brother, Charles Wallace Murry, a genius generally mistaken for mentally handicapped as he prefers not to speak to most people.


A Wrinkle in Time is basically about Meg and Charles’ quest to find and rescue their father from wherever he is. They are aided by three weird old ladies, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which, who are possibly extraterrestrial, or perhaps celestial. This involves interstellar travel by “Tessering”, a word derived from the geometrical term tesseract, folding the fabric of space and time to jump across light years; a little like hyperspace travel or taking shortcuts through wormholes. En route they come across many strange beings, including the three old ladies in their true forms, eventually they wind up on a bizarre and dreadful planet Camazotz, where conformity is king, and they have to confront “IT”, to rescue their father.

I kind of regret not having read A Wrinkle in Time in my early teens, I would have gotten the most out of it then. This book was written specifically for children, in a style that they will find accessible and enjoyable. Reading it as an adult I felt a little alienated from it, always feeling conscious that I am too far outside the target demographic. I don’t think this is a book “for all ages”, and rightly so, that is what children’s books are for. No point spoiling the book by making some subtle adult references that go over the children’s heads.

Having said that, I would be dishonest if I rated the book at five stars when I was not able to get the most out of it. The star rating is merely a reflection of my enjoyment of the book, not the book’s actual worth. For me, the planet Camazotz is the most interesting invention in this book, a rather surreal dystopian nightmarish landscape. The three “old ladies” are interesting characters but the children and their parents are drawn in rather broad strokes and I could not relate to them (though I suppose young readers will like them better than I do). The climax and the ending feel a bit rushed and not as exciting as I anticipated. I do like how  Madeleine L’Engle has woven in the theme of individuality, though, the main characters are all a little unusual in some ways but they have to learn to treasure their uniqueness rather than feel frustrated at being outside the norm. I also appreciate that the book nicely communicates to children that things are often not what they seem. There is often beauty behind surface ugliness and vice versa.

I would definitely recommend A Wrinkle in Time to children; that is a no brainer. If you have kids, give them a copy! As for my adult GR friends, I would recommend it if you don’t mind reading an unabashedly children’s book, certainly it would be great to read along with your children.

Notes:
• For me, the main impetus to read this book now is the forthcoming  new film adaptation. The trailer looks pretty good.
n  n

• Check out this hilarious (yet educational) “Thug Notes” video review.


• Coming back to the idea of “sci-fi for people who don’t like sci-fi”, what if you do like sci-fi? It depends on what kind of sci-fi you like. If your idea of good sci-fi is in the vein of Clarke /Asimov /Heinlein /PKD /Herbert, I don’t think A Wrinkle in Time would be quite the thing for you. It is more akin to C.S. Lewis’  Out of the Silent Planet, it even has some religious undertone, though less overt.

Quotes:
“We don’t travel at the speed of anything,” Mrs. Whatsit explained earnestly. “We tesser. Or you might say, we wrinkle.”

“We are all happy because we are all alike. Differences create problems.”

“I don’t understand it any more than you do, but one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be.”

“Matter and energy are the same thing, that size is an illusion, and that time is a material substance. We can know this, but it’s far more than we can understand with our puny little brains.”


Mrs. Whatsit by mheuston

This very rarely happens to me but I believe I will enjoy the movie more than the book. I don't have much luck with classics and this novel is a perfect example. It didn't live up to the hype for me.
This science-fiction fantasy novel follows a 13 yr old girl, Meg Murry, on a journey through time and space with her younger brother, Charles Wallace Murry, and their new friend, Calvin O'Keefe, to rescue her father from the evil that holds him prisoner on another planet.
I have mixed emotions as I read this classic novel. I had to constantly remind myself that this was categorized as children's literature and that it was published in the 1960's. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I read it when I was a child.

I JUST read this book for the first time, and it was BEAUTIFUL. The writing is exactly why I adore childhood classics (how can they make the ordinary so magical; and the food is always so salivating) and then this tale took twist after twist...and it was utterly unique. I am a big fan. :)