Yuffie's Book Reviews

A Wrinkle in Time - by Madeleine L'Engle

I'd read this book as a kid, and I don't think I got that into it. I clearly remembering "this is really weird...." But it seems to be so many people's childhood love, so I decided to give it another read. I didn't remember at all what the book was about, so I was going into it with a fresh pair of eyes. While reading it, I had pretty much the same reaction as before: "This book is really trippy..." So it's really hard to put my reactions into words... I don't even rightly know HOW to react to this book.... I'll give it my best shot.

But this book felt really familiar after I was about 1/2way through, and it wasn't because I was unlocking old memories of the first time I read it. Just throw in a blue police box and a sonic screwdriver, and it'd be hard to distinguish from Doctor Who! (So after that revelation, I got way more into the story, haha.)

THE WORLD
Incredibly imaginitive! I loved the creative worldbuilding and aliens. The entire concept of the book and "wrinkles in time" was beast. Since it was only 200-odd pages long, the world building wasn't detailed or very deep, but the things that were included were so colorful and stretched the limits of the imagination.

PLOT
Three children get whisked away on a journey through time and space to find and save their MIA father from the evil of evils: The Dark Thing. You have plain-jane Meg, her abnormally genius and possibly telepathic 5-year-old brother Charles Wallace, and some random kid who somehow randomly came on this journey and I still don't know what the heck he's doing here, Calvin.

There are three old women, Mrs Who, Mrs Whatsit, and Mrs Which, who guide the children through time and space and introduce them to the Dark Thing. Pretty analogous to the three fairies from Sleeping Beauty, only these women aren't women, they're centaur-looking alien, a former star, and idk what else. Pretty cool. But they're such trolls, and they end up being huge deus ex machinas for the story, which I wasn't a fan of. When Meg needed to get whisked back to the evil thing's lair, they just magically appeared to take her--and only her for some contrived reason. They gave each child a warning and a gift, and those weren't as transparently obvious as these kinds of things usually are in books, so I wasn't turned off by that as much. I laughed out loud when the gift to meg was "Your faults!" Meg: "My faults!" she cried in horror. and it was pretty smart how L'engle naturally used Meg's faults to her advantage against the Dark Thing.

But yeah, plot was pretty straight-forward, however, a lot of it was really contrived. For example, the Mrs W's took the three children to the planet Uriel in order to show them the dark thing, and then they took them to another planet with this Medium who showed them the dark thing surrouding the earth. Like, why did they have to take the kids to Uriel first? It was a cool experience in the book, but ultimately it wasn't logical. And the Mrs W's spent an inordinate ammount of time in the book trying to explain their decision, but ultimately their explanation was pretty thin--something along the lines of the air on earth wasn't clear enough so they had to go to the mountaintops of Uriel, and they wanted to show them on a happy planet Uriel before they saw the Dark Thing surrounding their home planet earth, which would have upset them.... That stuck out as backwriting to me.

Deus ex machinas happened a few times. I'd mentioned it with the Mrs W's showing up when most convenient for the plot, and then NOT showing up when convenient for the plot too, and the explanations behind why they could show up felt a little thin to me (you're free to disagree! That's just my reaction to it. I would've liked stronger reasoning behind them not being able to tesser--or teleport across space/time--onto the dark thing's planet. I can't even remember a solid explanation.. .Just "we can't go there".

Overall, however, the plot was pretty cool, especially the stuff happening in the climax with IT. There was full plot progression with inciting incidence, rising/falling action, obstacles, climax, and resolution. The book started great too with Mrs Whatsit randomly showing up at Meg's house in the middle of the night. That entire scene felt like something out of Howl's Moving Castle, which was awesome.

CHARACTERS
I... wasn't fond of them. They had strong characterization and distinct personalities, but none of them are people I'd ever want to be friends with.

Charles Wallace is smarter than most adults at age 5, and he's got a lot of pride about it. It was kind of creepy to see a 5 year old using a stove and making sandwiches for his mom and big sister... And he had some unexplained telepathic powers. I'd be totes on board for this if not for the "unexplained" part. Meg just accepted it as normal.

Meg is whiny, stubborn, insolent, a crybaby, and impatient. Which are all fine flaws for a character, but ... i dunno it was just laid on really thick. I do know a ton of people who saw her as a childhood role model, and I do see the merit in her! She's just a little too emotional and screamy and got on my nerves quite a bit. However, I can forgive that because her flaws were actually the way she could resist the Dark Thing's hypnosis/attacks, which was really cool. And despite her whininess, she still took her own initiative when it counted. She's terrified, but she still does what needs to be done to save her family from the forces of evil.

What I did love about her was how she was so into math and science, and those things actually had a place in the story, too. But back in the 1960s when this book was written, Meg was probably one of the first, if not the first, female protagonist into math and science in a children's book. That's huge and brilliant, and I will bow to L'engle for taking such bold risks and inspiring millions of little girls everywhere to pursue math and science, which at the time was more of a "male" thing. Even just a few weeks ago, I saw a movement on youtube that highlighted female role models in the science field because they aren't talked about as much as the men.

Then Calvin, the random guy. Seriously, the way he's introduced into the story is Meg and Charles Wallace are walking in the woods and they randomly run into him, and Calvin says he has compulsions and feelings, and he's getting one now to go to their house for dinner. Really contrived... Maybe there's an explanation in later books, but even so, I wish there was even a hint of an explanation other than gut feelings to bring him along. And just like 2 seconds after meeting them, he's already bffs with them and being protective over Meg and holding her hand and everything. He was just... so RANDOM. I don't know what he was doing there!! He like, just photobombed the story hardcore! I'm not sure if that was intentionally funny, but I'm cracking up at him right now.

WRITING
I have extremely mixed feelings about every other aspect of the book, except here. The writing was plain. A lot of telling and filtering, which was why it stopped me from feeling immersed in the story. This was told like a bedtime story, not as if I were IN the story. Much of the story felt like a distant account of the events, like I was watching from behind a window. While Meg was the protagonist, we were watching her, rather and watching the world through her eyes, and that took away from the overall effectiveness of storytelling.

I would've been way more into this book, way less cynical about its flaws and contrivedness, had the prose been a little more immersive. and I know L'engle could pull it off! There were several passages that were beautifully written and I did feel like I was there. But most of the story lacked that.

OVERALL
A super read! It flawlessly blends magic and science (or you could argue that the "magic" IS science!). The infusion of religion was a bit transparent and heavy-handed, however it was still an interesting interpretation of Christianity. I loved the sheer imagination put into this story. It's quite inspiring. It is pretty trippy and random and eccentric, so it's not for everyone, but fans of Doctor Who and Hayao Miyazaki would likely adore this book. The quality of the writing is really the only spot I'll dock points, because I'm still so utterly flabbergasted by everything else and not sure what to think, so it gets the benefit of the doubt and I'll deem it awesome. (Someone please tell me they feel so confused at what to feel about this book? lol)

4/5 stars