Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
387th out of 7,914 books
—
39,528 voters
A Ring of Endless Light (Austin Family #5)
After a tumultuous year in New York City, the Austins are spending the summer on the small island where their grandfather lives. He’s very sick, and watching his condition deteriorate as the summer passes is almost more than Vicky can bear. To complicate matters, she finds herself as the center of attention for three very different boys.
Zachary Grey, the troubled and reck
...moreMass Market Paperback, 332 pages
Published
September 28th 1995
by Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group
(first published May 1st 1980)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
I read this book in fifth grade, and I loved it so much. I bought it earlier this spring at Borders (I think it was on sale because it’s newbery honor sticker is the wrong color), though I just picked it up.
Vicky Austin goes to her grandfather’s house on Seven Bay Island. Each day, her grandfather only seems to grow weaker from Leukemia. The book begins with the Austin’s family friend Commander Rodney’s funeral. There, she meets her older brother’s friend Adam, who she thinks she likes. She wor...more
Vicky Austin goes to her grandfather’s house on Seven Bay Island. Each day, her grandfather only seems to grow weaker from Leukemia. The book begins with the Austin’s family friend Commander Rodney’s funeral. There, she meets her older brother’s friend Adam, who she thinks she likes. She wor...more
I first read this book as an early teen--I can see now, reading it as an adult, that having read this book (along with all Madeleine L'Engle's other books) at twelve and thirteen clearly had a profound impact on my world view. L'Engle's writing has a depth and profundity that draws on emotions of which most writers only attempt to scratch the surface.
I think all developling adolescents should read this book and all the surrounding ones, if only to see that there is more out there than either com...more
I think all developling adolescents should read this book and all the surrounding ones, if only to see that there is more out there than either com...more
Mar 05, 2009
D
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
fans of L'Engle and of thoughtful young-adult lit
Recommended to D by:
Maria Eidietis
Shelves:
ya-lit
L'Engle seems to achieve that which Stephenie Meyer is, as yet, technically unable: a respectful, plausible narration of square pegs, alienated dreamers, and teens wiser than their years finding authentic connection. L'Engle's form is by no means flawless, but Meyer and others would do well to follow her lead and learn to show their protagonists' extraordinariness, not dictate, begging us to believe.
I LOVE this book it is amazing! i've read this book about 5 times and i'm still not sick of it.it's about a girl named vicky who falls for a guy named adam. he doesn't really think she's all that special until he realizes she can communicate w/ dolphins! Then it becomes a battle for her heart because 3 guys are interested in her. Lessons you can learn from this book is to not take life and your friends and family for granted because no one has them forever. Also, it teaches you how to figure you...more
This was my second time reading this book. The first time I read it, which was quite awhile ago, it immediately became one of my favorite books. Reading it again as an older and perhaps more discriminating reader, I still enjoyed it immensely but was more aware of flaws.
Although there are some deep elements to the theme, the major over riding focus of the plot is about Vicky Austin's relationship with three young men. The boys are very different from each other, and although she likes all three...more
Although there are some deep elements to the theme, the major over riding focus of the plot is about Vicky Austin's relationship with three young men. The boys are very different from each other, and although she likes all three...more
In my youth I was on a L'engle tear having gone through the "Time" series...however I didn't get the memo that L'engle's writing ministry developed into one catered towards guiding pre-adolescent females through their awkward years.
Needless to say, I caught on when I realized that the books really weren't speaking to me like the others were...and I quietly returned this one back to the library and saw that I was the only dude to read the book for the past decade...
A good read nonetheless!
Needless to say, I caught on when I realized that the books really weren't speaking to me like the others were...and I quietly returned this one back to the library and saw that I was the only dude to read the book for the past decade...
A good read nonetheless!
1981 Newbery Honor Book
This has been on my mental "to read" list for awhile. Sometimes, it's mistakenly placed in the "Time" series of L'Engle but this book has to do with the Austin family and not the O'Keefes, although Dr. O'Keefe is mentioned in this book. Fortunately, it doesn't rely on the other books in the Austin series so I was able to read it as a "stand alone" book.
The book centers around Vicki, who is spending the summer on the island where her grandfather lives. He is dying of Leukem...more
This has been on my mental "to read" list for awhile. Sometimes, it's mistakenly placed in the "Time" series of L'Engle but this book has to do with the Austin family and not the O'Keefes, although Dr. O'Keefe is mentioned in this book. Fortunately, it doesn't rely on the other books in the Austin series so I was able to read it as a "stand alone" book.
The book centers around Vicki, who is spending the summer on the island where her grandfather lives. He is dying of Leukem...more
There's something about looking up at the stars that makes it easier to look at your problems clearly. The vastness of the ocean pulls me in and lets the words spring to my mind.
I think everyone when they were little dreamed of swimming in the ocean along with all of the sea animals. Adams' project with the dolphins brings back a little bit of my childhood, and the results end up speaking to me as an author and songwriter. I've always been obsessed with the different ways that different people...more
First of all, the science in A Ring of Endless Light is WAY off - dolphins are vicious little bastards. I laughed out loud when Vicky said that you never hear about dolphins' inhumanity to dolphins. Are you kidding me? Someone spent too much time daydreaming about her Trapper Keeper.
That being said, I still love this book. Vicky is wrestling with the problem of evil, particularly in terms of death, and she's also learning about burdens and what a person should or should not ask another person to...more
That being said, I still love this book. Vicky is wrestling with the problem of evil, particularly in terms of death, and she's also learning about burdens and what a person should or should not ask another person to...more
This is one of my favorite books. Has been since I was a child and continues to be so today. It's beautifully written, has some strong messages, and is very relatable, especially for teenage girls (of which I was one when I first started loving the book). It's actually a part of a series, but is easily a stand alone book. If you want more background on the characters, it might be better to start with the first book though.
Vicky Austin and her family have come to their grandpa's home on an island...more
Vicky Austin and her family have come to their grandpa's home on an island...more
After An Acceptable Time I didn’t really have much hope for this book, but I was pleasantly surprised. I liked Vicky Austin (even though she was a little bit too forgiving of some of the characters) and she made for an interesting protagonist. I also liked the scenes with the dolphins and found it interesting that Madeleine L’Engle was able to put so much personality into these characters that essentially have no dialogue. I thought the plot with the dolphins was great and it made me really wish...more
I think I would give this 3+1/2 stars but hesitate to give it four. The first time I picked up the book I was deterred by the strong teenage romance undercurrent running through it and put it down after a few pages. However I returned to it and I'm glad I did. At one level it is a story about a young girl trying to come to terms with the attentions of three very different kinds of young men, the emotional turmoil of adolescence and sexual awakening as well as her place in the world. Foremostly t...more
I discovered Madeleine L'Engle in elementary school and poured through every one of her books that our local library carried by the sixth grade. But this one in particular was especially moving and became a guiding part of my teenage years for it's hauntingly beautiful prose, the romance of communing with nature, and most of all, for it's intelligent and stubborn protagonist - Vicky Austin.
(view spoiler)...more
(view spoiler)...more
I had to read Meet the Austins and The Moon by Night, the first two Austin Family novels, in eighth grade. While I didn't like Meet the Austins as it read like a juvenile fiction book, I fell in love with The Moon by Night and the book's heroine, Vicky Austin. I reread the book so many times, the pages are coming out.
Surprisingly, I never picked up A Ring of Endless Light until college. My sister read it for school and told me that it was a fellow Vicky Austin novel and was surprised I had not y...more
Surprisingly, I never picked up A Ring of Endless Light until college. My sister read it for school and told me that it was a fellow Vicky Austin novel and was surprised I had not y...more
I've been going through a pile of books that I've been given to see if they are worth keeping. Most aren't worth commenting about...this book on the other hand left me a bit perplexed about how well I liked it.
The back of the book and the first few chapters it seemed like a realistic fiction coming of age/teen romance (yuck-in my opinion). I was irritated about the 3 boys interested in the 15 year old girl. And I felt that she had to make too many decisions about intimacy that I think girls of...more
The back of the book and the first few chapters it seemed like a realistic fiction coming of age/teen romance (yuck-in my opinion). I was irritated about the 3 boys interested in the 15 year old girl. And I felt that she had to make too many decisions about intimacy that I think girls of...more
Great read from what I remember from high school. I like L'Engle's writing.
However, from what I remember, I think she paints the Austins as a perfect family, which doesn't exist. Also, though this is not at all a "naughty" romance novel, and more of a young-adult book (although the main character's three prospective love interests are a big subject), I wanted to use this to comment on the subject of romance in reading. A sermon on sexual purity (by Bob at ECC) let me know that even the Christia...more
However, from what I remember, I think she paints the Austins as a perfect family, which doesn't exist. Also, though this is not at all a "naughty" romance novel, and more of a young-adult book (although the main character's three prospective love interests are a big subject), I wanted to use this to comment on the subject of romance in reading. A sermon on sexual purity (by Bob at ECC) let me know that even the Christia...more
I was surprised at the completely different tone that this book had compared to the Wrinkle in Time series. It's almost like it was written by a completely different author (In fact I flipped to the front of the book just to make sure it was by L'Engle). I did like it however. Again with L'Engle's books I really appreciated the moral/religious themes in the story and the questions it posed about people and life. I thought that this book was well written and the different "magical" or "spiritual"...more
A Ring of Endless Light takes what could be a beautiful, poignant book with the most saintly of grandfathers and a reverence for the poetic soul, dries it out, overloads it with sentiment, and then beats it over the head with understanding and well-wishing. And that's my polite impression of it.
Honestly, I don't know how anyone can like this book unless they find picture-perfect, saccharine families and neat answers appealing. Vicky is the most understanding and emotionally and psychologically a...more
Honestly, I don't know how anyone can like this book unless they find picture-perfect, saccharine families and neat answers appealing. Vicky is the most understanding and emotionally and psychologically a...more
This book was one of my elective reads, I think I am becoming increasingly more alarmed that I have not read more Madeleine L'Engle in my life, and I plan to amend this immediately. This book follows Vicky, who returns to a summer home and becomes involved with a science project involving communication with dolphins. Meanwhile, she is learning how she feels about religion, death, and boyfriends. This book is not to be confused with the horrible, watered down, counterfeit Disney movie that shares...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Sometimes you hear about a book that sounds really dumb and you just have to read it. I remember liking A Wrinkle in Time when I was a kid and found out about this lame-sounding dolphin book and brought it home from the library on impulse.
I probably would have looooved this book when I was about 11. The reasons for this are twofold. First of all, it's packed to the brim with adolescent wish fulfillment that would thrill a tween or young teenager, but bores the life out of an older person. The ma...more
I probably would have looooved this book when I was about 11. The reasons for this are twofold. First of all, it's packed to the brim with adolescent wish fulfillment that would thrill a tween or young teenager, but bores the life out of an older person. The ma...more
I was so disappointed in this, because it is highly rated by many of my friends, and the poetry is truly lovely. Maybe I would have loved it if I had read it when I was a teenager, or if I had read the first three books in the Austin family chronicles...
Things that bothered me:
1) The cluelessness of the female protagonist, who lamented her lack of looks yet managed to snare three boys in one summer and string them all along for a while, going from one date to another, sometimes within the same d...more
Things that bothered me:
1) The cluelessness of the female protagonist, who lamented her lack of looks yet managed to snare three boys in one summer and string them all along for a while, going from one date to another, sometimes within the same d...more
(I'm lazy about writing reviews this long after the fact, so here is something i wrote for a different project.)
A Ring of Endless Light - the fourth in the Austin series by L'Engle. (I have been re-reading my L'Engle collection this winter, sort of randomly. I see that i missed the third in this series reading this time around -i'm going to have to go fill in holes.) Re-reading is an interesting thing - the best books are still fresh and have new meaning when you go back to it.
This book is reall...more
A Ring of Endless Light - the fourth in the Austin series by L'Engle. (I have been re-reading my L'Engle collection this winter, sort of randomly. I see that i missed the third in this series reading this time around -i'm going to have to go fill in holes.) Re-reading is an interesting thing - the best books are still fresh and have new meaning when you go back to it.
This book is reall...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This Young Adult novel is about death, incredibly enough. And not death as in vampires or zombies either, but the everyday deaths of pets, strangers, friends, and beloved grandparents. There's a lot of reflection on the human condition and the meaning and consequences of death, rooted in a gently Christian but non-denominational spirituality.
And in the middle of all this, to keep you interested, the narrator, Vicky Austen, not quite sixteen, is being courted by three young men. Which will she en...more
And in the middle of all this, to keep you interested, the narrator, Vicky Austen, not quite sixteen, is being courted by three young men. Which will she en...more
Vicky, who is sixteen, is spending the summer with her family on an island with her grandfather, who is dying of cancer. On the island, Vicky finds herself in tangle of three romances, Leo, whose father dies at the beginning of the story, Zachary, her boyfriend from the previous summer, and Adam, a friend of her brother's who is researching ESP and dolphins. This book deals with the topic of love, but also a lot with death, which is very hard for Vicky to come to terms with.
I liked this book. It...more
I liked this book. It...more
I couldn't have found this book at a more perfect time. L'Engle's poignant tale of a teenager who struggles through one unforgettable summer, balancing three love interests with a summer job, with watching her grandfather die of cancer. My grandfather passed away earlier this year from cancer, and this book really hit home with me. The depth of the emotion with which L'Engle writes not only touched me deeply, it gave me hope that there is still light in this world, that there is still love and l...more
This was very enjoyable to me, to see how those who do not have the gospel in their lives have to wonder and are not sure of what comes after life. I'm so grateful that I know exactly where I'm going and what the Plan is.
In this brilliant installment in the Austins series, Vicky and her family are spending most of her summer on the island where her grandfather lives. As she watches her dear grandpa's condition deteriorate, she begins to wonder how the world can even contain life when there is s...more
In this brilliant installment in the Austins series, Vicky and her family are spending most of her summer on the island where her grandfather lives. As she watches her dear grandpa's condition deteriorate, she begins to wonder how the world can even contain life when there is s...more
This is not a book to read quickly in a gulp -- like I did, because it was a present for my sister, which I was supposed to be wrapping. Oops.
This is one of the darker books L'Engle has written -- which is why I'm gifting it to a sister who just attended her first wake and sickbed. I can't imagine a better way to grapple, like protagonist Vicky Austin does, with the Big Questions in life, than to a backdrop of beach, dolphins, love, poetry, and philosophy.
That said, if you read it in one big bl...more
This is one of the darker books L'Engle has written -- which is why I'm gifting it to a sister who just attended her first wake and sickbed. I can't imagine a better way to grapple, like protagonist Vicky Austin does, with the Big Questions in life, than to a backdrop of beach, dolphins, love, poetry, and philosophy.
That said, if you read it in one big bl...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer best known for her Young Adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters. Her works reflect her strong interest in modern science: tesseracts, for example, are featured prominently in A Wrinkle in Time, mitochondrial DNA in A Wind in the Door, organ regener...more
More about Madeleine L'Engle...
Share This Book
6 trivia questions
More quizzes & trivia...
“Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light.”
—
298 people liked it
“It's hard to let go anything we love. We live in a world which teaches us to clutch. But when we clutch we're left with a fistful of ashes.”
—
128 people liked it
More quotes…
Feb 25, 2009 05:34am
Sep 17, 2009 01:06pm