Many Waters (Time, Book 4)

by Madeleine L'Engle
Many Waters (Time, Book 4)
book data
5,620 ratings, 3.96 average rating, 264 reviews (more data...)
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published
May 1st 2007 (first published 1986) by Square Fish

binding
Paperback, 224 pages

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isbn
0312368577    (isbn13: 9780312368579)

description
The fifteen-year-old Murry twins, Sandy and Dennys, are accidentally sent back to a strange Biblical time period, in which mythical beasts roam the de...more




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Matt
09/01/07
Matt rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Just barely edged out as my favorite book in the series (right behind "A swiftly Tilting Planet"). Tells a story less concerned with love and justice and all about the hard choices that people (and deities) make in a flawed world.

An out and out retelling of the Biblical Deluge from the point of view of two modern teenagers. Unique in that it makes no apology for all the fantastical stuff the Bible referred to in antediluvian times. Angels getting it own with the village ...more
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Elin
05/01/07
Elin rated it: 5 of 5 stars

I adore stories that take a piece of established lore (in this case, the Noah's ark story), and really bring it sweating and breathing into life. When I read this book I felt the people's derision at Noah for building a boat in the desert, their bewilderment when it began to rain, the anguish of being separated from lovers and forsaken by God. This story makes that beautiful Bible verse real: "Many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it. If a man tried to buy it with everyt...more
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Alexis
08/23/07
Alexis rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in January, 1995
so... this was the first of all the books which made me realize while i was reading it that it was all christian imagery. i mean, the arc and all - noah... hard to miss, right? and that's what people say about aslan - just a jesus allegory - but i didn't have any christian education as a child, so i missed all of that. and most people say the same "when i was a kid i didn't realize it had all that christian metaphor." which i think means that in effect, it didn't. if we don't know ...more
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Amanda
03/19/07
Amanda rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in January, 1991
This is the other contender for my favorite Madeleine L'Engle book. I especially love this book because of its version of the biblical story of Noah and the flood, a story that I've heard often and that loses its luster since I spent my entire childhood in Sunday School. L'Engle blends biblical ideas and stories with her own imaginative renderings of that time, like her interpretations of the seraphim and nephilim, mythical creatures like manticores, and her explanation of Noah's daughters' c...more
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Jacqueline
03/26/09
Jacqueline rated it: 4 of 5 stars

bookshelves: ancient-times, fantasy, jf
Read in March, 2009
I first read Many Waters as a young adult many years ago. I have been re-reading many L'Engle books the past couple of years, and this one has been hard to get ahold of. (Our large library system only has one copy, and it has had a long hold list.) I finally got my chance and enjoyed revisiting the story.

Many Waters is basically a fictionalized account of the Noah's Ark story from the Bible. Sandy and Dennys Murphy inadvertently disturb one of their father's science projects and ...more
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Qt
10/26/07
Qt rated it: 4 of 5 stars

bookshelves: science-fiction
This is the third book in the Wrinkle in Time quartet, and, like the others, it has an unusual and intriguing mix of spirituality, quantum mechanics, philosophy, and fantasy. It's not your typical novel--no slam-bang action, no climactic ending--it's more of a "thinking" book. Some of the parts were sad or a bit unsettling to me, but that's a shortcoming of my own--not the book's, as it was really well-written and beautifully done :-)
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Rachel
05/17/09
Rachel rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in May, 2009
This Time Quartet book seems not to fit in really well with the other three, but I liked it very much. For one thing, it follows the twins, Sandy and Dennys, who were hardly noticed in the other three books except that they were described as the most "normal" of the Murry children. For another, they were not granted some great mission, like Meg and Charles Wallace in the other three Time books. It was much more like the Wizard of Oz, where the boys, having stumbled into a different ...more
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Rob
04/16/09
Rob rated it: 4 of 5 stars

bookshelves: fantasy
Read in April, 2009
The Murry twins, Sandy and Dennys, get transported back to the time of Noah, just before the flood. I have to say, whatever you expect that to be like, L'Engle probably still has a surprise or two for you. Very good writing,. as always. THe plot is somewhat unsatisfactory to me towards the end, though. Maybe she addresses this in the An Acceptable Time. Doesn;t look like it, though.

***SPOILER******
******SPOILER******
*********SPOILER******
Well, I know where Pullman g...more
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Grimstnzborith Janeen-san-elda svit-kona
bookshelves: books-i-own
Read in June, 2009
This book was good and interesting.
Sandy and Dennsy, the Murry twins, accidently mess up one of their Father's experiments with a tesseract and suddenly are transported back in time and help Noah build his ark in time to escape the giant flood they know is going to come.
This book was good, but there was one thing I found very strange: the author shortened her sentences, and this bothered as well as puzzled me.
For example, instead of saying 'He got up and walked across the ro...more
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Kirsten
11/19/08
Kirsten rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in November, 2008
Probably 3 1/2 stars, which I am rounding up to 4. Another one which I think I liked better as a child, when the whole idea of reinterpreting the Bible seemed fresh and new. There's a lot here, but most of it doesn't really go anywhere. In most of L'Engle's books, there is a reason for the time/space travel - the person is needed as a catalyst or an inspiration for something key to happen. I just didn't get that sense here - I felt like everything in the plot would have happened even without...more
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Julie
06/17/09
Julie rated it: 5 of 5 stars (review of other edition)

Read in January, 1995
The concept of this book fascinated me and has stuck with me for years. I don't remember the plot, as much as I remember ideas, like the idea that people in Biblical times could have been much, much shorter than people today (which would only make sense considering that the average height is increasing every year) and that they might not have kept time the same way - meaning that Abraham could have been 900 years old on HIS calendar. That kind of thinking was new to me then. I'd like to re-read ...more
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courtney
09/29/08
courtney rated it: 5 of 5 stars

Read in October, 2008
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Lindsey
09/22/08
Lindsey rated it: 3 of 5 stars

Of the four within the traditional Time Quartet, this is the odd novel out. The previous three books focus on Meg, Charles, and Calvin O’Keefe as the main characters, and this uses the other two members of the Murry family as the protagonists. Also, the previous three have interweaving themes that bring out the ideology regarding self-sacrifice regarding social justice that has the ability to effect and entire culture or time period, whereas this is more about the process of boys becoming men ...more
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Margie
09/02/08
Margie rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in October, 2008
recommended to Margie by: self
recommends it for: Teens interested in quantum physics and the space-time continuum
This was interesting because it not only took principles of physics (quantum leaps) but also the little-known Nephilum (fallen angels) and Seraphim of Noah's time (yes "THE" Noah of the Old Testament) and combined it into a thought-provoking tale of the Murray twins Dennys and Alexander (Sandy). This was my favorite of the series after "Wrinkle", but I was a little miffed that it was chronologically out of order with the 3rd book. The two books should have been flip flopped...more
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Chak
08/07/08
Chak rated it: 4 of 5 stars

bookshelves: kid
Read in August, 2008
Even though I recommended the 3rd book in The Time Quartet for 10 year olds, I would think a reader's age of 12 or more would be warranted for "Many Waters," the last book in Madeline L'Engle's Time Quartet series due to recurrent sexual themes in the book and some violence. L'Engle handles everything morally and appropriately, but it just seems like a book for an older kid. Again, my son is only five, so maybe kids are dealing with these topics a lot sooner these days, I don't know....more
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Heather
06/18/08
Heather rated it: 2 of 5 stars

Read in January, 2007
I've been a fan of the three other "Wrinkle in Time" books since I was a child, so I was interested in re-reading those books and reading this for the first time. The story is about the twins Sandy and Dennys, and their accidental travel back in time to Noah's (of Noah and the Ark) days.

I was surprised by how different this book felt from the other three. At first I was a little put off by the dialogue between the twins at the beginning. Their manner of talking to each...more
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Paula
05/01/08
Paula rated it: 4 of 5 stars

Read in May, 2008
I was surprisingly pleased by this book. It started off a little slow, and it took me the majority of the book to figure out who was who, but it ended really nicely, and probably in the only way that was possible.

It was odd that this book seems to be a bit out of order in the series (for example, Meg is married in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, the third book in the series, while she's only in college in this one), and completely unusual to involve the twins as major characters in a book ...more
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Morgan
03/27/08
Morgan rated it: 4 of 5 stars (review of isbn 0374347964)

Read in March, 2008
recommended to Morgan by: Jenn
recommends it for: everyone
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Kelly
01/26/08
Kelly rated it: 5 of 5 stars (review of isbn 0374347964)

bookshelves: old_friends
Read in December, 1987
My piano teacher asked me what I would like for my 12th birthday, and I said that I liked Madeleine L'Engle's books. This one had just come out, so she bought it for me. I can't believe how nice she was, especially considering I never practiced before my lessons.

(non-book-related aside)
The other thing she would give all her students every year was a little plastic bust of a composer - you'd get a different composer every year. Each one would come in a box with a checklist of...more
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Madeleine L'Engle
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