Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
The Other Side of the Sun
L'Engle at her best, this novel features Stella, who marries into the aristocratic Renier family and discovers a frightening world of intrigue, greed, prejudice, and superstition. Soon drawn into a raging battle between good and evil, Stella must fight her way through to find the other side of the sun.
Hardcover, 384 pages
Published
April 15th 1996
by Shaw Books
(first published 1971)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
This book is not yet featured on Listopia.
Add this book to your favorite list »
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
975)
I was a big Madeleine L'Engle fan as a kid, though I favored the time-travel ones over the ordinary-time ones as a rule - I read this book once sometime in junior high or high school, but never re-read it as I did with most of my favorite L'Engles, so revisiting it now, I found I had forgotten all but the most general details.
Stella, a British girl of 19, falls in love with and marries an American southerner while he was stationed in England. His job almost immediately sent him onward to a secre...more
Stella, a British girl of 19, falls in love with and marries an American southerner while he was stationed in England. His job almost immediately sent him onward to a secre...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
view 2 comments
Stella, a young British bride, arrives in South Carolina in 1910 to live with her husband's family while he (Terry) is on a secret assignment. The Renier family has lived in a big rambling house at the beach for many generations. There is a long history of family secrets and animosities, and Stella does not understand the threat of danger that seems to be lurking. 1910 is not too far removed from the Civil War and there is a great deal of racial discord in the area. The family also has some tie...more
I awarded 5 stars because, although this book was picked at total random (I was with my 5 year old niece at the library and she pulled it off the shelf and announced I should read that one), I found it hard to put down. The narrator for most of it is a young English woman, newly married and having to live with her husband's family in the South right after the civil war. She isn't racist and doesn't understand why treating blacks as equals will cause problems. Oh, and everyone's crazy and there's...more
I absolutely hated this book. It was slow, mundane, with characters that I couldn't care less about. A whiny pregnant woman stuck in the south away from her husband with weird/horrible people in the South, this book when it wasn't boring me to death with a billion pages of mundane actions annoyed me with the woman whining to herself about feeling alone and lost. Oh and voodoo people attack her pregnant belly at the end of the book too.
While I respect L'Engle and love the Time series, this book...more
While I respect L'Engle and love the Time series, this book...more
This is one of my favorite L'Engle books. It has a mystic quality to it that is in the oddest of settings, the south after the civil war. Hard to find, but so worth the time.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Sep 25, 2010
Annie
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
own-it,
christian-fiction
I don't know when it was published in relation to her other works, but this feels like a culmination of her fictional writing: an adult novel that incorporates ideas and themes she began exploring in A Wrinkle in Time, Many Waters and in several ways A Swiftly Tilting Planet. Mostly, because in all these books, in various ways, you can see the myth within this reality that L'Engle perceived.
The Other Side of the Sun is an insular novel with a limited cast of characters and a small setting on th...more
The Other Side of the Sun is an insular novel with a limited cast of characters and a small setting on th...more
This was quite different from the other L'Engle books I have read and it doesn't seem to have received a great deal of attention over the years, perhaps because it does not fit in with much of her output. It is a story of the American South in the period following the Civil War and is not a children's book at all. There are still some familiar common elements, such as the emphasis on education and the display of knowledge as entertainment, seen here in the recurring use of a literary quotation g...more
Sep 08, 2009
Libby
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
grownup-fiction,
historical
I'm not quite sure what to make of this book. The same feeling and emphases that characterize all her books are here (importance of love, trust that good will triumph even in the darkest times, good vs. evil battle that stretches beyond humans). Naivete seems to be both an element in the story and part of the storytelling. At points, I feel like L'Engle sometimes treats the issue of racism with too much naivete (particularly in the idea of Nyssa--a plantation run by a white family, still worked...more
I enjoyed this book because it made me grateful for what I believe and what I know to be true. We often say that history is written by the winners, i believe that is often true of fiction as well. We don't think much, here in the west, about what it must have been like in the South after the Civil War. It makes me sad for those who still have a hard time loving people different from themselves.
I love the aunts in this book, and the literary games they play. I wonder how much of my literary character, if you will, was formed by early and frequent exposure to L'Engle. Though if that were true, I'd probably be a Christian as well, or at the very least a theist.
This is a strange book, dark and full of allusions, mysterious and circular and disorienting. Like the protagonist, Stella, one is plunged into a complex and layered Southern family with a generous helping of racial tension and co...more
This is a strange book, dark and full of allusions, mysterious and circular and disorienting. Like the protagonist, Stella, one is plunged into a complex and layered Southern family with a generous helping of racial tension and co...more
THis book is unlike most of her other works. It is dark and unsettling and amazing all at the same time.
I really enjoyed getting to know the characters. It was a time and place that I can't really understand- the South after tha Civil War.
I wishe dthat I could have changed the ending. But it would have been wrong to have it end any other way.
I really enjoyed getting to know the characters. It was a time and place that I can't really understand- the South after tha Civil War.
I wishe dthat I could have changed the ending. But it would have been wrong to have it end any other way.
Jan 04, 2009
Jennifer
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
classics,
favoriteauthors
I found this little paperback at a library book sale and picked it up because, well, it's Madeleine L'Engle.
It's an amazingly powerful, but quiet and slow-moving book. L'Engle weaves a tapestry that encompasses slaves, masters, American history, revenge and redemption. Beautiful setting, beautiful characters, frightening secrets.
Complex and wonderful.
It's an amazingly powerful, but quiet and slow-moving book. L'Engle weaves a tapestry that encompasses slaves, masters, American history, revenge and redemption. Beautiful setting, beautiful characters, frightening secrets.
Complex and wonderful.
Intriguing as a historical novel. L'Engle just catches me with her prose and this one, while old, still speaks to life as we have it today. We as a society still struggle with many of the issues that we did just after the Civil War. While she has no solid answers, L'Engle keeps after us to keep asking the questions. I love her books.
Aug 31, 2011
Meredith
rated it
2 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
magical-realism
I remember this book being in my Junior High's library. I really should seek it out and reread it, as at the time I just couldn't appreciate it for what it was when what I wanted was more in the vein of other of L'Engle's books.
Definitely different from everything else she's written. A bit like Raintree County, a bit like Green Darkness, a bit like that goofy Dracula movie with the Voodoo angle. Just...odd. Well written, but odd and depressing.
I've read some of Madeline L'Engle's books for adolescents in the past and wanted to try one of her adult books. I couldn't put it down. She weaves eternal truths into her writing imaginatively and beautifully.
This novel is by Madeline L'Engle, the author who wrote the classic children's book A Wrinkle In Time. Her adult fiction is just as strange and wonderful as her children's books, and this one is a favorite of mine.
Jan 16, 2012
Bayneeta
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
historical-fiction
Summer on the 1910 South Carolina coast. While her new husband is on a secret government mission a young English bride is sent to live with his family. Lots of race issues, lots of humidity and heat, lots of secrets, lots and lots of atmosphere.
at first i really enjoyed it but it began to drag and eventually it just became a "my god is better than your god" missive, which i just didn't enjoy.
Walking on the beach and seeing the black hooded and the white hooded riders is a visual memory strong and unforgetable.
Just couldn't get into it and so didn't finish. I want to like her books, but I find many of them a little bit depressing.
Oct 02, 2010
Liz Taylor
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
everyone
Wonderful book full of mysticism and life after the Civil War seen through the eyes of a young British bride.
Action a little erratic but good pacing of suspense clues and characters.
Valuable insights and truths found within this gripping story set in the deep South.
My favorite of her books, deeply affecting, deeply moving.
this is my favorite book. i love it when i read it as a young teenager and i still love it now. it is about a young woman who marries a man but he must leave her with his family in the deep american south while he goes off to his secretive job. he leaves her with his old aunties and the housekeeper, honoria, honoria's husband, clive and another aunt and uncle. and of course, no one is as they seem. and there are darker characters in the shadows vying for the naive woman's attentions. i loved it...more
I stuck with this one because I love Madeleine L'Engle's perspectives and writing, but it's not a page-turner. It was more of a discussion and contemplation of race relations than a story. As always with L'Engle, she has beautiful lines here and there that comment on life or humanity:
• "It never occurred to me that one day I would be as old as Aunt Olivia and Aunt Des. Even now I really don't believe in my own antiquity."
• "Is it crazy? Maybe that's what people think of all the essential actions...more
• "It never occurred to me that one day I would be as old as Aunt Olivia and Aunt Des. Even now I really don't believe in my own antiquity."
• "Is it crazy? Maybe that's what people think of all the essential actions...more
One of her best
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
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
