L'Engle at her best, this novel features Stella, who marries into the aristocratic Renier family and discovers a frightening world of intrigue, gre...
read full description
reviews
Aug 22, 2009
Jessica
rated it: 
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 onwar 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 onwar More...
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Aug 07, 2011
Linda
rated it:
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
More...
Mar 11, 2010
Luke
rated it: 
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 More...
While I respect L'Engle and love the Time series More...
Sep 21, 2007
Beth
rated it: 
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.
0 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Dec 10, 2009
Leila
rated it: 
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Mar 01, 2011
Annie
rated it: 
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 More...
The Other Side of the Sun is an insular novel with a limited cast of characters and a small More...
Aug 05, 2008
Michael
rated it:
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:
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...
Feb 16, 2010
Ashley
rated it:
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.
Feb 14, 2010
Melody
rated it:
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 te 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 te More...
Mar 03, 2009
Cynthia
rated it:
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:
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.
Aug 31, 2011
Meredith
rated it:
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.
Jul 27, 2010
Michele
rated it:
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.
Jan 28, 2011
Michelle
rated it:
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.
Jul 21, 2009
Auntjenny
rated it:
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:
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.
Sep 11, 2011
Mtngoddess
rated it:
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.
Oct 08, 2011
Melanie
rated it:
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
rated it:
Wonderful book full of mysticism and life after the Civil War seen through the eyes of a young British bride.
Aug 05, 2008
Melissa
rated it:
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 lov
More...
Jul 03, 2009
erin
rated it:
This is my favorite L'Engle so far. It's different then her others and I hadn't heard of it before.
May 29, 2010
TheRealMelbelle
rated it:
My favorite L'Engle book. I have reread it many times. It is hard to find and not comfortable to read. Racial prejudice, strange undercurrents in family dynamics, confusing time sequences, violence and voodoo.... Love the old aunts who only speak to each other by way of quoting Shakespeare!
Aug 26, 2010
Lisa
rated it:
I really wanted to like this one, but it was so sloooow for me to get into that I never did.
May 30, 2008
Hilary
rated it:
Oh my god. Fantastic. One of my favorite books of all time, and definitley my favorite L'Engle book. The plot sucks you in (after the clunky first chapter that made me think "ouch, early L'Engle book"), and the descriptions are lush and amazing. Read it. Now.
Nov 20, 2009
Caitlinleah
rated it:
It's such a different one. historical, southern, sad. the family is so confusing, but it's so dark. i haven't read it in a long time and was glad for the chance.
Feb 01, 2010
Karena
rated it:
I love this book, but the title is really The Other Side of the Sun. It's about racism and the struggle to overcome it, and as always, Madeleine L'Engle tells a very compelling story with well-developed characters.
