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Pamela's Reviews > The Moon by Night
The Moon by Night (Austin Family, #2)
by Madeleine L'Engle
by Madeleine L'Engle
Okay, four stars...That's quite a bit but this novel deserves them, despite its flaws. After all, I'm re-reading it, and I'm well past 'young adult'. Just that says a good deal about a book.
It's skillfully written, sometimes tedious (how many descriptions of campgrounds can you take?), and mostly persuasive. Many have gushed about how 'true' Vicky's fourteen year old voice is. That's perhaps my biggest problem with this book. After all, I, too, was fourteen and female at a date not so terribly past the time these events take place in.
Does Vicky Austin really sound like any of the fourteen year olds I knew at the time, even the brightest and best educated? No. Vicky quotes poet after novelist after essayist, sings hymn after hymn, recognizes the significance of any number of historical events, and so on. In other words, she comes across as a rather strange blend of adolescent female naivety when it comes to any number of social situations (most notably, 'boys')--and in that sense does ring true to upper middle class female and fourteen in around 1962--but is surprisingly erudite and educated, and, I think, unrealistically so.
This raises an interesting question for writers, and readers, of young adult and children's fiction. It is often almost impossible to strictly adhere to creating a young character who does not transcend the bounds (for that age group) of generally accepted levels of maturity, whether emotional, social, or intellectual. Writers of juvenile fiction regularly craft characters who fall out of step with their peers, and in many ways.
But a writer can only stretch those limits so far before s/he will lose a certain credibility with his or her readers, and L'Engle, in The Moon By Night, does exactly this. I vividly recall reading this book as a young teen, and finding Vicky quite unconvincing. Now, many years later, I am enjoying her thoroughly, but having to push myself to accept that she would both crawl into her Uncle Douglas' lap for a confiding chat (a scene in the Austin family's visit to Laguna Beach) and be able to rattle off, when beset with insomnia, Whitman, Rossetti, and any number of Psalms!
It's skillfully written, sometimes tedious (how many descriptions of campgrounds can you take?), and mostly persuasive. Many have gushed about how 'true' Vicky's fourteen year old voice is. That's perhaps my biggest problem with this book. After all, I, too, was fourteen and female at a date not so terribly past the time these events take place in.
Does Vicky Austin really sound like any of the fourteen year olds I knew at the time, even the brightest and best educated? No. Vicky quotes poet after novelist after essayist, sings hymn after hymn, recognizes the significance of any number of historical events, and so on. In other words, she comes across as a rather strange blend of adolescent female naivety when it comes to any number of social situations (most notably, 'boys')--and in that sense does ring true to upper middle class female and fourteen in around 1962--but is surprisingly erudite and educated, and, I think, unrealistically so.
This raises an interesting question for writers, and readers, of young adult and children's fiction. It is often almost impossible to strictly adhere to creating a young character who does not transcend the bounds (for that age group) of generally accepted levels of maturity, whether emotional, social, or intellectual. Writers of juvenile fiction regularly craft characters who fall out of step with their peers, and in many ways.
But a writer can only stretch those limits so far before s/he will lose a certain credibility with his or her readers, and L'Engle, in The Moon By Night, does exactly this. I vividly recall reading this book as a young teen, and finding Vicky quite unconvincing. Now, many years later, I am enjoying her thoroughly, but having to push myself to accept that she would both crawl into her Uncle Douglas' lap for a confiding chat (a scene in the Austin family's visit to Laguna Beach) and be able to rattle off, when beset with insomnia, Whitman, Rossetti, and any number of Psalms!
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