A Wrinkle In Time review

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is a little like its hero, Meg Murray. What at first appear to be its faults are actually virtues. It is a mixture of fantasy and science fiction, which should not work but in this case it does. The science fiction elements are very good, like the concept of Tessering and the wonderful alien Aunt Beast. The fantasy elements are equally good. There is a black Thing that is spreading evil throughout the universe and some planets, like Camazotz, have given up fighting. Others like Earth are still fighting, and Earth's greatest warriors are people like the Buddha, St. Francis of Assisi, Leonardo DaVinci, Isaac Newton, Euclid, and before the book is over, Meg Murray. Fantasy and science fiction should not go well together but here they do.

Meg is a nerdy girl whose father has given her the pet names "Megatron" and "Megaparsec". She can recite the periodical table of elements and do square roots in her head, but don't ask her to tell you who wrote Boswell's Life Of Samuel Johnson. She has a younger brother who is even smarter than she is, who has decided not to learn to read until he attends Kindergarten because he doesn't want to give his teachers a hard time. She also has younger twin brothers, who are normal children.

Meg has begun to hate herself, and her father has been missing for a year. He is supposed to be on a dangerous, but secret, mission but the neighbors think he ran off with some woman, abandoning his family.

One day she meets a woman who claims to be able to take her to rescue her father, who is trapped on a distant planet, and her genius little brother and a new friend Calvin O'Keefe come with her on some of the most remarkable adventures you'll ever read.

This book hit a nerve with a lot of readers, not all of them young girls. It certainly hit a nerve with me when I read it as a kid, and revisiting the book at the age of sixty-plus I find that it holds up. Many things I enjoyed at that age do not.



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