A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (Website, Goodreads)Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR) on April 1st 2010
Genres: Classics, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Young Adult
Pages: 216
It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.
"Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them. "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract".
Meg's father had been experimenting with this fifth dimension of time travel when he mysteriously disappeared. Now the time has come for Meg, her friend Calvin, and Charles Wallace to rescue him. But can they outwit the forces of evil they will encounter on their heart-stopping journey through space?
I’m just going to be straight and tell you all that I have never read this book before. I know… I’m reminded often how ridiculously non-existent my reading habits were as a child.
What drew me to this book though was the announcement of the film. The trailer is incredible and I was completely enthralled. I knew that I had to read the book before it arrived. Bonus, my new version of this book included some film stills at the midpoint.
I have to admit though that I was somewhat underwhelmed. After hearing people rave about it for so many years, I was expecting to be blown away. Unfortunately I was not. I think that part of my problem was that this is very much a middle grade style book. I think that if I had been reading it with my son, I may have been able to look at it a bit differently and enjoy it through his experience of reading it. (that said, my son isn’t much of a reader and I couldn’t convince him to read this with me!) I truly enjoyed the plot of the story, the sci-fi aspects were unique and interesting, but what really didn’t work for me were the characters… they were incredibly annoying. I had to continually remind myself that this was written in the 60’s and instead of cringing at what was being said or how characters were being treated that was probably the norm back then.
I’m very interested in how this story will translate to the big screen though. There are parts of it that completely intrigued me and I’m excited to see how it’s done. I will say that the ending left me … wanting more… maybe? It just felt somewhat rushed. I do realize that there are more books in this series and it’s possible there is more explanation there, but I’m not sure I’m invested enough to try to read them.
Thank you to the publisher for an early copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.
Recent Comments