A Wrinkle in Time (1962)

I’ve been meaning for a while to do a nostalgia tour through some of my favorite genre fiction from my younger days, and where better to start than with Madeleine L’Engle’s time quartet?  I still have such vivid memories of my mom reading all the books in this series to me when I saw a kid, but especially this one.  As early as the first chapter, I knew there was something special here:  “Speaking of ways, pet, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract.”  Yes!!

Meg Murry, awkward tween extraordinaire, has a lot of anger to direct everywhere – at her own dissatisfaction with herself, at the neighbors who sneer at her little brother Charles Wallace (who they call an idiot, when he’s actually a genius,) at the world that’s taken her father from her with no hint of what happened to him.  Her world changes late one night, however, when she’s introduced to Charles Wallace’s new friends, the mysterious Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which.  The three ladies prove far more than meets the eye, and they talk Meg and Charles Wallace – along with Calvin, another new friend – on a fantastical journey to recover their father and to battle the very forces of evil itself.

Reading it again as an adult, there are a few bumpy spots that don’t escape my notice.  There are points where the “lessons” are pretty fairly telegraphed, and it makes me chuckle that the ultimate force of pure evil in the universe, as expressed in this Cold War-era book, basically looks like communism.  (Yes, it’s implied that the Black Thing encourages moral ills of all sorts, but Camazotz, the most dramatic example of a planet that’s “fallen” to the Black Thing, is a classic dystopian communism metaphor packaged in a way that’s accessible for kid readers.)

But any complaints here are minor.  I love this book.  All the characters are wonderful.  I’ve written before about the deep, beautiful relationship between Meg and Charles Wallace, who both dazzle in their own ways individually and together.  I love Meg for her faults, and I love Charles Wallace for his otherworldly knowing and his manner that’s somehow totally precocious but 100% natural at the same time.  Calvin is such an earnest picture of kindness and hope, and the Mrs. W’s, L’Engle’s own weïrd sisters, are each shiningly unique, at once absurd and tremendous.  The book is littered with golden character moments, perfect lines and little details that fit each like a glove.

The characters, for me, are the main attraction here, enough that I would probably love a story about them no matter what they were doing, but in this case, they’ve got a pretty darn good plot to work with as well.  Although the whole idea of tessering is mostly similar to opening worm holes, the way it’s done and described in the book is entirely its own, and the different worlds, peoples, and creatures explored here are all really neat.  And really, the ending can’t be beat.  I love A Swiftly Tilting Planet almost as much as this one, but in the end, I always keep coming back to A Wrinkle in Time, and it’s in no small part due to the pure beauty of that ending.

Warnings

Scary moments for kids and thematic elements.