An Acceptable Time (1989)

Out of town again - I’ll post the News Satire Roundup after I get back.

I didn’t read this book when I initially revisited Madeleine L’Engle’s time series, even though it was included in the boxed set I picked up.  Growing up, while I was aware of An Acceptable Time’s existence, my association with the time series only included the first four books.  Now, though, I’ve circled back around to it.

Polly O’Keefe, the daughter of the grown-up Meg and Calvin, is taking some time out to stay with her Grandma and Grandpa Murry.  What at first seems a cozy stay of study, relaxation, and nature quickly becomes more:  boundaries in time are blurring, and Polly finds herself increasingly encountering things and people that stood on that spot 3,000 years ago.  Members of the People of the Wind (a native tribe later displaced by European settlement,) along with two Celtic druids who’ve joined their community, are crossing over into Polly’s time.  The lines of history and the present are tangling, and Polly and her friend Zach are getting caught in it.

As with Many Waters, this book takes an immediate hit by not being about Meg, Charles Wallace, and/or Calvin.  I like Polly well enough, and I enjoy her story and interactions with the characters from the past, but there’s no one in this book that matches the richness of those three from the earlier books.  As such, while I like a lot of the proceedings, this story was never going to rival the likes of A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, or ASwiftly Tilting Planet.

That said, there is a lot to like here.  I enjoy revisting the People of the Wind, whose tribe we were introduced to in A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and the druids, Karralys and Tav, bring to mind Madoc and Gwydyr from that book while still having a distinct dynamic of their own.  This book also brings back Dr. Louise from A Wind in the Door and introduces her brother, a bishop who, like Polly, is caught up in the blurred edges of the timelines.

Some interesting ideas here – I don’t know that they all necessarily fit together into a cohesive whole, but there are some neat threads woven into the overall patchwork.  I like the ruminations on the notion of gods/the earth demanding blood and whether the death of Christ does or does not align with that, as well as the question of whether there’s a point in praying to Christ 1,000 years before His birth.  As with most stories involving the intersections of time, we examine the pull between interference and predestination – will our characters’ involvement change the course of history, or are they simply playing their roles in what was always meant to happen?

Warnings

Violence, some racial insensitivity, and strong thematic elements.

Many Waters (1986)

I know that An Acceptable Time fits somewhere into Madeleine L’Engle’s time series, but I was raised on just the four that focus on the immediate Murry family.  While I suppose I’ll get around to An Acceptable Time at some point, as of now, I’m still used to thinking of Many Waters as the end of the line.

A bit of a companion novel to the other three, Many Waters follows, not Meg or Charles Wallace, but the other two Murray kids, twins Sandy and Dennys.  It’s set between A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and it sees the 15-year-old twins accidentally wandering into one of their dad’s experiments and being flung through time and space into Earth’s antediluvian days.  In the time before the flood, Dennys and Sandy of course meet Noah and his family, and as they try to find a way home/not do anything to interfere with history, they catch the attention of the otherworldly Seraphim and Nephilim.

In the biblical story of Noah, I don’t think there’s more than one or two verses that mention the Seraphim and Nephilim, but L’Engle mines a great deal of plot from those scant lines.  She paints an intriguing picture of the pre-flood world, populated by humans, now-extinct animals (household mammoths,) more fantastical creatures (griffins and “virtual” unicorns,) and beings with celestial origins, including those who’ve since fallen (Seraphim and Nephilim.)  Much is made of the Nephilim’s practice of taking a liking to human women and fathering children by them, and I like how members of both races can take either their natural shape or that of a specific animal.  It all comes together to make a story that’s part sci-fi, part fantasy, and part Bible story.

And in the middle of it are Sandy and Dennys.  Neither boy is as interesting as Meg or Charles Wallace, but that in itself adds a new wrinkle to the plot.  The twins aren’t as apt as their siblings to believe in being thrown backwards through time, let alone the fantastical things they see once they get there, so it’s neat to see them grapple with what’s happened and try to reconcile it with their experience of the world thus far.  The plot also takes the smart step of separating them for a good chunk of the earlier action.  In addition to increasing the storyline space, this helps us get to know both boys better, which is important.  The twins are relatively minor characters in the first three books, known more for their contrast with Meg and Charles Wallace than for themselves, and to the extent that we do know them, it’s definitely as a matched set.  Putting them in different situations with different characters helps differentiate them and gives us a crash course in understanding them as individuals before they’re brought back together as the bigger stuff kicks off.

Although it’s my least favorite of the four books, there’s plenty to like here, especially for readers who are well-acquainted with the story of Noah.  I appreciate the time L’Engle takes to offer a specific view of everyone in Noah’s household, and I give her credit for doing something different here – really, even though it’s a series, all four books take remarkably different approaches to their fantastical/sci-fi elements, which is rare.  In L’Engle’s world, there are many varied wonders to be seen.

Warnings

Implied sexual references, violence, drinking, and thematic elements.

A Swiftly Tilting Planet (1978)

In my reread of Madeleine L’engle’s time series, I think A Wrinkle in Time is cementing its place as my favorite over A Swiftly Tilting Planet.  Don’t get me wrong – I love Charles Wallace as a character, and it’s neat to have him as main lead here, but I think he’s more intriguing in the first two books when he’s still a little boy.  Also, I have serious love for Meg, and even though she’s involved, it’s not quite the same as when she’s in the thick of the adventure.  That said, it’s still a very good read (premise spoilers.)

On Thanksgiving, the Murrys get word that the world is on the brink of disaster – the festive atmosphere is fractured by the knowledge that an unstable dictator in South America is looking to start a nuclear war.  The only hope, unlikely as it seems, may lie with 15-year-old Charles Wallace.  Armed with a mythic rune and aided by Meg, who remains at home but stays linked through kything the whole way, Charles Wallace rides the winds through time on the back of a unicorn (which is less cheesy than it sounds, trust me,) sifting through history in order to save the future via the past.

There’s a ton of interesting stuff here.  The sections set at different points of the past are all mostly excellent.  If I had to pick a favorite, it’s probably the sequence with Beezie and Chuck, but there’s neat plotting and cool characters in pretty much every period Charles Wallace visits.  As an adventure/quest story, it’s maybe a little deceptive, since Charles Wallace’s hand isn’t felt significantly throughout the process.  He tries to reason with Gaudior, the unicorn, about when and where they should try to go, but once they arrive anywhere (or, more accurately, anywhen,) Charles Wallace is sent Within one of the people there and is mostly submerged inside them.  Yes, he influences them in subtle ways, but in a way, he’s not exactly the hero.  Madoc and Brandon and Chuck and Matthew are, and Charles Wallace is just the tie that connects them.  However, this fact doesn’t really bother me.  I’m so interested in the idea of the future hanging in the balance due to a past that’s still happening, which sounds like a weird, recursive thing to say, but that’s what this book is about, and it’s pretty cool how they go about it.

The aspect of it that I don’t like, though, is the notion of ancestry and the same traits echoing through generations.  It’s most pronounced, of course, in looking at the difference between Madoc and Gwydyr’s lines, but it’s more than that.  It’s an idea that echoes throughout the book:  all the O’Keefes are bad, all the Mortmains are horrible.  I understand putting forth the theme of the future hinging on the past, but if that past is still in flux, then why does it seem like the roles are preassigned?  Why do one man’s sins taint his entire line and doom his descendents to greed and malice?  These “bad” lines are all the more disappointing because the “good” line, Madoc’s line, is still complex and imperfect – there, we find characters who wrestle with knowing the right thing to do, or, knowing it, struggle to summon the courage to do it.  They get nuance, but the bad lines don’t.  It’s not something I really noticed reading the book as a kid, but it stands out to me now, and I think having even just one character from a bad line who rejects those traits would have gone a long way toward showing that we’re influenced by those who came before us, not defined by them.

Warnings

Scary moments for kids, violence, and strong thematic elements.