A Wrinkle in Time - no wrinkle at all

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	• A Wrinkle in Time Madeleine L'Engle Square Fish, 2007 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 73 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Wrinkle in Time - no wrinkle at all

This author is strangely amazing. I have loved everything that I have read by her so far. This is a book that was read to me as a child and I have now finally come back to it. You will be amazed and confused and baffled, but wonderfully surprised at how she uses seemingly childish ideas to explain the quite complex.

Of time and tesseracts

One effect of the phenomenon that was Harry Potter was the proliferation of Potter knock-off books. It makes perfect sense: readers (especially young readers) want similar fare and publishers are out to make money. Of course, most of these imitations will be pale shadows of the original work, but there is an alternative: earlier, original works by other authors, some of which has been around for decades. C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and Philip Pullman offer material that can appeal to the Potter-loving crowd without just being merely imitation Potter. Likewise, Madeleine L'Engle provides some fun fare with her books. Her most famous work is A Wrinkle in Time.

Wrinkle is the adventures of Meg Murry, a tweener girl whose life is about to get very complicated. The story opens with the familiar dark and stormy night, but things get weird pretty quickly. Meg's father has been missing for a year, and no one seems to know where he has gone, although his work in exotic physics may offer a clue. As the winds howl, Meg and her brilliant younger brother Charles Wallace enjoy a late night snack when an unexpected guest appears: their new, eccentric neighbor Mrs. Whatsit.

Mrs. Whatsit shares a supposedly abandoned house with Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which, and all three women are more than they seem; in fact, they may not even be human. They do, however, have a clue as to where Meg's father is. Using a space-spanning device called a tesseract, they will bring Meg, Charles Wallace and a neighborhood kid Calvin (who is a couple years older than Meg) to the world Camazotz.

Camazotz is not a pleasant place, a somewhat Orwellian dictatorship where free thought is completely squashed. Non-conformists are either disposed of or effectively brainwashed into complacency. Meg's father is on Camazotz, but it will require all the special talents of the three kids to possibly overcome IT which rules this grim planet.

Although there are fantasy elements to A Wrinkle in Time, this novel is probably better categorized as science fiction. Like the Harry Potter books, this book is aimed at younger readers but can be enjoyed by adults as well, though I feel that Rowling offers more than L'Engle in terms of plot and characterization. Even so, A Wrinkle in Time is a good read, a bit of a mind bender with a nice sense of suspense. If you (or your kids) have finished Harry Potter, Wrinkle is both similar enough and different enough to be appealing.

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what an inspiration

My 4th gr teacher read this book to our class nearly 40 years ago. The message in it is even more important today as we fight the continual govt inroads into our life to steal our freedoms. For one, those who own even one livestock animal will have to register their premises, microchip and file reports on all births, deaths and off property movements of those animals under a USDA program called NAIS. Just so big ag can sell their meat globally. See [...] for more info on how this program will affect all those who eat.

Full of Interesting Ideas

Although neither the prose nor the plot seemed exceptional,
"A Wrinkle in Time" brings forth many interesting ideas and themes to ponder, with the overarching theme including the tension that exists
between the individual and society; between respecting the uniqueness of each human, and the need to homogenize society in order to eliminate some undesirable aspects of living that often arise due to the variation found in humanity.

The book centers around the Murry family who can be described as "eccentric" (as my daughter puts it). The mother has two Ph.D.'s (biology and bacteriology), the father is a physicist who is away
working on a secret project for the government, and has not returned in some years which has brought a dark, solemn cloud over the household. But the story mostly revolves around two of the Murry children, Meg and Charles Wallace. Meg is considered not very bright and viewed by her school principle as being the most "uncooperative and belligerent" student in school (I received the impression that much of her problems are rooted by missing her father). Charles also seems misunderstood by
most people, yet we are led to understand his unieque, pure honesty and insightfulness.

May be most the important point the author makes is of the importance of individuality and tolerance of people and beings who seem different. In fact, the adversary of the book can be summed up as representing total social conformity towards a centralized controller in which individuality is attracted to IT like light towards a black hole. Such a theme seems even more relevant today than over forty years ago when the book was first written.

But may be an even more important idea brought forth by the author is the power of Love. Interestingly, Love is the force that supports both conflicting forces. For individuality, Love increases it by offerering variation in offspring, while also being at the root of inspiration for great artists, scientists, and engineers who create new ideas and inventions that help transform both individual and society. For society, there is not only love for humanity that spawns social institutions aimed to help humanity progress, but also there is love for family that inspires someone to forgo his individuality and fit into society as a working functional componenet for the sake of providing loved ones with the materials needed to sustain a dignified existence.

I thought the author presented these ideas in a very tasteful if not subtle manner. I especially enjoyed the science fiction aspect of traveling through space and time. In the edition I read (0-440-49805-8) a very good aricle by Lisa Sonne on the science behind the sci-fi fantasy of the book followed the story. Any book that helps one gain perspective on his or her place in the universe is worth reading for that reason alone.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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