A Wrinkle in Time
The Time Quintet, Book 1
Madeline L'Engle
Listening Library
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: Everything about teenage Meg Murry's life is going wrong, from her grades (even though both her parents are scientists) to her looks (plain, bespectacled, and wearing braces, as opposed to her beautiful mother) to her attitude (when are people going to stop telling her to be positive when there's nothing good to be positive about?). The worst, however, is the fact that it's been years and her father is still missing, and the small town rumor mill won't stop their whispering, muttering, or outright telling the Murry children to their faces what they think about that. There's only so much a girl can take, and certainly Meg's at her limit. Then things take a very strange turn. Her odd little brother, Charles Wallace, starts talking about "friends" in the old abandoned house in the woods. Then one of those friends comes to visit, and a very odd person Mrs. Whatsit turns out to be, indeed. Then fate seems to conspire to bring Meg, Charles, and classmate Calvin together, just in time to be whisked away on a dangerous journey across space and time. At the other end, Meg may finally find answers about her father... or she might find nothing but ultimate darkness.
This audiobook presentation also features an introduction by Ava DuVernay, the director of the 2018 theatrical film, a foreward by the author, and an afterword by Madeline L'Engle's granddaughter Charlotte Jones Voiklis.
REVIEW: I've been meaning to get around to this classic for a while, but I was leery after my first childhood introduction to the Time Quintet: a teacher in third grade read us part of another story in the Time Quintet (which I remember as being A Swiftly Tilting Planet, but the plot summary sounds more like A Wind in the Door), and without context my chief memory of the experience was being bored to tears. But I finally got around to giving the first installment a try. While I wasn't bored to tears this time around, I can't say I was as blown away by it as many people seem to be.
Published in 1962, A Wrinkle in Time challenged what many publishers thought was "appropriate" material for children, even older children (the middle-grade distinction, separating younger from older children and both from the yet-to-be-created young adult/teen category, not being a thing yet). It still does, as witness the many challenges and bans aimed at it. While I can appreciate that it intentionally pushes at boundaries, I still found myself grinding my teeth now and again as I was bludgeoned with Lessons, not to mention casual assumption of (white) Christianity as the default human baseline culture (despite some lip service to other cultures existing) and galactic norm. While there's talk of advanced physics and metaphysics, the story leans far more on spirituality and religion; the Murry father vanished because he ran afoul of the malevolent "Black Thing" which already shadows Earth and has consumed whole worlds, the mysterious Mrs. Whatsit and her companions are clearly angels working for a masculine divine creator in the ongoing war against the darkness, and the whole tale is punctuated by Bible quotations. (There are also some elements that just plain don't age well; the focus on Meg's looks as a reflection of her self-worth, particularly how she needs a handsome boy to validate her existence - validation that comes in the form of Calvin telling her her eyes look pretty, so maybe she should stop wearing glasses, but then deciding that he'd rather she wear glasses so no other boy notices she has pretty eyes, which totally isn't creepily possessive for a veritable stranger to say to a girl at all - not to mention the slang that almost had me snickering it was so out of date and stilted.) As with most books that focus on Lessons, characters could sometimes take a back seat. Meg starts an emotional, somewhat whiny teenager - not entirely without cause, given what she's going through - but she leans awful hard into the role and only belatedly makes any effort to stand up, despite the whole of Creation evidently going out of its way to teach her personally. Her kid brother Charles Wallace is an unbelievably advanced five year old who almost shouldn't even need his sister's help (or Calvin's, though it's pretty clear the main reason Calvin is part of the trio is because of Meg, because heavens forfend a female find her own validation for existence or an independent future or actually be important save how she can help males who are her clear superiors succeed). In any event, many strange, sometimes beautiful and sometimes scary (and often eye-rollingly allegorical) things happen as Meg, Charles, and Calvin pursue Meg's father and confront an avatar of the foul Black Thing on a planet that has succumbed to its power.
While the plot doesn't drag overmuch, I have a low tolerance for preaching. That, plus aforementioned parts that don't age well (plus some irritation with the audiobook narrator's delivery), held it back in the ratings. I can still see the appeal, though, and how it changed the landscape of children's literature. (And the fact that people are still trying to ban it and rip it out of children's hands says it's still striking a nerve that needs to be struck, because I've yet to encounter a book banner who actually had the well-being of children and society at large in mind, despite their pearl-clutching rhetoric... but I digress.)
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