Madeleine L'Engle  Meet the Austins
    Vanguard
    Reviewed 4/61
This is a beautiful book and very difficult to describe without making it seem commonplace. To put it simply, it is a present-day story of the family of a country doctor, told by the twelve-year-old daughter, during a year in which a spoiled young orphan, Maggy, comes to live with them. The family is completely normal in its noise and minor quarrels, small disasters and confusion; but it is far from ordinary in its enjoyment of books and music, its emphasis — in an era of "important superficialities"—on fundamental values. The story is more than an account of the family's adjustment to Maggy and hers to them. It is one of the most convincing bits of living I have experienced in a book in a long time. It is full of warmth and love and idealism but is intensely real, and so is absorbing reading. I felt that this author's And Both Were Young (Lothrop) showed remarkable perception of young people. This book is an even greater exercise of that perception. We not only "meet the Austins" here; we know and love them. R.H.V.

Madeleine L'Engle  A Wrinkle in Time
    Ariel
    Reviewed 4/62
The story begins with Miss L'Engle's usual realistically individual and appealing characters. Meg is the daughter of two scientists. Her father has mysteriously disappeared while on a government mission and she misses him deeply and resents the village gossip. Of her three brothers, little Charles Wallace is particularly dear to her and especially responsive to her moods. About the time that Charles Wallace is just beginning to seem too precocious and perceptive the reader suddenly finds that he has been plummeted into a thrilling science fantasy. By means of "tesseracting" which proves that in space a straight line is not the shortest distance between two points, the children and their protectors travel to several planets, even through the Dark Thing which shadows the earth and in which some planets have been lost, and finally reach one of the lost planets where their father is a prisoner. Here is a confusion of science, philosophy, satire, religion, literary allusions, and quotations that will no doubt have many critics. I found it fascinating. To children who read and reread C. S. Lewis' fairy tales I think it will be absorbing. It makes unusual demands on the imagination and consequently gives great rewards. R.H.V.

Madeleine L'Engle  The Arm of the Starfish
    Farrar
    Reviewed 4/65
From the opening paragraph, which places Adam Eddington in a great airport, its atmosphere tense with hurry and frustrations, the story rushes ahead, never losing momentum. Adam, age sixteen, is bound for an island off the coast of Portugal, where he is to spend a summer as student assistant to a world-famous marine biologist. That Dr. O'Keefe's work could have significance beyond scientific circles does not occur to Adam until, during his journey, he finds himself continually observed; he receives warnings from a remarkably beautiful girl, is treated with suspicion by passport officials, and becomes convinced that the disappearance from the plane of Dr. O'Keefe's young daughter can only be explained as kidnaping. International intrigue, unusual and convincing characters, and elements of science fiction are placed in fascinating settings, the most beautiful being the Portuguese island, which Adam does reach and where he can observe Dr. O'Keefe's extraordinary experiments. An engaging aspect of the book is the pleasure Adam, an only child, takes in living with the O'Keefe family; the six children are lively, unconventional, and as appealing as any the author has ever presented.
    The plot moves with such speed and variety, and emotions are so tautly stretched, that if there are weaknesses, the reader is much too occupied to be aware of them. At the end he might wish that the restraint and subtlety had held to the last page. But the critic who turns back thinking to pinpoint a flaw is caught again not only by the vigor of the plot and the power of the overtones, but by the small imaginative details: apt naming of the characters, realistic conversations, brief moments of awareness of commonplace joys.
    Excitement, a sense of identification, the chance to live for a while in a wider landscape are the pleasures the readers of novels ask for, pleasures that cannot be underestimated; but the distinction of this book lies not alone in fulfilling such requirements. The story lasts beyond the reading and can be turned to again and again because it is based on the conviction of the power in humanity's essential yearning to build for the future. Being so based, it can give courage as well as enjoyment.
    The fragments of password phrases, finally assembled by Adam, turn out to be lines from Robert Frost: Only where love and need are one, and the work is play for mortal stakes, is the deed ever really done for Heaven and the future's sakes. R.H.V.

Madeleine L'Engle  A Swiftly Tilting Planet
    Farrar
    Reviewed 10/78
The author picks up themes from earlier books — time as a relative phenomenon, the interdependency of people and events, the importance of the individual — and presents them in an unusual framework. She considers the possibility of one person's altering the course of history by traveling back in time and entering the consciousness of other individuals: "What happens in one time can make a difference in what happens in another time, far more than we realize. . . . Nothing, no one, is too small to matter." The Murry family (from A Wrinkle in Time and A Wind in the Door) is gathered for Thanksgiving dinner when a phone call from the President warns of impending nuclear war. Charles Wallace — now fifteen — feels called upon to avert the disaster. Using a powerful rune, he asks certain forces to come to his aid and suddenly finds himself face-to-face with a gleaming white unicorn — "a creature of utter and absolute perfection." Throughout the book Charles travels on the back of the unicorn to various times and places in history. On one level the book takes place in the course of an evening; on another it spans centuries. Unfortunately, the different episodes are not well integrated, and the author's tendency to philosophize interrupts the smooth flow of the narrative. Characterization, though, is carefully handled, and if the book is flawed on a structural level, it is impeccable on an emotional one. K.M.K.

Madeleine L’Engle  A Ring of Endless Light
    Farrar
    Reviewed 8/80
In the fourth of the novels about the Austins written over a span of many years, the family is surrounded by loss and death. They are all spending the summer on a New England island in order to be with the beloved grandfather, a wise and scholarly retired clergyman, who is dying of leukemia. A favorite neighbor, a Coast Guard commander, has just died of a heart attack after rescuing a wealthy, self-indulgent boy from an attempted suicide. Vicky, now almost sixteen, is once again the central character; her brother John, an M.I.T. student, is working at the Marine Biological Station; her volatile younger sister Suzy, the family beauty, wants to be a doctor like their father; and all of them, including seven-year-old Rob, are being devastated by Grandfather's gradual deterioration. Adam Eddington, a character from The Arm of the Starfish (Farrar), is John's friend—a brilliant young scientist doing research on dolphins. He discovers that Vicky, who normally expresses herself through poetry rather than through science, has an uncanny intuitive ability to engage in telepathic communication with dolphins; and the girl, transcending her fears and worries, becomes deeply involved with Adam and his project. Even at the marine labs, however, tragedy and death still stalk Vicky, until the drama of the story seems to be evolving into melodrama. The author cannot resist packing her novel with all the interests of her agile mind. But she thoroughly respects young readers and presents to them with passion and energy all sorts of theological, scientific, and philosophical ideas — including quotations ranging from St. Teresa of Avila and the mystical poets of seventeenth-century England to Elie Wiesel — to support her ultimate theme: that coming to terms with death is an affirmation of wholeness and life. E.L.H.