It Was a Dark and Stormy Night…
There are books I read as a child that I have re-read periodically ever since; there are children’s books that I have only known as an adult, and then there are the books that I read when I was young but for some reason haven’t read since. There’s nothing really strange about this; I am, after all, nominally an adult, and not every book one reads as a kid merits being returned to as a grown-up. But there are some that do, and this week I revisited one of them. It’s the 50th Anniversary of A Wrinkle in Time, so I picked up one of the lovely new editions to see what it would be like to come back to it nearly a quarter of a century after I last read it.
My recollections of the story just before I started this second reading were minimal. The first line, obviously: It was a dark and stormy night. I recalled Mrs. Which, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Whatsit, but not much more than their names; I remembered that there was space travel accomplished with the wrinkle of the title, called a tesseract, and that the whole thing was to do with Meg Murry’s missing father; and I remembered something about a garden. So, while I hadn’t forgotten everything, I had forgotten most everything when I opened the book on the subway on Monday night and started to read. By the time I finished the following evening, I felt like singing.
A very brief synopsis: Meg Murry’s father, an eminent physicist, has been missing for a couple years. Meg herself is wandering around somewhat lost; she’s homely, doesn’t fit in at school, and is in danger of being held back. Her only solace is her little brother, Charles Wallace, a prodigy who seems to know more than he should about everything. Then, one dark and stormy night, the strange ladies turn up, along with Calvin O’Keefe, a boy from Meg’s school who’s everything she isn’t: confident, popular, athletic. Using a tesseract, the three ladies whisk the three kids away on a mission to rescue Meg’s father, and in the process, to hopefully strike a blow at a dark and evil Thing that has been sieging the universe throughout time.
It’s hard to know where to begin in talking about why this book was and remains so potent and wonderful. Firstly and most importantly, A Wrinkle in Time is an incredibly good bit of storytelling. It’s beautifully written, the characters are delightful (especially Meg and the three Mrs Ws), it speeds right along to the end while giving the reader so much to think about in such a simple-seeming package that although you can read it in a few hours, you think about it for days afterward.
It’s a story in which children are faced with the limited capabilities of their parents, and forced to find ways to do what seems impossible on their own. It’s a story in which a flawed girl doesn’t have to overcome her flaws in order to save the world and to find herself loved; her flaws and her own capacity to love are revealed to be great strengths. And in the end, love is what saves the day—hope and courage too, but more than anything, her great and unshakable love does what the greater minds (in Meg’s estimation, anyhow), the stronger bodies, and the magic around her cannot.
It’s just immensely satisfying. If I’ve said enough to convince you to give it a try, you’re welcome to stop reading now. But I have more to say, if you have the time to stick with me.
I can’t remember what I thought of A Wrinkle in Time as a kid, but I can tell you why it resonates so much with me now. But first, full disclosure: although I don’t expect that anyone reading this post knows my name, I also write middle-grade and young adult fantasy, and I use religious imagery and elements inspired by the sciences side-by-side in my books. I find that juxtaposition to be incredibly powerful, which is probably the biggest reason I felt spoken to when I read A Wrinkle in Time this time around. L’Engle allows religion and religious feeling to exist on equal footing with science, without in any way demanding that they explain themselves to each other. And while allowing the religious and the scientific to coexist creates a fascinating philosophical setting, it (at least to my mind) makes this a story that’s about neither one. It’s completely about Meg, Charles, and Calvin, and in the end, neither faith nor science can save the day. Only the children themselves can do that.
In the extra material, we learn that A Wrinkle in Time was rejected so many times that Madeleine L’Engle actually asked her agent to stop submitting it at one point. Nobody knew what to do with it. Since its publication, many readers have been confused as well. She took heat both from secular readers who objected to the Christian elements, and from Christian readers who objected to the juxtaposition of the religious elements alongside the secular. A quick glance at the Wikipedia page for the book tells us that it was #22 on the ALA’s 100 most banned books between 1990 and 2000, due to references to witches and crystal balls, “challeng(ing) religious beliefs” and because the book lists Jesus alongside “great artists, philosophers, scientists, and religious leaders.”
But none of that is what the book is really about—at least, that isn’t what I took away from it. I received this message, just five words long: love is stronger than evil. It staggers me that the power of that message could be in some way diminished by mentioning Jesus alongside Euclid (or, for that matter, Euclid alongside Jesus). But then, a story that can be read in so many different ways, and that can arouse such strong feeling for so many years—that’s what makes this the kind of book worth coming back to again and again.
So who am I to say what it’s really about? Decide for yourself. In the meantime, my list of “read every year” books just got longer by one title.
Kate Milford
