Madeleine L’Engle 1918 – 2007

September 7, 2007 /

I know, I said I was on Hiatus…but really, the reason was that I had nothing new to say. Plenty to say, but nothing new.   We’ll see how the whole ‘hiatus’ thing goes.  I could ignore the whole iPhone price reduction scandal, which was tempting to write about, but I couldn’t ignore the passing of one of my favorite authors of all time, Madeleine L’Engle.

I think the first book I read of hers was A Wrinkle In Time.  I loved the books in this series, loved reading about Meg, Charles, and the whole family.  Loved that their mother was a smart, loving scientist.  A Wrinkle in Time was written in the 1960s, and to have a mother who was a smart, loving scientist was pretty groovy.  Perhaps because she was a woman, the women and girls in her stories were all strong characters.    And I would guess that she came from a strong, loving family, because the characters in her books generally come from strong, loving families.  I loved that about her.  After reading the Time Trilogy (quartet now, but I read it before the last one was released), I went on to read her young adult books about the Austin family.  They mostly center on Vicky Austin, the middle-child daughter of a doctor father and a housewife mother.  Unlike the Time Quartet, Vicky’s adventures don’t take her to other worlds, inside mitochondriae, or back in time.  Instead, they deal mainly with the issues of growing up, moving from a small town to a big city, and back again.  Loss of a beloved grandfather.  First crushes. Perhaps love.  My favorite of these books was A Ring of Endless Light, in which Vicky and her family travel to the small island on which her grandfather lives, so they can be there when he dies.  I’m an animal lover, so I was interested in her relationship with the dolphins on the island.  But the relationships between the people were all pretty good as well.  Another favorite book of hers is based on the daughter of Meg, protaginist of A Wrinkle in Time, Poly (who eventually comes to the small town where Vicky lives, and deals with another character from those books…), A House Like a Lotus.  In this book, Poly has travelled to Greece, alone, to attend a conference.  She also has some healing to do…

I don’t know…all I can say is that the world has lost a wonderful writer.  The world will be smaller without her in it.

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