2019/39: A Wrinkle in Time -- Madeleine L'Engle

‘Oh, we don’t travel at the speed of anything.’ Mrs Whatsit explained earnestly. ‘We tesser. Or you might say, we wrinkle.’ [p. 58]

Incredibly, I had never read this classic work: and I wish I had first encountered it when I was less cynical.

Meg Murry is twelve years old, 'outrageously plain', and devoted to her baby brother Charles Wallace, who is extraordinarily astute when it comes to Meg's thoughts, and extremely erudite. Their scientist mother lets Charles Wallace 'be himself'; their father, also a scientist, has been missing for a long time.

Then (on 'a dark and stormy night') they have a visitor, the eccentric Mrs Whatsit, who tells them that 'there is such a thing as a tesseract' -- apparently this was what their father was working on when he disappeared.

Together with a schoolfriend, Calvin (who's 14), Meg and Charles Wallace go to a house in the woods and meet Mrs Whatsit's equally eccentric friends, Mrs Who and Mrs Which. These three beings transport the three children via tesseract to a planet named Uriel (where they find out that a great evil is threatening the universe) and then to Camazotz, a planet under the control of the evil thing. There they encounter an evil disembodied brain, and manage to rescue their father. Which is, of course, not that simple.

There are two aspects of this book that I found uncomfortable. Firstly, it has a strong religious element (quite a few quotations from the Bible, King James version): although I applaud L'Engle for combining science and religion without prioritising one or the other, I would have been better-pleased if other religious texts had been mentioned. (But the children she was writing for would likely not recognise them.) Secondly, Calvin (14) kisses Meg (12) in a way that echoes romance novels: '... drew her roughly to him and kissed her' (p. 192). Meg is quite happy with this, and Calvin has already told her he thinks her eyes are 'gorgeous'. And yes, twelve-year-old girls are perfectly capable of enjoying such a kiss. But it felt too adult for the rest of the book.

Still: I can see why this book affects so many people so powerfully. I'm pleased that it's full of strong, capable, empowered female characters (the male characters are rather more fallible!) and that the science is exciting and beautiful, and does not exclude an individual's religious faith.