The late Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time deserves to be introduced to a whole new audience. Forty-four years after it was first published its contents still ruffle feathers.
Trio of the month
IF you’ve decided that three books is all you can afford this month, consider these!
A WRINKLE IN TIME
By Madeleine L’Engle
Publisher: Square Fish, 224 pages
(ISBN: 978-0312367558)
ON Sept 6, Madeleine L’Engle died at age 88. She was the author of A Wrinkle in Time, a book that always springs to my mind when I think about the pain experienced by children who are unusual or simply different from their peers.
The book opens with this classic (some would say clichéd sentence): “It was a dark and stormy night.
” When I was a child, this was what made me want to read the book. I thought it was a ghost story, but it turned out to be much stranger. It’s a book filled with startling, sometime disturbing images and imagery; a book that deals with the crippling power of loneliness and prejudice; and the redeeming qualities of love and kindness.
The heroine, Meg Murry, is a teenage social misfit. She is a girl who loves maths and science, which I found unbelievable when I was younger, being a dunce at maths. Meg has a four-year-old genius brother, Charles, who is regarded as backward because he doesn’t conform to conventional expectations.
She also has popular twin brothers whose effortless acceptance by their peers annoys Meg no end.
The Murry children’s parents are scientists whose research into matter, time and space has caused Mr Murry to be trapped in a parallel dimension. Meg and Charles slip through a “wrinkle” in time, hoping to find and rescue their father.
Their journey, made with three new friends (a teenage boy named Calvin and three witches called Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who and Mrs Which), brings them into direct confrontation with IT, an evil entity intent on bringing order to the universe by forcing intelligent life to bow to its will.
A Wrinkle in Time is about life’s endless possibilities. It celebrates individuality and self-belief. Meg Murry taught my 11-year-old self that girls shouldn’t be pigeonholed. Now I know that no one should be.
A Wrinkle in Time won the 1963 Newberry Medal. It has, to date, sold more than eight million copies and is in its 69th printing.
The other books in the Time series are A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters and An Acceptable Time.
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BLOOD RED, SNOW WHITE: A NOVEL OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
By Marcus Sedgwick
Publisher: Orion, 304 pages
(ISBN: 978-1842551844)
I RECENTLY wrote about Marcus Sedgwick’s My Swordhand is Singing – only the second book by him that I’d then read. Blood Red, Snow White makes three and Sedgwick is fast becoming one of my favourite contemporary novelists. His books are marketed as young adult fiction but the subject matter and Sedgwick’s writing style makes his work appealing to older readers too.
Blood Red is set during the Russian revolution and tells the story of children’s author, Arthur Ransome’s experiences as a young journalist in Russia. This was, of course, a long time before Ransome wrote his Swallows and Amazons series.
Unhappily married, he left his wife and their young daughter to go to Russia. There, he fell in love with a woman called Evgenia, whom he eventually married.
Ransome was accused of being a spy and double agent, and British Secret Service files reveal that Evgenia may have smuggled three million roubles worth of jewels out of Russia.
Intriguing details like these inspired Sedgwick to write this book. He weaves stories gleaned from Ransome’s diaries and autobiography with folktales and historical facts. The result is an intriguing tale of adventure and love, loss and longing.
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WAITING FOR MAMA
By Lee Tae-Jun;
Illustrator: Kim Dong-Seong
Publisher: NorthSouth Books, 32 pages
(ISBN: 978-0735821439)
A LITTLE boy, who looks not more than two or three, waits at a tram stop by the side of a busy street for his mother. It’s a windy winter’s day and the boy’s nose is red from the cold. When trams stop, he asks the drivers if his mum is coming. The drivers are not very friendly or helpful, although one advises the boy to keep away from the track.
The boy is drawn looking both patient and resigned. He is immensely huggable, completely wrapped up, with just his round face showing. As a mother, my heart went out to him and I was almost frantic wondering where his mother was!
The final picture-spread shows a snow-swept scene with, in the distance, mother and child walking home hand in hand. Readers may miss this tiny detail and be beside themselves with grief and worry for the boy and so the publisher’s have pointed out the happy ending on the cover blurb.
The text in this edition is in both English and Korean.
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