Book Review – A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

This was one of the books that were in a collection of books that made me love reading. This time there’s a 30ish-year difference and a few more thousands of pages in between. With that being said, I understand why I liked the story when I was about 10. The main character, Meg, is that antsy character who is trying to do the right thing, smart, and often fails because she gets in the way of herself. Charles Wallace is the smart kid but when he’s just 6 years old and is practically the leader in inhuman intelligence. Friend Calvin is a good encourager but I wish he would have gotten more things to do.

The sci-fi elements have a mixture of The Neverending Story meets 1984 in space. There is not a lot explained and the Meg voices this and is ignored. I felt for her a lot this time around in my reading because I too wanted to understand things a bit more. Everything kind of hops from one location to the next without really giving you a context. The three guiding “witches” as angels kind of just assume Meg will do the right action or that Charles Wallace is so smart to do the right thing intellectually. As far as characters, the story develops them quickly at first but Meg almost becomes too whinny and Charles Wallace too smart and Calvin too brutish. Nothing is really explained and the message of the “power of love” is kind of shoehorned in as a resolve. The story moves too quickly to show why love is what removes control of the communist super-brain and the fact that I said that a communist super-brain is a bit too boring is a sad thing to even say!

There are a lot of issues with pacing and even with theology. I’ve seen many tout this as a Christian novel or something adjacent but the author makes it clear that Jesus is just one of many “good figures” that typifies the “love” aspect of conquering the Black Thing – even if there is a planet that sings like the Heavenly Choir a hymn for Christ.

I believe I first read this in 4th grade and this is probably where I would recommend it especially as a gateway into sci-fi. I didn’t know until I picked up this book again that there are three other books in this series and I do think I would pick them up to figure out what’s more to the story. This isn’t a straight out recommend reading for me but it was influential in my literature upbringing.