"The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been."
^Madeleine L'Engle
+ I just heard that Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes is going to be made into a movie, as is Madeleine L’Engle’s Camilla. I wonder if this is going to be a new trend: classic slice-of-life YA books getting turned into movies. I mean: the movie studios are still snatching up the rights to Paranormal Romance novels, aren’t they? And I think ( Read more... )
See, I think Many Waters is one that takes a longer while to make an impact. I have a friend who read it a second time, removing her expectations that it would be as fast and epic-scaled as the other two, and she liked it a lot more. : )
though I think for me I saw it more as a cycle of bad influence continuing on by choices that were negative or ill intentioned.
I would have liked L’Engle to show us MORE of the ‘bad choices’ bit, though. In every timeline, Gwdyr/Gedder/whoever ancestor just showed up. and the narration would set off alarm bells: bad! Evil! He’s from THAT family line! I think it would’ve been more interesting if we’d seen how they made bad choices, how they passed on the grudge to their descendants, etc. We didn’t get to see the full picture of that side of the story, which is why I think it’s flawed.
I never did fully understand how the Echtros were connected to the family line; were they like Charles Wallace, hidden in the heads of Gwydyr’s descendants and spreading their negativity (instead of the positivity on Charles’s side)? Because I’d rather think they were doing that, instead of merely making Madoc’s descendants “choose the wrong person”. Basically, I would have liked the premise better if came across as good choices versus bad choices. Instead of showing us people who are coded ‘bad’ without us seeing the choices they made that LED them to that. Hmmm…will have to think more about how the Echtros messed with that side of the family.
But yeah, whizzing through the book still feels gloriously epic. And the Meg-Charles bond is love, always. I especially like how they’re holding hands “like children” in the end. :D
I always loved the dynamic though of the Murray family- so many families in fiction anymore or so dysfunctional, it's nice to see a family that does have problems but genuinely care about each other.
They are just so lovely! Remember how Mrs. Murry always makes hot chocolate in her lab? And how she almost never uses couches, but she keeps two of them in the lab so that the kids can hang out there anytime? It’s also cool to see how the kids regard their place in the family: “we’re the ones not quite rooted in the real world”, “we’re the ones who are normal in a genius family”. I think those are really realistic ways to see yourself, if you’re in a family like that.
Also, I think it’s really interesting how even the close relationships can cause problems. Like, Meg can honestly hide nothing from Charles even when she wants to keep secrets-he just knows her too well. And it frustrates her sometimes. The twins are kind of codependent, and when they sense something that might potentially cause a problem between them, they back away from it, and it becomes hella hard for them to communicate.
I will forever be sadface that Madeleine L’Engle never got to write the future career of Charles Wallace’s that she said she was imagining. : ( And I’d have LOVED it if she had written another adventure starring all four Murry kids - imagine the epic dinner table conversations they would’ve had with their parents!
The Austins took some time to grow on me. I still think they’re a little too idealized, but yeah, I like them a lot. And I think you’d like Vicky!
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