Book Review: A Wrinkle In Time, by Madeleine L'Engle (Time Quintet #1)

Genre: Children's science fantasy
Date Published: 1962
Publisher: Farrer, Straus & Giroux
Length: 233 pages, or 6 hours and 4 minutes on audiobook
Source: Audible

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Synopsis: It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and their mother had come down to the kitchen for a  midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.
"Wild nights are my glory," the unearthly stranger told them.  "I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course.  Let me sit down for a moment, and then I'll be on my way.  Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract."
A tesseract (in case you don't know) is a wrinkle in time.  To tell more would spoil your enjoyment of Madeleine L'Engle's unusual book.

My Rating:

★★★

.....for being a pleasant, if somewhat unusual, read

My Thoughts:

Well, that was interesting!  This is one of those books where I'm not sure how much I liked it.

On the one hand: this is a classic that practically everyone recommends as a must-read.  It is thought-provoking and highly creative.

On the other hand: there didn't seem to be a whole lot of depth, and it had a lot of strange stuff I wanted to learn more about.  I kept zoning out a little while listening to it, and when I was paying close attention, I kept on wondering how things worked and why they worked in a particular way.  It's clearly something I would have loved if I was 15 years younger.

I feel like this is the type of story I should have read when I was a kid.  It's kind of like The Chronicle of Narnia: when you're a kid, the books are awesome!  But as an adult, you start to see little problems with the book and you don't enjoy it quite as much, but you're still nostalgic about it all the same.

For me as an adult, I need character depth in a story.  I need to really feel for the characters.  The characters here were a little flat for my taste.  Also, when it comes to world-building, I want more!  I want to know how everything works, and why they must work a particular way.  If the world-building is a little vauge, then I start to question things, which ends up distracting me from the story.

With that being said (and before the people who love this story start yelling at me) the tale was very pleasant.  It's an adventure story for kids, about finding the courage to do things for yourself, and not having others do it for you.  It's sweet and light and fun, something I'd want my future children to read.  I just couldn't absolutely love it as a grown-up.

So, I'm sorry to the fans of this book that I didn't rate this higher.  I know why you love it so much, I get why you found it so inspirational, and, I repeat, I would have loved this as a kid.  But.......I read this book for the first time as an adult, and the magic of this story was somewhat lost on me.  So, all in all, it was a nice little story with a good message for children.  I recommend this read for anyone between the ages of 8 and 14; it's a story they're bound to love.