I am well past the typical age-range for readers of A Wrinkle in Time, but the new season of Stranger Things made me realize that I’d never read it and I decided to correct that oversight.
Meg Murry is a bright young girl who struggles in school because she’s impatient and quick to anger. She’s always getting in trouble defending his eccentric little brother, Charles Wallace, or reacting poorly to people asking her about her missing father. Mr. Murry is a scientist working for the government on some kind of secret mission when the family suddenly stops hearing from him. No one can tell them where he is.
When Charles Wallace introduces Meg to the odd lady who’s moved into the neighborhood haunted house, it leads to Meg, Charles Wallace, and an older boy named Calvin going on a rescue mission to save Meg’s father. Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which teach the children about interdimensional travel, using the very “tesseracts” that Meg’s parents were apparently working on before her father’s disappearance.
I know this is regarded as a classic, and allowances have to be made for a book intended for younger audiences, but I really didn’t care much for this book. The plot is very rushed, the characters one-note and irritating, and L’Engle takes a laissez-faire attitude to explaining what’s going on. Why is Charles Wallace the world’s most precocious five-year-old? No reason! Why is Camazotz the way it is? It just is!
The final confrontation is maybe the most slapdash invocation of a well-worn trope I’ve ever seen, though I won’t spoil it just in case. Perhaps it was a novel approach back in 1962, but it reads as laughable now.
