The Rereading Mission, Round 2: A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle

(First of all: have you heard about that Divergent-related surprise that I'm posting about tomorrow? Well now you have! It's gonna be good, I promise.)

Summary (from goodreads): Meg's father mysteriously disappears after experimenting with the fifth dimension of time travel. Determined to rescue him, Meg and her friends must outwit the forces of evil on a heart-stopping journey through space and time.


The first time I read this book, I wasn't even the one reading the words. My mother was. My mother used to give me and my two siblings a half-hour to an hour each of "me + mom" time when I was younger, and most of that time, for me, was taken up by reading aloud. (This time was, by the way, one of the many things my mother did that resulted in me being a well-adjusted human being.)

One of my most vivid memories about this book is that it completely rattled me. We had to stop in the middle, and I had trouble sleeping that night. So one of my questions as I was rereading was: why?

One word: CAMAZOTZ.

Camazotz is where Meg (the MC), Charles Wallace (her genius little brother), and Calvin (friend) go to look for Meg and Charles Wallace's father, who has been missing for some time when the novel opens. Camazotz is also deeply frightening. Not in an obvious way, but as you read, the descriptions start to creep into your mind more and more, until you just want OUT, OUT of that terrible place as quickly as humanly possible.

Remember that post I did on evil a few weeks ago? In which I discussed how evil can be chaotic or orderly? Well, this is orderly evil. Observe:

"Below them the town was laid out in harsh angular patterns.... In front of all the houses children were playing. Some were skipping rope, some were bouncing balls. Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it. She looked at Calvin, and saw that he, too, was puzzled.

"Look!" Charles Wallace said suddenly. "They're skipping and bouncing in rhythm! Everyone's doing it at exactly the same moment!"

This was so. As the skipping rope hit the pavement, so did the ball. As the rope curved over the head of the jumping child, the child with the ball caught the ball. Down came the ropes. Down came the balls. Over and over again. Up. Down. All in rhythm. All identical. Like the houses. Like the paths. Like the flowers."
--Page 117

I've spent a lot of time thinking about why I find this so creepy. There are several reasons, I think, but first and foremost, it relates to what it says here: "Meg felt vaguely that something was wrong with their play. It seemed exactly like children playing around any housing development at home, and yet there was something different about it."

Sometimes I have dreams that seem exactly like real life, except they are different in one crucial way-- something is wrong with them. Once I dreamt that I was walking down a hallway with the FH, like I sometimes did at the time, and he just wouldn't look at me. I kept staring at the back of his head, but he refused to turn around. There was something scary about that.

I keep thinking about this quote by W.H. Auden: "Evil is unspectacular and always human, and shares our bed and eats at our own table." Sometimes people go too far with their evil in books (and pre-edits, I was one of them. Cackling Disney Villain Syndrome, I call it.) And sometimes there is a place for dramatic evil, but there is something to be said for the evil that persuades the reader to be complicit in its crimes. That kind of evil exists all around us, all the time-- it makes people fail to do the right thing, fail to struggle against the wrong things.

And that's something Madeleine L'Engle illustrates with the journey to Camazotz. Things just keep getting wronger and wronger, until Charles Wallace begins to believe that he can let evil into his mind just for a second and come out unscathed-- and instead, he's completely enveloped in it, and worse than that, doesn't even see the need to fight against it anymore. I'm convinced that L'Engle understands the nature of evil, and also, what is necessary to defeat it.

Ultimately, Meg saves her brother by loving him. No special powers. No unique gifts. Just ordinary Meg and her extraordinary love. I feel like that sounds cheesy, and maybe that's because we sometimes cheapen love by assigning the word to everything, including infatuation and lust and obsession.

The other interesting thing about rereading this? When I was ten: had no idea how "religious" this book was. I mean, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which and Mrs. Whatsit, quoting scripture? Did not pick up on that the first time, probably because I was not raised a Christian. And frankly, as someone who is currently a Christian, many books that are labeled "Christian books" make me want to punch myself in the head, because they moralize, and they shy away from examining evil-- they oversimplify it, dumb it down, limit it to just the "villains" and refuse to infuse it into the "heroes". You have to understand how evil works if you want to understand why goodness is so important, and writing about evil things does not mean that you condone evil-- far from it. And also, representing the whole truth is something I believe God is pretty fond of. Just my opinion.

Anyway. What I'm trying to say is that L'Engle doesn't run away from the bad. Not that A Wrinkle In Time is edgy, by our current definition-- it's not, and it's not supposed to be. But she creates genuine peril that makes you thirst for resolution, and that's not something that all books accomplish.

One other thing I love about this book is: none of the characters are hot. Seriously. Meg's kinda weird looking with glasses, Calvin's too tall for his clothes, Meg's dad is all scraggly. It's like in Harry Potter-- very few megahot characters in that book, either. I want this to happen more often. I'm going to add it to my writing goals.

(Look, even Sawyer is reading it!)

So: Madeleine L'Engle, thank you for scaring the crap out of me at night, and for showing me that I need to delve into how evil really works, and for making me cry every time Meg figures out that love is all she needs to rescue her brother.

Yeah, I'm a total marshmallow. Secret's out.

Want more? Check out Sarah Enni's post on THE WITCHES by Roald Dahl.

The Rereading Mission, Round 1: THE GIVER by Lois Lowry

A few weeks ago I decided it would be cool if I reread some important books from my childhood and blogged about the experience. And then I invited you to do it, too! No worries: if you couldn't participate this month, I'll be doing it next month on September 13th. And if you did participate, leave a link in the comments, or email it to me, and I'll add the link to this post.

(Also: all images in this post link back to their original source if you click them.)

(And: this post contains spoilers about THE GIVER.)

Summary (from the back of the book): Jonas's world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear or pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the Community.

When Jonas turns twelve he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now it's time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back.



I first read this book in fifth grade, during our "what is a utopia?" unit. The assignment associated with it was to create our own utopias; to figure out how we would form the world if we intended to form it perfectly. The consequence of that assignment, for me, was to realize that I could not form a perfect world on paper, no matter how hard I tried.

So eleven years later, I decided to form an imperfect one on paper.

I don't think I need to dwell on the lasting impact this book has had on my writing life. Suffice it to say that THE GIVER was my first taste of what was possible for me as a writer: I could write about a disturbing world that did not yet exist. So: THE GIVER is important to me.

I found this book disturbing the first time I read it, for obvious reasons. Basically: the whole "let's euthanize old people and twins, but lie to everyone and say we're just sending them outside the community!" thing. But more than that is the chipper attitude with which the people who do the euthanizing talk about it. Jonas's dad is like "cootchie cootchie coo, if you don't learn how to sleep through the night, we are so going to murder you, yes we are, snookums!" to the baby they temporarily adopt into their family. This bothered me as a ten year old, and it disgusted me now.

Yes, that about summarizes my rereading experience. I comprehended, at the age of ten, a lot that this book was saying. But I did not understand its full weight until now.

I have a scene that will illustrate this. I didn't even really register this scene when I was young, I think because I was so desperate to finish the book that I breezed through a lot of it. But I actually teared up in LAX at gate G29 (or wherever I was) as I was reading it this time. Here, have a look:

He made himself say the words, though he felt flushed with embarrassment. He had rehearsed them in his mind all the way home from the Annex.

“Do you love me?”

There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. “Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!”

“What do you mean?” Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.

“Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless it’s become almost obsolete,” his mother explained carefully.

Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.

“And of course our community can’t function smoothly if people don’t use precise language. You could ask, ‘Do you enjoy me?’ The answer is ‘Yes,’” his mother said.

“Or,” his father suggested, “‘Do you take pride in my accomplishments?’ And the answer is wholeheartedly ‘Yes.’”

“Do you understand why it’s inappropriate to use a word like ‘love’?” Mother asked.

Jonas nodded. “Yes, thank you, I do,” he replied slowly.

It was his first lie to his parents.

(Lois Lowry, The Giver, page 127)

As a child, I thought: Why can't they understand what he means? But surely they love him, they just don't get it.

As an adult, I thought: these people have been so warped by the society that surrounds them that they can no longer experience love. Even the mild impressions of love they are able to convey are entirely egocentric, based on what their son does for them rather than who he is.

Yeah, it's much more upsetting now.

This has led me to several conclusions. The first is that what I appreciate in this book now, I have always appreciated, but it was on some undeveloped, almost visceral level, the only level at which I could experience it as a child. And I am so glad that I had people in my life who let me read things that bothered and disturbed me, because at that age, I was still figuring out who I was, and it was only by reading about things that I knew were wrong that I was able to isolate what I thought was right.

The second is that really now, really really, anyone who says that books for young readers are not worth reading because they lack nuances or don't require as much deep thought in order to comprehend them or whatever, can just kiss my pale butt. Also, they aren't reading the right books. I had to grow up and "become an adult" (whatever that means) to appreciate how heart-rending this book is.

I mean: it isn't perfect. Another thing I realized while rereading was that it was flawed, something I didn't pick up on when I was younger. And that is deeply encouraging. Even this book, which stuck with me for over a decade, which was so memorable that I continually felt compelled to read it again, which helped me develop as a writer, is not perfect; therefore my work doesn't have to be perfect in order to be powerful. And let's hope it is that, even if it never compares to THE GIVER.

THE GIVER, I can't forget you. You remind me of colby jack and cracker sandwiches in the dilapidated mobile classrooms behind Grove Avenue Elementary School. And Ms. Gill, who put up with my incredibly moody and generally looney tunes childhood self for two years. TWO. And somehow managed not to throw heavy objects at my head. You made me realize that sometimes life is painful, but having pain is better than having nothing at all. You made me realize that life is valuable even if it's imperfect, and that people should never be discarded. And I still need to learn those lessons. I need to learn them over and over again.

Other Rereaders:
(Aka: people currently made of awesome.)

Sarah Enni-- A Wrinkle In Time
Michelle Hodkin-- 99 Fear Street: The House of Evil-- The First Horror
Aunt Feather-- The Hundred Dresses

The Wonderful Thing About Outlining (And Tiggers)

First: my first "rereading childhood books" post on The Giver goes up on Friday. If you are also planning to put up a "rereading childhood books" post, please either put the link in my post's comments, or email it to me at veronicarothbooks@gmail.com, so I can add your link to the original post. (And so I can read about your rereading experience.)

Second: some of my thoughts about voice are up on the GotYA blog today, if you want to check it out.

Third: the Road Trip Wednesday topic at YAHighway is awesome this week. I tried to participate, but in the process I discovered that I can't do it without seriously spoiling DIVERGENT for everyone (which should tell you just how good this topic is.)

In other news, I'm hard at work on DIVERGENT's sequel, which I will hereby refer to as D2. It has an actual title, but I'd rather not use it until it's final, on the off chance that it changes.

And I have discovered the wonderful thing about outlining. (Not to be confused with the wonderful thing about Tiggers, which is that Tiggers are wonderful things.)

I don't know if you know this about me already, so I'll tell you: I don't like to outline. And when I say I don't like it, I mean that the thought of doing it fills me with terror. Not frustration. Not annoyance. TERROR. Why? Because up until recently, I thought of outlining as the enemy of my creative process. Once I decide that the plot of a book is going to go a certain way, I have serious trouble getting that idea out of my mind. I have to practically dig it out of my brain with a scalpel in order to think of any other options.

But if you want a trilogy, or even a sequel, you have to learn to outline. Because your publisher isn't going to say, "oh, you don't have an outline for the next two books? Well, that's all right. We trust you to make them good, debut author who we have no prior experience with." That would be extremely foolish of them. So: I'm sorry, fellow pantsers, but we are all out of luck.

I outlined D2, and freaked out for awhile, and then got scared, and now I've finally found my inner writing badass again, and I'm writing. (That post I did last week actually worked, people! How cool is that?)

The wonderful thing about outlining is this: I can write anything. At any time. No more forcing myself to write the next scene in the narrative sequence even though I really don't feel like it. (Yes, I know that some of you were never prisoners to chronological order. Shush.) Yesterday I wrote a scene from the middle of the book. The day before that I wrote a scene from the end, and then wrote a scene from the beginning.

Yes, that's right: now I just wake up and think, what kind of scene do I feel like writing today? And then I consult my outline and find a scene that corresponds to my mood.

It's freaking awesome.

So this week's motto is: embrace the outline. The outline is your friend.

And this week's D2 song is...





Also, look!
My very own copy of The Contract! Signed!
This, my friends, is a look of "OMG."