Now why would the perspicacious Enbrethiliel, with whom I concur on so many things, and I differ so much on the point of one YA novel? I don't know. To this reader, the book has everything. The central argument is a version of the one that has been the downfall of many a good, intelligent, and pious man and woman since time immemorial: the existence of real evil under the guise of goodness, beauty, and truth (in this case, the Anglican bishop of New York City). The children in the novel are called upon, in their varying states of figurative and literal blindness, to choose good, but some are confounded by the glamour, as it were, of evil. The theological problem of freedom -- the freedom to love and also to fall -- is posited against the tantalizing possibility of a return to a state of primordial goodness that is, however, compelled rather than freely chosen, and is, therefore, demonic. And the climactic scene is truly disturbing and frightening. And the book touches on race, class, exile, addiction, oedipal conflict, and disability. And several of the characters are gifted musicians. And most of the action takes place in and around the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on Amsterdam Avenue and 112th Street in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, a New York neighborhood that I know as intimately as any. While reading, I could trace each step of every one of the characters as they walked around the neighborhood as if I were walking with them, which gave me particular delight. And is that a great cover, or what? (The three Fab Four-looking fellows are members of a dangerous gang, the Alphabats, which is threatening to take over the city.)
Michael D. O'Brien, whose novels I also love, has been very down upon Madeleine L'Engle, which I do not love. He calls her work "'Christian' neopaganism," and claims that the "foundation" of her work is "wrong." I cannot bring myself to read his polemic on the evils of children's literature, so perhaps it's not fair of me to reject his argument, where it applies to her work, out of hand; and yet I do. As with all of her novels that I've read, the message of this book is Christian on the deepest level, and, besides, it's a great read.
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46 comments:
+JMJ+
Now why would the perspicacious Enbrethiliel, with whom I concur on so many things, and I differ so much on the point of one YA novel?
Oh, dear! Did I really make it sound that bad? LOL! The Young Unicorns has always been my favourite "Austin Family Chronicle", which is why it was the only one to make my "Final Four" (otherwise dominated by the Time Quintet)--where it then had the poor luck to be up against An Acceptable Time. =( (I do think it would have demolished A Wrinkle in Time, had they been paired together, and gone on to the next round.)
All that aside, I do love your own review of it. =) When I think of New York as a setting, this novel is one of the first to come to mind; but since I've never actually been there, I have my own blindness to deal with. Like Emily, I can only snap my fingers, remember smells and sounds, and count my steps as I wander through even the most evocative writer's New York.
"It would have demolished A Wrinkle in Time"? Heresy! And yet . . . and yet . . . I have to admit . . . YOU ARE RIGHT. The Young Unicorns kicks SO much ass on so very many levels. And I suppose I'll have to read "An Acceptable Time" now . . . :)
Oh, and L'Engle is so good with the New York setting. And I love the way that she intends her novels to be mildly futuristic, and yet, to us, they seem so anachronistic; except that the neighborhood she writes about, bordered by Riverside Park and the Hudson River on the West, Morningside Drive on the East, 125th Street on the North, and about 106th Street on the South, hasn't changed that much. I wish you could come for a visit, E. There is a wonderful place, the Hungarian Pastry Shop, right across from the Cathedral, which you would love.
+JMJ+
Just one word of warning: I'm the only one I know who likes An Acceptable Time as much as I do! =P It's one of my many "acquired tastes."
Duly noted. I'll let you know when I've read it. :)
I liked An Acceptable Time. I liked A Swiftly Tilting Planet better. I didn't like Meet the Austins, so I never read The Young Unicorns, but I might now on your recommendation.
A House Like a Lotus is a book I hadn't realised I avoid re-reading. It's too painful. I read it when I was about Polly's age and found it deeply disturbing.
One of the annoying things to me about Meet the Austins was Vicky's narrative voice. But Unicorns is told in the third person. It has a completely different feeling.
I sometimes think L'Engle sacrifices characterization for plot, too, but in The Young Unicorns.
+JMJ+
Lissla, I also read A House Like a Lotus when I was close to Polly's age, and I think I was even a little traumatised by it. One expects sin to take the form of the fantastic ecthroi in a L'Engle novel, not the form of a deeply flawed human being. But though I think the novel itself was another amazing achievement, I can't love it.
PS--Pentimento, I thought I was the only one who wasn't won over by Vicky as a narrator!
I meant to write "but NOT in the Young Unicorns" in my comment above.
I have not read House Like a Lotus, but I just started An Acceptable Time last night. I was fortunate enough to get a nice copy through BookMooch a couple of months ago. I was intrigued by Mrs. Murry's remarks to Polly about Meg's prolific childbearing, and I wonder if we'll finally be getting a glimpse into real Murry/O'Keefe family relationships in this novel.
As to Vicky as a narrator, I think that L'Engle is better when she shows rather than tells. If people are ingenuous, idealistic, and innocent, it's better to show it; telling your audience that they are makes them no longer seem so.
My husband and I were talking about O'Brien's comments re: L'Engle, and I honestly can't remember when if ever she portrays dragons in a friendly light. Pegasus, beasts, dolphins and birds. Don't remember dragons. The only dragon reference I can think of is the title of Dragons in the Waters, which is a Psalms reference- "He breaketh the heads of the dragons in the waters", and "Praise Him, ye dragons and all deeps".
I've never been to New York. Am i still allowed to read your blog? :)
In A Wind in the Door, there is the seraph, Blajeny, who Charles Wallace thinks is a dragon at first. And there is the snake, Louise, and the doctor who is connected to her in some mystical way. I haven't read O'Brien's book, but I'm guessing that, in his lexicon of symbols, snakes, like dragons, must always be bad, or else the moral consciousness of the reader is being subverted. I just don't see why there has to be a rigid rule like this to gauge whether children's literature is good or evil . . .
You can still read my blog if you firmly believe that, even though you've never been there, New York City is the best place in the world. :) Well, you don't really have to do that. I've been to Toronto many times, and it's beautiful. But one of the funniest things for me is to hear my oldest friend, formerly of New York and now of Toronto, comparing the two cities (I hate to tell you, but in her estimation New York always wins).
Oh, I forgot - Blajeny is a cherubim. Not a seraph. Certainly not a dragon.
+JMJ+
Don't forget L'Engle's unicorns! They're some of the best unicorns in the Fantasy!
You can still read my blog if you firmly believe that, even though you've never been there, New York City is the best place in the world.
Hmmmmm. Does that condition apply to all your readers, Pentimento?
If only I could enforce it. :)
And I'm sure I'm wrong, anyway. New York is probably not anywhere near being the best place in the world. But, to me, it is.
+JMJ+
G.K. Chesterton, felt the same way about his beloved Battersea, so he would agree, in his paradoxical way, that New York is the best place in the world. =)
And I actually went through my little library to see how many books I have that are set in New York City. I was seriously shocked to find only six, including The Young Unicorns. I had thought there would be more . . .
:)
Do you have From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E? A wonderful children's book set in New York.
There's also Harriet the Spy, which, for some reason, I didn't like very much when I read it as a child. And the recent When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead. It won the Newberry for 2009, but I wasn't crazy about it. It is a sort of homage to Harriet the Spy and Wrinkle in Time, with lots of inside-joke references to L'Engle.
+JMJ+
From the Mixed-Up Files . . . is one of my favourites! =D
I do have Harriet the Spy as well, but never thought of it as a New York book. I didn't even remember it when I was doing my settings "audit"!
And you're the only other person I've met who didn't like it so much. I gave it a second chance a few years ago, hoping I'd like it better (because a second reading totally worked for The Catcher in the Rye), but I only disliked it even more. =(
I remember thinking of the ending as a cop-out. Harriet's friends thought that it was all right for them to read her private notes, as if they were more sinned against than sinning because of what she had written; and Harriet, who had only written down what she was thinking, dismissed her observations as "lies" in order to get her unrepentant friends back. I don't know, but that wasn't much of an ending to me.
I agree, the ending was disturbing. You should check out When You Reach Me. It got a lot of hype, but I thought it was disappointing.
+JMJ+
I'll keep an eye out for When You Reach Me. I just read the plot summary on Amazon, and it had me at "time travel." ;-)
I'd love to know what you think of it -- keep me posted.
My 11th/12th grade English teacher, who I absolutely adored, gave me a copy of Many Waters as a gift for having the highest grade in the class. I remember reading it instead of studying for the final. ;)
It's funny, though, she was a committed Protestant and her husband was a minister and they had a son named John Calvin...
I haven't read Many Waters yet, but Enbrethiel can weigh in on that one.
L'Engle is very much a committed Protestant too, but in a high-church Anglican, not a Calvinist, sort of way. She has a surprising number of priests and bishops in her novels, but they're all Episcopalian, which is odd to a Catholic reader.
And you have to read The Young Unicorns, Dreshny. It takes place in your neighborhood!
+JMJ+
The priests and bishops in L'Engle confused me a lot, in the days before I could quickly check references on the Internet.
You expect them to be Catholic, don't you? And of course, the whole conceit of a great cathedral which is actually . . . Episcopalian (though the plot device of a corrupt Catholic bishop would certainly have a lot of resonance with what's going on today, sadly). And them people throw up their hands throughout her books at all the bizarre things that happen and say, "I'm just a simple little Episcopalian." Hard to know what that means if you're not one, I guess. And then Bishop Colubra -- an Episcopalian bishop with a Latin name? And a Puerto Rican ex-gang leader who becomes an Episcopalian priest? It almost makes you think L'Engle tried hard to identify some of her characters as not-Catholics.
+JMJ+
Now I'm trying to imagine throwing up my hands at a bizarre occurrence and saying, "I'm just a simple Catholic!"
I really can't see any Catholic in the world pulling that off with any credibility . . . but I'm willing to be open-minded if you come up with any suggestions. ;-)
On the other hand, we do have Chesterton's Father Brown solving the most intricate of cases because he's "just" a simple Catholic.
Good points, E. And the irony is that, in this country at least, "simple" and "Episcopalian" are not two words you expect to hear in the same sentence, Episcopalians being generally found among the upper echelons of society.
The "just a simple Episcopalian" thing is intelligible to me. I spent a couple of transitional years in the Episcopal Church. There's a certain streak of Episcopalianism which you could trace at least back to Swift's Tale of a Tub, in which he contrasts the countervailing insanities of Puritans on the one hand and Papists on the other with the solid common sense of the Church of England. As it manifests itself in this country there is often more than a whiff of we-don't-go-in-for-that-sort-of-thing snobbery about it--the Holy Rollers and the Roman Catholics are very different from each other but alike in being so *tacky*. I don't know whether it's fair to suggest that L'Engle shares this attitude, but it certainly exists.
Mac, thank you for weighing in. That makes a lot of sense. And, looked at in this light, the ethos of Catholicism seems, in many ways, antithetical to the prevailing trends of American thought and culture,
Okay, I just finished An Acceptable Time. It is just wonderful. I'm with you on this one, Enbrethiliel. Now I'm at a loss for what to read next; anything, I fear, will chase the marvelous feeling from my reader's palate . . .
+JMJ+
You're with me on An Acceptable Time?!?!?!
*speechless*
Okay, I'm not really speechless--though if we were face to face, I'd be sputtering. It's just that this has never happened before!
I think a lot of people who didn't like An Acceptable Time just couldn't stand Zachary--for the novel is just as much his story as it is Polly's. But I've read all the L'Engle books in which he has "guested," and think there was no other way L'Engle could have given his character a decent resolution.
We know Zachary fears death because he's an atheist, yet he manages to get tangled up with believers no matter where he goes. He always knows instinctively who the good guys are, but thinks that he himself is a bad guy. In an earlier L'Engle novel, his reckless actions actually did lead to a good person's death--and I think he fell into a pattern of endangering other people (always good people) since then, because he was never able to get over it. But at the end of An Acceptable Time, I think he finally got over it.
I haven't read the other novels that feature him -- which ones are they? But it strikes me that anyone who can't stand Zachary Gray is someone who hasn't yet realized the gaping need for Christ's mercy in his or her own life.
+JMJ+
The other Zachary novels are:
The Moon by Night
A Ring of Endless Light
A House Like a Lotus
It is in Lotus that he and Polly first meet. Moon and Light are Vicky books.
And I love your insight that Zachary's gaping need for mercy likely serves as an uncomfortable reminder of our own. He's not an easy character to love, but of all her characters, he definitely needs love the most.
So he's one of those characters that crosses from the Austins' world to the Murry-O'Keefe world? Interesting.
Maybe he's so hard to love because he, so tragically human, is slapped up against the backdrop of the rather perfect, demigodlike people with whom L'Engle usually populates her novels.
I was raised at one of those simple Episcopalian churches. Okay, Anglican, because I'm in Canada, but we didn't even have a cross at the front we were so Low Church (Low Church means nearly Baptist, and very suspicious of Popery- crucifixes, incense, genuflection).
The Anglican church uses the same terms for church and priest and sacraments (more or less) as the Catholic, but in a very different way, which I can see being confusing to Catholics.
+JMJ+
Her regulars are awfully close to perfection. (She said somewhere that the editor of Light had to ask her to get Vicky to make some mistakes and not be right all the time. I've kind of detested Vicky ever since I learned that, I'm afraid.)
Now I'm trying to think of another writer who would have done a better job making Zachary sympathetic, tragic flaws and all. J.D. Salinger keeps coming to mind--but that may be because I don't know as many writers as I should and am feeling influenced by your blog!
Then there's G.K. Chesterton . . . but he'd probably give Zachary red hair and make him another haunted, emotionally displaced Celt!
Hmmmmm. Who else is good at writing young, tortured souls starving for mercy?
Oh yes, Salinger. And you know who else would be great with Zachary Gray is Graham Greene. He always managed to provoke sympathy for even his most loathsome characters, like Raven in This Gun for Hire.
Hmm. IN YA fiction, some of Rosemary Sutcliff's characters come to mind. Have either of you read ROsemary Sutcliff's historical YA novels? They're great. I particularly like The Lantern Bearers, about a young Roman British man who loses his family to Hengest's raiders. It's set about fourth or fifth century, I think.
They sound really good, Lissla. I'll check them out.
+JMJ+
Sorry, Lissla, but I haven't read Sutcliff yet. I'll keep her in mind, though! =)
Who knew that L'Engle could generate such discussion! I finished "Unicorns", P, but I'm most resonating to the attractive family picture and finding the idea of a powerful and influential Anglican clergy a bit hard to swallow. The Anglican clergy I know are not in the least formidable, for good or bad.
Now I'll have to go back and start with "Wrinkle in Time", one of the best YA books ever.
(Now I'll be interested to see if my brand-new avatar photo shows up with this - I know you'll think it's most suitable, if it does...)
Heh, Otepoti, that's a very good point. The Episcopalian bishop of New York is in reality such an afterthought that I don't even know his name. But L'Engle seems to imagine a parallel universe in which everyone is Episcopalian.
I think that, if you started with Meet the Austins, you might, as I do, find the Austin family tiresome. When I read it, it crossed my mind that the perfection of that family was unkind to all the YA readers who had families far less than perfect. But the current trend in YA literature is to portray dysfunctional families (which is far closer, I fear, to the norm). I suppose a little happy-family porn isn't that destructive, really.
And, heh, your avatar kicked in!
So at this point, dear P., I feel I must lower the tone of the discussion by posting the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZVjKlBCvhg
And now I must go and plant some tulips, which is a fitting thing for a Calvinist to be doing.
Best
Ah ha ha ha ha! "You're lucky I'm Church of England!"
+JMJ+
The idea of a parallel New York in which everyone is Episcopalian--except, of course, the Jews who so fascinate Rob Austin--reminds me of something Father Benedict Groeschel (I think!) once said about the same city. He remarked that on Ash Wednesday, it seems as if everybody you run into in New York is Catholic. Pentimento, was this true in your experience?
I can't say that it's really true in my experience, but it really depends on where you are that day. Over the past few years, it seemed that fewer and fewer people I ran into had ashes on their foreheads. When I was in graduate school, it was a particularly low number (although one Ash Wednesday I had to work on a piece with a Korean-born pianist for our twentieth- and twenty-first-century performance practice seminar, and we were each delighted to see the other show up with ashes -- we became good friends after that, and have performed together frequently).
If it happened that I stayed in my neighhborhood in the Bronx that day, though, most people had ashes, but that's because almost everyone in the neighborhood was Irish (there were a handful of Italians, Croatians, and Albanians, too). In my old neighborhood though -- with a large population of artists, classical musicians, and orthodox Jews -- not so much.
But on the other hand, I can think of only three Episcopalians of my acquaintance in New York, and two of them have moved elsewhere now.
I'm late to the party (by a couple years) but I love your review. The Young Unicorns is my favorite M.L'E Young Adult novel for all the reasons you mention, and I'm going to link to your review. Also, note regarding the comments: in A Wind in the Door, the cherubim is Proginoskes. Blajeny is the Teacher.
Thanks for the email, Wendy, and for the correction! Happy new year!
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