A Wrinkle in Time
Madeleine L'Engel
Brilliant, Broken Meg
I believe I was eleven or twelve years old the first time I read A Wrinkle in Time, so let's call it 1967. I still have vivid memories of it. Since I have now reached the age when I have to look in the microwave to find out what's in there when it beeps1, this is pretty impressive. My clearest memory of it is how it felt to read it. "Enjoyment" or "pleasure" was not it. It hurt to read A Wrinkle in Time. Well, that's not entirely true. The Mrs W's were sometimes a pleasure -- brave and kind and occasionally funny. But overall, it was a hard book to read. I give myself credit for being wise enough to know, even at the age of eleven, that sometimes if you push through you will be rewarded.
The reward was brilliant, broken Meg. I was pretty broken myself at the time, so I felt her. (I still am, but now I know all the best people are.) I had never met a character like Meg before. There are some Meg-lite characters in books I have read since. Most of those were written by authors who, I am sure, themselves read A Wrinkle in Time. But these other authors compromise. Rough edges have been sanded down in the Meg-lites you meet in other fiction. If you see a Meg-lite on the screen (TV or movies), she is almost certain to be pretty or at least cute. L'Engle's Meg is uncompromised, unsmoothed, ungentled.
I looked at some of the other Goodreads reviews. Many reviewers point out the flaws in A Wrinkle in Time. I agree entirely! It is a deeply flawed book, If we start listing what's wrong with it, we quickly get into Captain America territory -- "I can do this all day!" So it's a matter of how you judge the whole. I don't take an average. Meg's greatness trumps everything that is wrong with A Wrinkle in Time in my judgment.
OK, that is not actually true.