A Wrinkle in time

Written by: Sriram Chadalavada
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I was curious about the book after the release of the film ‘Wrinkle in Time’. Often the book turns out to be better than the movie and I started the book with that in mind. Let me start with a quick summary of the plot and write my thoughts on the book after that.

Plot (spoilers ahead): A teenager Meg Murray is struggling since the disappearance of her scientist father when she was young. Her brother Charles Wallace is enigmatically smart who has equally mysterious friends Mrs Who, Mrs Which and Mrs WhatsIt. They confirm that Meg’s mother is right about space travel using ‘tessering’ which is what the scientist father was involved in before his disappearance. And lead the children and their friend Calvin to the father trapped on another planet. It is while tessering that they encounter It, dark and ominous controlling consciousness that enforces homogeneity and is a big brother totalitarian. What follows is a reunion with the father, a desperate escape from It leaving Charles Wallace in its clutches and finally Meg rescues her brother by employing the emotion of love as opposed to the controlling hatred of It. Happily, the family is together again and the trio of Mrs vanish without a proper farewell.

The book is a hybrid between science fiction and fantasy and appeals to one’s sense of adventure and doing the right thing. It is similar to Harry Potter in that evil antagonist It stands for greed, arrogance, hatred, low self esteem whereas Meg Murray stands for love with all its imperfections. The characters are relatable and this definitely is must read for young adult audience.

The book espouses American values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and is clearly an allegory against cold war communism. While there is a lot of sense in those values for the rest of the world, they are not panacea in present day and it becomes difficult to relate to them beyond a point. Those aspects could put off non-American readers.

Interesting fact is that the author Madeleine L’Engle who won the Newberry medal for this book faced TWENTY SIX rejections before finally her mother brought it to the attention of a publisher John C Farrar who believed in the manuscript. Rest is history!