Squee
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult
Squee from the Keeper Shelf is a feature wherein we share why we love the books we love, specifically the stories which are permanent residents of our Keeper shelves. Despite flaws, despite changes in age and perspective, despite the passage of time, we love particular books beyond reason, and the only thing better than re-reading them is telling other people about them. At length.
If you’d like to submit your reasons for loving and keeping a particular book for Squee from the Keeper Shelf, please email Sarah!
…
When I was in fifth grade, my grandmother died, and my best friend introduced me to my favorite book. Nearly twenty years later I can’t tell you if the two events were connected, but by high school I realized that I might have imprinted on Madeleine L’Engle’s A Ring of Endless Light at that moment partially because it features a dying grandparent.
My favorite book actually has a lot in it about death. It starts with our not-quite-sixteen-year-old narrator, Vicky Austin, attending a funeral. The person who has died is a family friend, and his grieving son, Leo, has a crush on Vicky. Leo’s dad died after saving a suicidal boy named Zachary, and meanwhile Vicky’s beloved grandfather is dying of leukemia. Oh, and Adam, who Vicky meets at the funeral? He has some issues about death from a previous L’Engle book (The Arm of the Starfish) that make it difficult for him to trust Vicky.
Pretty heavy material for an eleven-year-old (or a thirteen-year-old, as Vicky’s annoying little sister Suzy points out during one deep conversation about second chances). Or anyone, really, but as a fifth grader it wasn’t all the death that drew me in. It was the cute boys, and the telepathic dolphins.
When I first read the book, it was thrilling to think that a smart, not exactly popular girl who wanted to be a writer would suddenly have three boys chasing her:
- Leo, the “slob”, as Vicky first thinks of him, whose “kisses didn’t count” (kisses?! What kisses, Vicky?), but who is a smart, good guy with some growing up to do, even before his dad dies of a heart attack after saving Zachary.
- Zachary, the bad boy with a death wish who Vicky met in a previous book (The Moon by Night), who gave her “that first real kiss” at fourteen and purposefully capsizes his boat in a suicide attempt after the death of his mother, and who tells Vicky that he needs her (what does that even mean, Zach?).
- And Adam, a friend of Vicky’s older brother: the scientist with the summer project with dolphins. Adam who sometimes takes Vicky seriously, asking to read her poetry (but only once they know each other a little better) and inviting her to help with his project, but at other times pushes her away and acts as if their age difference means that there isn’t interest or attraction or respect there.
Three different boys, offering three different relationships. I’ll confess, at eleven I thought more about when it would be my turn to have three boys interested in me at the same time (answer: this is a fictional problem) than about what Vicky – and I – learned from those three boys. But after almost two decades of reading and rereading, it’s become very clear.
From Leo, I learned that we are all a little awkward, and that being direct about interest and boundaries is important. That if we take time to understand each other, we can learn and grow together.
From Zachary, that “Other men’s crosses are not my crosses” (John Donne, courtesy of Vicky’s minister grandfather). Or, that our love can’t save someone and that their love can’t save us — we can support each other, but we can’t fix each other’s problems.
And from Adam, that being vulnerable is hard but important, and that the kind of guy I’m interested in can go from having a very serious conversation about life and death and talking dolphins to standing on his head, because life is both serious and fun.
I joke about the talking dolphins, but they bring in an element of wonder, of knowledge beyond words. Adam the scientist acknowledges to Vicky the poet that there is more to this universe than we can understand, even if he’s not quite sure about God or religion. The dolphins teach Vicky and Adam about intimacy and vulnerability, and also about joy after tragedy.
I’m still learning about life and death and love and intimacy. Every time I read A Ring of Endless Light I bring to it new experiences that have shaped me since the last reading, and I suspect this book will impact me a little differently each time I read it. I’m so glad it came into my life when it did.
It was my gateway book to all of Madeleine L’Engle’s writing – but that’s a story for another day.
A Ring of Endless Light comes from Sarah Evans’ Keeper Shelf! Sarah is a lapsed fiction writer, former children’s book editor, sporadic blogger, and current graduate student in public administration. She lives in DC and is open to ideas about what she should do next with her life.
Regarding why this book is on her Keeper Shelf, Sarah says, “There are many books on my shelves, and most of them are keepers (ask the movers who packed up my last apartment). But I knew that if I wanted to pick one book to write about for the Squee from the Keeper Shelf series, it had to be the book I’ve read so many times I’ve lost count. There are three copies of it on my shelf – my original copy, my loaner copy, and the hardcover my parents sent away to be signed when I was in high school. The inscription? ‘To Sarah – Ananda – Madeleine L’Engle.'”
Ananda: “That joy in existence without which the universe would fall apart and collapse.”
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This is probably my favorite book of all time so I am super excited to see it here! When I was younger, I didn’t even realize it was part of a series because, in my opinion, it can be read as a standalone. That said, I’ve always wanted to go back and read more about the Austins. Are the rest just as good (and profound)?
My favorite was always Troubling a Star, I almost went to head school ctor oceanography because of that book. Still looking for excuses to go to Antarctica.
I very much liked ‘The Moon By Night’, an earlier Austin family novel where the family goes travelling across the US, and Vicky first encounters Zachary, who is exciting and also terrifying in his interest in her. I remember being astonished by the idea that you could just load your family in an RV and go from park to park like that, and I thought Austin conveyed very well the tensions you get in a big family when you’re trying to establish your own identity (with a prettier younger sister right behind you – Vicky, I hear you). I think I read this book when I was thirteen, which was probably exactly the right age for it.
I know L’Engle’s books aren’t for everyone, as they do reflect her strong Episcopalian faith, but as a child who was very confused about the existence of evil in our world, I found the ways in which L’Engle wrote about these questions in her books hugely helpful. Zachary’s an atheist; Vicky is not, but is painfully trying to reconcile her childhood faith with her growing awareness that sometimes, terrible things are allowed to happen to the innocent (Zachary takes her to see a play of Anne Frank, I remember).
Should add – I never quite liked ‘A Ring of Endless Light’ as much as I should have, because I was already half-won over by the terrible Zachary. Between him and Sorensen Carlisle, thirteen year old me had worrying taste in literary boyfriends.
Also my all time favorite. For years, I re-read it every single summer.
This is one of my favorite books of all time. It has been there for me at the lowest periods of my life and it has been there to comfort/guide me when I supported my friends when life turned upside down for them.
I also read it once in a while just because it’s a good book and Adam Eddington is one of my all-time literary crushes.
This. Beautiful. Book.
I love this book. It’s time for a re-read.
I’m slowly reading the Austin series for the first time as an adult and just finished The Moon By Night a couple months ago. I readily admit to being apprehensive about reading A Ring of Endless Light because of the heavy themes, and am holding off for when I feel less emotionally fragile in general because I am a coward.
I loved L’Engle’s Murray books (A Wrinkle in Time and A Swiftly Tilting Planet are among my favorites), but for some reason I never got into her Austin series even though there was crossover between the two. I believe Meg’s family was in this book, and then Zachary shows up in An Acceptable Time, the book about Meg’s daughter.
I loved all L’Engle’s books and hoarded them for years (decades) before finally releasing them into the Great Book River. It is time I started collecting them again in e-book form. I read them over & over & over again. This one got binge-read with “The Moon by Night” and “The Arm of the Starfish,” I could never just read one of the three.
Zachary was one of those characters who I was very attracted to but at the same time so frighteningly familiar – I had a boyfriend who was All Drama – that it helped me clarify what was good for me, and what wasn’t.
I haven’t reread this as an adult, but it was one of my favorites growing up. And, I’ll admit, the reason I got an oceanography degree. Not as sexy as marine biology/working with dolphins, but those programs were rare and hard to get into when I went to college.
I wonder if I still have my old copy…
I haven’t re-read it in years, but it was one of my favorites, especially since I was planning to study marine science when I read it and just wanted to hug dolphins. A Swiftly Tilting Planet is my other favorite. (Gaudior the unicorn!)
Off to binge-read L’Engle…
What a lovely Keeper Shelf piece! Thank you, Sarah.
OOooh, this book. This book started my love for metaphysical poetry, and then Lord Peter Wimsey sealed the deal. I think I first read it when I was 13 or 14… I read the Austins in order, from the library, over and over again. (I’m also a Murry family fan; Wrinkle was my L’Engle gateway drug.)
I love Ring of Endless Light for the telepathic dolphins, and for boys from A to Z (TEAM ADAM), and for the poignant way it deals with life and death, and for the beautiful depiction of religious faith well-practiced. “If thou couldst empty all thyself of self…”
I also love it because Vicky is coming into her own as a poet, and that her writing is taken seriously (mostly) by those around her, and Vicky learns that it is work to get the words to do all the things you want them to do. It was, I think, the first book I read that treated writing that way for a teenager.
This was beautiful to read and brought back great memories of L’Engle’s books. I devoured all of them and thought they were both heartbreaking and wonderful. And romantic. I was definitely there for all the boys, too. 🙂 I can see I was not alone, haha… Love it!
So happy to see other A Ring of Endless Light lovers!! Thank you all for reading! 🙂
I think I read this and Troubling a Star before any of the other Austin books — Madison, I would say that you should read Troubling a Star as it IS a sequel (and there are some lovely Adam bits — though not as many as I wanted, and an amazing trip to Antartica). The Moon by Night is the most like these two and introduces Zachary — as others have said, it’s also very thoughtful. I haven’t read Meet the Austins in a long time so someone else might have more of a memory of it, but I think it’s also Vicky’s POV and deals with a child coming to live with them for a while after her parents die. The Young Unicorns is third-person and very different, somewhat focused on Rob as the family lives in NYC for a year and has some strange adventures. They’re all interesting but A Ring of Endless Light always resonated the most for me.
Tam, have you read An Acceptable Time? It will help you get over Zachary… but then when I read The Moon by Night I think I rooted for the cute boy she met in Canada over Zachary so I’m just not the bad boy type, I guess!
I love that so many of you went into marine-related fields! i’d love to read someone’s thoughts about this book from that angle. Someday I’ll write about it from the poet/writer and religious angles — figured a twenty-page Keeper Shelf piece might be a bit much. 😉 I highly recommend L’Engle’s Crosswicks journals and her other nonfiction — she talks a lot about writing and faith, separately and together, in a way I really love.
Can we all make a date in March to talk about the Wrinkle in Time movie?!
Oh, I loved this book so very much. That and “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” were my favorite L’Engles, but really, I read and re-read all of them from junior high through graduate school.
… should probably pull them out again.
Loved this piece and thank you so much for the reminder about this book, which I loved as a kid and had almost forgotten about! I will now be sure to pass this along to my almost 11-year-old daughter when I think she’s ready. She and I read A Wrinkle in Time together recently and cannot WAIT for the movie!! There was a trailer for it when we went to see Star Wars this past weekend, and when the trailer ended she and I both very quietly said “oh yeah!” Also for some reason reading about the inscription that Ms. L’Engle wrote in your book made me very happy, and a little teary. How lovely.
Oh! I love seeing this pop up here… This was one of the books I re-read endlessly as a young teen — Adam Eddington was maybe my first literary crush; the late-80s high school dating pool left a lot to be desired, by comparison. 😉
I went on a L’Engle binge re-read earlier this fall and was delighted to discover that for the most part they really hold up — highly recommend falling into that rabbit hole.
I was the first person to check this book out of my small town library around age ten and checked it out at least once a year into college. Haven’t read it for about ten years. I love most L’Engle books but this is my all time favorite best ever.
Madeleine L’Engle is my comfort read, and I’ve always loved the Austin series. Troubling a Star is probably my favorite L’Engle, though A Swiftly Tilting Planet and A House Like a Lotus come in at a close second and third.
*bursts into tears just thinking about this book*
Sarah E., thank you for this beautiful review. I read and enjoyed at least one of Madeleine L’Engle’s books for adults several years ago, but I’ve always been slightly ashamed of the fact that I wasn’t madly in love with A Wrinkle in Time and so hadn’t read any of her other books for young people. I just finished A Ring of Endless Light for the first time, and it was truly beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing your enthusiasm for it.
I just stumbled onto this thread and so many wonderful memories are coming back! Starting with being introduced to A Wrinkle in Time by my elementary school librarian in the mid-1970s. It opened up a whole new world to me and I devoured every L’Engle novel I could get my hands on over the next several years, including A Swiftly Tilting Planet. I even wrote to Ms. L’Engle (a fangirl before they invented the word) and she wrote me back! Her genius was in writing about serious “adult” themes and concepts in ways that spoke to me as a young person just beginning to think about the universe and the universal. I can’t wait for the Wrinkle movie this spring. The one that came out several years ago was a disappointment, but this one looks good! I’m hopeful…