Review by Booklist Review
This collection brings together L'Engle's early short stories, which dig into the frustrations of childhood, the anger of young women who feel confined or limited in their ability to live independently in the world, and the strange politics and sometimes cruel insularity of small towns. In "The Foreigners," a well-off family new to the town of Mt. George make a poor impression on the locals; in "The Fact of the Matter," a grandmother considers turning to the devil rather than sharing a religion with her 'innocent' daughter-in-law. Independent young women feature strongly, from a girl struggling to escape her stifling and emotionally abusive mother to a young woman saying goodbye to her childhood home to become a teacher. Her stories touch on breakups with friends and lovers, on the struggle to find actress work, or on religious faith. This collection spans many genres, and holds stunning tales that are realistic, autobiographical, science fictional, or fantastical. L'Engle's stories are softly tragic with sparkles of hope and a sincere faith, told in a simple and earnest voice. [HIGH DEMAND BACKSTORY: These newly discovered stories, written in the 1940s and 50s, will spark the interest of the approximately one bazillion fans of L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.]
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
While L'Engle (1918--2007) is best known for her 1963 Newbery Award winner A Wrinkle in Time, her work stretched across genres, as seen with this illuminating collection of mostly previously unpublished material. Organized chronologically by her granddaughter and literary executor Charlotte Jones Voiklis, the book traces L'Engle's progression as a writer of short stories for adults. Beginning with autobiographical works, some of them college assignments featuring young female narrators struggling with murky emotions, the collection moves toward more plotted narratives, closing with several ambitious tales that occasionally lead into supernatural or speculative territory, such as "The Fact of the Matter," "Poor Little Saturday," and "A Sign for a Sparrow," about a cryptologist in the 22nd century, which is rooted in the intersection of science and religion that distinguished much of L'Engle's work. Unswerving throughout is L'Engle's mastery of mood-setting language and her depiction of the complexity of human relationships. Voiklis's illuminating introduction places many of the stories in the context of L'Engle's life and points out those that were reworked and integrated into her later novels. The book will obviously attract L'Engle aficionados, but the thoughtful selection and organization recommends the volume to anyone curious about a writer's evolution. Agent: Lisa Vance/Aaron M. Priest Literary Agency. (Apr.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
From the author of A Wrinkle in Time, 18 gemlike stories ranging from the small heartbreaks of childhood to the discovery of life on a new planet In these stories, some previously published and others appearing for the first time in this collection, L'Engle explores family dynamics, loneliness, and the pains of growing up. In "Summer Camp," children show a stunning capacity for cruelty, as when one writes an imploring letter to a lost friend only to witness that friend mocking the letter in front of their bunkmates; in "Madame, Or..." a brother finds his sister at a finishing school with a sordid underbelly and is unable to convince her to leave. L'Engle employs rhythm and repetition to great effect in multiple stories--the same gray cat seems to appear in "Gilberte Must Play Bach" and "Madame, Or..."--and sometimes even in the language of a single sentence: "The piano stood in the lamplight, lamplight shining through burnt shades, red candles in the silver candlesticks...red wax drippings on the base of the candlesticks." Occasionally, emotional undertones flow over, as in the protagonist's somewhat saccharine goodbye to her Southern home in "White in the Moon the Long Road Lies." Overall, though, the stories seem to peer at strong emotions from the corner of the eye, and humor dances in and out of the tales. "A Foreign Agent" sees a mother and daughter in battle over the daughter's glasses, which have come to represent the bridge between childhood and adulthood when the mother's literary agent begins to pursue the daughter. On another planet, a higher life form makes a joke via code: The visitors will be "quartered--housed, that is, of course, not drawn and quartered." While there is levity, many of these stories end with characters undecided, straddling a nostalgic past and an unsettled future. Although written largely throughout the 1940s and '50s, L'Engle's lucid explorations of relationships make her writing equally accessible today. A luminous collection that mines the mundane as cannily as the fantastic and extraterrestrial. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
