The Books: A Ring of Endless Light (Madeleine L’Engle)

Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books

Next book on the shelf is A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L’Engle.

This is my favorite of all of her books. Can you have 2 favorites? Because A Wrinkle in Time is also a favorite … but this book? It’s taken on an almost Harriet the Spy level of importance in my own life personally. I couldn’t BELIEVE it when I first read it – I still remember my first impressions. I wanted to step into the book. I loved every damn page. It seemed to describe life – yet not everyday life. It seemed to describe everyday life from the eyes of someone who was intensely aware of everything. So there is an intensity on every page. The meals they eat, the books they read, the sunsets they see … all of it takes on this deep rich intensity which I SO responded to. The book is about a family gathering around their beloved Grandfather who is dying – they spend one last summer with him, basically knowing it will be their last. And so because of that awareness of death approaching – everything else takes on this unbelievably potency. It comes across in the writing.

This is the next book in the Austin series (although – chronologically – it should come AFTER one of my favorite books in the Murry series – The Arm of the Starfish – haven’t gotten to that one yet – I love how these series overlap). The Austin family, after spending a year in New York, have moved to be with their Grandfather who lives on Seven Bay Island – where he was a minister for many years. The Austin family would go and visit him every summer and stay for a month. But now they are going to stay indefinitely. They are going to stay until he dies.

So it’s already intense. Vicky is as introspective and moody as ever – and she’s trying to deal with her grief of losing her grandfather. And yet … he’s still alive! So how do you grieve beforehand? And how do you celebrate someone’s life in the little time you have left? These are some of the challenges Vicky faces. She’s not always graceful as she is learning these lessons – that’s what I love about Vicky Austin and about Madeleine L’Engle’s writing. She knows that learning life lessons is HARD and that sometimes, in order to learn the lesson, you have to give up something. And giving up something is not always easy – even if it makes you unhappy. You have to give up, say, your penchant for feeling sorry for yourself. Or you have to give up blaming your parents for everything. You have to “give up childhood things” – and that is not always a graceful process. Looking back, we might wish it were – but Madeleine L’Engle writes about these moments from the ground-level. If you’re Vicky’s age when you read the book (she’s 15) – then you will TOTALLY relate to her.

Vicky has quite a summer. Zachary (member Zachary?) tracks her down – much to the family’s chagrin. Oh – him again?? They go out on dates. Zachary tries to impress her. Takes her flying. Takes her out to expensive meals. Somehow she still likes him – even though he is CLEARLY a mess. In a very key moment, though, he abandons her. This is not a fun-loving summer for Vicky – and – when push comes to shove, Zachary can’t handle what she’s going through. He takes off. This will not be forgiven. She might not hold a grudge forever – but Zachary revealed his character once and for all in that moment.

Vicky’s older brother John is now at MIT – and he has an internship that summer on Seven Bay Island where there is an internationally known Marine Biology research center. He immediately befriends a guy named Adam (who also is in Arm of the Starfish – Adam knows the O’Keefes from the Murry series – okay, I’ll stop now) – who works at the station. Adam works with dolphins. And this, for me, is where the book stops being a typical (although wonderfully written) young adult novel – and starts being a really GOOD book period, about BIG subjects. Vicky comes to visit the Marine Biology station one day and Adam observes her interactions with some of the dolphins. Her intuitive understanding of their behavior – and the rapport she immediately gets with them – peaks his interest. He asks her if she wouldn’t mind being his assistant on his own special independent project he’s doing. He is an older guy – he’s 20. But he treats her with respect. As an equal. Vicky is head over heels. But she also just falls in love with the work she does with the dolphins. The work involves ESP.

That’s enough to set up the excerpt. Adam takes Vicky out into the ocean – they swim out (Vicky’s a great swimmer) and hang out with some wild dolphins. They all have names. Vicky gets to know them. A couple days a week, she swims out and hangs out with them. Adam observes her. They then swim back to shore, sit on the sand, and have long conversations about their observations about the dolphins.

Here is one of those days.

Excerpt from A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4 by Madeleine L’Engle.

“Hey, I’ll race you along the beach to the big rock and then you can change into your bathing suit and we’ll go out and communicate with Basil and Co. And — each other.”

“I have to get my suit out of the bike basket.” I scrambled to mym feet.

“I’ll get it for you.”

I padded along the beach, and then speeded up as Adam came along with my bathing suit.

We swam out and I floated and thought: Njord.

Njord.

He came, but not alone.

Norberta was with him, and as they approached she flapped her flukes at me, splashing me with great deliberation, as though to scold me for summoning Njord without her, telling me in no uncertain terms that Njord was not old enough to go off on his own.

I burst into laughter.

“What’s so funny about being splashed?” Adam asked.

I told him.

He laughed, too. “You’re absolutely right. That’s just what she was telling you.”

Njord flicked toward me and nudged me. I caught hold of his dorsal fin and away we went, like a tachyon, toward the horizon.

Speed.

Much faster than Zachary with his foot down on the gas pedal.

I was gloriously excited and frightened at the same time. A baby dolphin may be a lot smaller than a grown one, but it’s a lot bigger than I am, and Njord was stronger than he realized. He would never hurt me on purpose, but he might overestimate my strength.

Norberta wouldn’t let him.

If I trusted him to come when I called, I had to trust him all the way.

He swung around so suddenly that I almost let go, but not quite, and we went racing back to Norberta. Njord dove and dumped me, and I came up to the surface, sputtering, and both Njord and Norberta began to splash me, making loud laughing noises.

“Calm them down,” Adam said. “Tell them you want to ask them some serious questions.”

What should I ask? What would be serious to both the dolphins and to me – and to Adam?

Dearest Norberta and Njord. Do you live in the now, or do you project into the future, the way I do, far too often?

I felt a gentle puzzlement coming from Njord.

Maybe he’s too young to understand about the future. When Rob was a baby, everything was now for him. Now embraced both yesterday and tomorrow.

Norberta?

Again I felt puzzlement, not puzzlement about her understanding, but my own. Norberta wasn’t sure I’d be able to understand.

Try me.

I rolled over onto my back and floated and Norberta moved her great body toward me until we were touching, and I was pressed against the beautiful resiliency of dolphin skin. And a whole series of pictures came flashing across the back of my eyes, in the dream part of my head.

The ocean.

Rain.

A rainbow, glittering with rain.

Snow, falling in great white blossoms to disappear as it touched the sea.

And then the snow turned to stars, stars in the daytime, drenched in sunlight, becoming sunlight.

and the sunlight was the swirling movement of a galaxy

and the ocean caught the light and was part of the galaxy

and the stars of the galaxies lifted butterfly wings and flew together, dancing

And then Norberta, with Njord echoing her, began making strange sounds, singing sounds, like the alleluia sounds Basil had made, and they did something to my understanding of time, so that I saw that it was quite different from the one-way road which was all I knew.

Norberta was right. There was much she understood that was beyond anything I’d ever dreamed of.

She and Njord slapped the water with their flukes in farewell and vanished over the horizon.

I rolled over and began to tread water.

“What did you ask them?” Adam swam to me.

“About time. Adam, their time and ours is completely different.”

“How?”

“Norberta tried to tell me, but it was in a language I didn’t know, and it translated itself into images, not words.”

Treading water, he held out his hands to me. “Hold. And try to tell me what she told you.”

I held his hands tightly. Kept moving my legs slowly. Closed my eyes. Imaged again what Norberta had imaged me.

I heard Adam sigh and opened my eyes.

“Nonlinear time,” he said. “She was trying to tell you about nonlinear time.”

“What’s that?” I was still holding on to the beauty of Norberta’s images, so it didn’t quite hit me that Adam and I had communicated in the same way that I communicated with the dolphins.

“Time is like a river for most of us, flowing in only one direction. Get John to explain it to you. Physics isn’t my strong point. But there’s a possibility that time is less like a river than a tree, a tree with large branches from which small branches grow, and where they touch each other it might be possible to get from one branch of time to another.” He let go my hands. “I’m not explaining it well.”

“Do you mean maybe for dolphins time is less – less restricted and limited than it is for us?”

“Isn’t that what Norberta was trying to tell you?”

“Yes. Adam, did you see the butterflies?”

He nodded. “Like the one we saw at the cemetery.”

“You saw it, too?”

“And so did your grandfather.”

“And Grandfather would kow what Njojrd and Norberta were singing.”

“Dolphins don’t sing.” Adam’s voice was flatly categorical. “Only humpbacked whales sing.”

“Call it what you like,” I said. “To me it was singing.”

He was staring out to the horizon, where they had vanished. “Granted I’ve never heard dolphins sound like that before. Hey, are you sure you don’t want to go in for marine biology?”

“It’s a thought,” I said, “but somehow I have a hunch that if I were scientific about them I might not be able to talk with them.”

“You may be right. Maybe that’s why I resisted you, because I’m too scientific.”

“No,” I replied quickly. “I was wrong. I went at you without thinking what I was doing.”

“And today?”

My body felt as though the water had instantly dropped several degrees. “Did you really see what Norberta showed me?”

“I think so. You’re cold, sweetie, and your lips are blue. Let’s swim in and have some tea and then we can check it out.”

“Okay.” He’d called me “sweetie” again. It was as beautiful as the dolphins singing.

“Then I have to spend the rest of the afternoon working on my report. Forgive my repetition, but you’ve thrown my project for a loop.”

“Do you mind?”

“Minding doesn’t have anything to do with it. I simply did not expect John Austin’s kid sister would be thunder and lightning and electricity.”

Cautiously, I asked, “Not — not like whoever it was last summer?”

“Not like. Very definitely not like. Okay. I’ll come along back over to the stable in plenty of time for that moussie or mucksie –”

“Moussaka.”

“Yah. I’ll be there for it.” Imitating the dolphins, he dove down and swam underwater, emerging yards away.

The song of Norberta and Njord echoed in my ears.

And it was joy.

And joy, Grandfather would remind me, joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.

But I couldn’t tell Adam that. Not yet.