Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books
Next book on the shelf is The Arm of the Starfish
by Madeleine L’Engle.
I don’t care how old you are – this is a great book. It’s NOT just for adolescents – so in a way, I wish it would be integrated into fiction shelves for adults – becaues I bet some adults would miss it otherwise, and that is a damn shame. This book has it all. It’s basically an international spy thriller – but there’s also that L’Engle touch of having it also be about a young man’s coming of age. L’Engle knows that “coming of age” is almost never a graceful process – and a lot of times, something awful has to happen to jerk someone up out of childhood. Something wrenching.
This is a book starring Adam Eddington (the Adam from A Ring of Endless Light) – and from the very start, he makes a decision to trust Kali – the hottie he meets at Kennedy International Airport. This ends up being a fatal decision with truly devastating consequences. When we meet Adam in Ring of Endless Light he is still recovering from the experience, still trying to forgive himself, live with his own actions.
Arm of the Starfish has an intricate plot – it involves foreign countries, and embassies, and limousines cruising through the midnight streets of Lisbon, carrying international businessmen up to NO GOOD … but it also is about the confrontation between good and evil. Innocence and corruption. What happens to innocence in this world? What happens to innocence in the face of corruption? What is true innocence? Does innocence = naivete? Or is there a deeper kind of innocence – an innocence that accepts the corruption of the world but refuses to succumb? Adam is caught up in that battle from page 1 of this book. Kali is a babealicious international hottie with a rich father. But it’s her looks … and her flattery of Adam … that get him hooked. He mistakes beauty for goodness. A lot of people do. Most people do, I would say. Beauty seems to equal Good. Adam learns, eventually, how wrong he was in his assessment of Kali – but the true thing about Kali is not that she is EVIL, not so much. But she is corrupt. She represents a corrupt world. Corruption will NEVER trust innocence because corruption always thinks there needs to be an angle. Corruption will NEVER trust that anyone would behave altruistically. I know “corrupt” people. In the context of L’Engle’s book, corruption doesn’t just mean: Oh, he cheats on his taxes, and he ciphers money out of the company and buys private jets … Corruption is often used only in a financial context. But there’s a spiritual context as well. L’Engle is looking at both contexts in this book. Adam throws his trust with Kali – and he sees the O’Keefes and Canon Tallis through her eyes – She has told him not to trust them. So even though they come at him with openness, friendliness, and goddness – because he is seeing through Kali’s eyes, he wonders to himself, “What’s their angle? Are they really what they seem??”
Great book. I HIGHLY recommend you pick it up – I won’t even tell you more about it.
Let’s just say that Adam, a marine biology student, is traveling to a small island off the coast of Portugal – to work with Calvin O’Keefe for the summer (from A Wrinkle in Time, of course) – Calvin is now married to Meg – and he is a famous marine biologist – but because, of course, he’s in a L’Engle book – he’s working on some stuff that powerful forces out there want to control. His main interest is in starfish, and limb regeneration. Adam is going to live with the O’Keefe family (and their bazillion kids) for the summer and be Calvin’s assistant. Polly (and actually I was wrong – this book comes before Dragons in the Waters
– Polly is 14 in Dragons – and she’s only 12 years old here – still a little girl) attaches herself to Adam. She adores Adam. Adam – because of the distrust placed in his head by his encounter with Kali – doesn’t really succumb to the experience. He’s more spying on Calvin than learning from him.
Horrible-ness ensues. It’s a fantastic book.
Oh – and there’s another great character – his name is Joshua Archer. Friend of the O’Keefe family and friend of Canon Tallis. Adam is asleep in a hotel room in Portugal – he will be picked up by Calvin later in the day, apparently – so he is sleeping off his jet lag. When he opens his eyes – after hours of sleep – an unknown man is sitting in his hotel room with him. It turns out that his name is Joshua. He is there to take Adam to the O’Keefe family. But … well, there’s way more to Joshua than meets the eye. He is an amazing character. L’Engle tells a great story about the writing of this book. She had been on a trip to Portugal – and the place was so rich for her, so … vivid … that she knew she had to write a book that took place there. She was in a fever. The plot came to her. O’Keefe family … starfish … young man coming into the mix … and she said that she was writing about Adam sleeping, and suddenly Joshua showed up. She had not planned Joshua, she had not made Joshua up – she was writing the episode, and AS she wrote it – she was like: “Wait … where did HE come from? Who is he?” Joshua is the vortex of the book – he becomes the moral center of this entire book. But L’Engle hadn’t planned for him, made space for him … He just HAPPENED. She has said that Joshua Archer is one of the only times in her writing life when that ever happened to her. When her writing took her over. When she didn’t create Joshua, oh no – Joshua INSISTED on being part of the story. I love that.
Anyway – here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the book. Adam has woken up to find Joshua in his room. Joshua is in charge of taking Adam to the O’Keefe’s. A lot of crazy shit has already gone down – Adam a pawn – Adam has to choose whether or not to go on to the O’Keefe’s. Nobody knows about Kali and her powerful tycoon father … who have basically hired Adam to spy.
Excerpt from The Arm of the Starfish by Madeleine L’Engle.
They left the hotel without speaking to anybody, without giving in keys at the desk, without further communication with Arcangelo. Joshua turned to the right and they walked briskly for about ten minutes through the sweet summer darkness. They stopped before a narrow house faced in gleaming blue-and-white patterned tile. “Ever seen the Portugese tile before?” Joshua asked absently, not waiting for Adam to respond. “It’s quite famous.” He put his key in the door. “I have the top floor. Modest, but mine. I love this stairway. Pink marble. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Adam followed him up three flights.
At the top was a blue painted door, which Joshua also unlocked, saying, “Gone are those innocent days when I didn’t worry about keys. I got awfully tired of having my things gone through. So ‘Gelo very kindly helped me fashion a lock that is impossible to pick or duplicate.”
“Who is Arcangelo?” Adam demanded.
“My very good friend.” Joshua flicked a switch and in the ceiling a crystal chandelier sparkled into life.
Adam looked around. They were in a fair-sized room, a room that smelled of tobacco and books. It was, indeed, more of a library than a living room, as there were books not only on all four walls but piled on tables and window sills. Adam saw in a quick glance a record player and shelves of records, a sagging couch covered with an Indian print, an old red rep easy chair, a large desk that looked as though it had been discarded from an office. It was a good room, the kind of room Adam had dreamed of having some day. He looked at a Picasso print over one of the bookshelves, a sad-eyed harlequin on a white horse. The harlequin reminded him of someone, and suddenly he realized that it was Joshua himself.
Joshua pointed to an open door. “Bedroom and bath. Go in and make yourself at home. Your stuff’s all in there. I’ll make us some coffee. I don’t have a proper kitchen, just a hot plate, but it does.”
Adam nodded and went into the bedroom. It was a small, bare room, furnished only with a narrow brass bed, a chest of drawers, a straight chair. The walls were white and absolutely bare. The room was cold and austere in comparison to the cluttered warmth of the living room.
Adam washed his hands and face. He was not being sent back to America. He was going to Gaea. He could not help liking Joshua. But if he should see Kali again how would he feel? So far he had managed to tell Joshua nothing of any importance, and Joshua did not seem to be going to pursue his questioning.
— Play it cool, Adam, he seemed to hear a voice in his ear. Kali’s voice.
As long as nobody knew that it was Kali who had come to him at the Avenida Palace, that it was to Kali’s apartment he had gone, that he was expected to work for Typhon Cutter as a — what had Mr. Cutter said? Patriotic duty, wasn’t it? — then he had not yet committed himself to either side. And as long as he didn’t commit himself he couldn’t do anything too terribly wrong. Could he?
— I wish thing were black and white, he thought savagely. — I wish things were clear.
He remembered his math teacher back at school, a brilliant young Irishman, telling of his personal confusion when he first began to study higher mathematics and discovered that not all mathematical problems have one single and simple answer, that there is a choice of answers and a decision to be made by the mathematician even when dealing with something like an equation that ought to be definite and straightforward and to allow of no more than one interpretation. “And that’s the way life is,” the teacher had said. “Right and wrong, good and evil, aren’t always clear and simple for us; we have to interpret and decide; we have to commit ourselves, just as we do with this equation.”
As though reading his thoughts Joshua came and lounged in the doorway. “Don’t hold off too long, Adam. The time comes when you have to make a choice and you’re not going to be able to put it off much longer. Unless you’ve already made it?”
“I don’t know.” Adam rubbed his face with a clean rough towel.
“The trouble is,” Joshua said, “that I can’t guarantee you anything. If you decide to work with Dr. O’Keefe I can’t in any honesty tell you that anything is going to be easier for you than it has been for the past few days. I can tell you that nobody expected things to start breaking quite so soon, or we wouldn’t have let you come. You were never supposed to be in any kind of danger. It was pure coincidence that it was this summer that Old Doc decided you were worth sending to Dr. O’Keefe to be educated. Of course neither Canon Tallis nor Dr. O’Keefe believe in coincidence. I’m afraid that I do, and that we’re often impaled upon it. Then, on the other hand, I can’t help wondering if it was pure coincidence that made Canon Tallis finish his work in Boston at just the moment he did so that he and Poly were on the plane with you.”
“But if he was lecturing there,” Adam protested, “he’d know when he was going to be through.”
“Oh, did he tell you he was lecturing? Well, probably he was,” Joshua said somewhat vaguely. “The main thing is that if you’re worth educating then I suppose you ought to be up to facing whatever there is to face, oughtn’t you?”
“What is there to face?” Adam sat at the foot of Joshua’s bed.
Joshua did not answer his question. Instead: “Maybe it’ll help you if I tell you that it wasn’t easy for me, either. I don’t know about you, Adam, but I can’t look forward to pie in the sky. I’m a heretic and a heathen, and I let myself depend far too much on the human beings I love, because — well, just because. I guess the real point is that I care about having a decent world, and if you care about having a decent world you have to take sides. You have to decide who, for you, are the good guys, and who are the bad guys. So, like the fool that I am, I chose the difficult side, the unsafe side, the side that guarantees me not one thing besides danger and hard work.”
“Then why did you choose it?” Adam demanded.
Joshua continued to lean against the door. “Why? I’m not sure I did. It seemed to choose me, unlikely material though I be. And it’s the side that — that cares about people like Polyhymnia O’Keefe.” He wheeled and went back into the living room. In a moment the sound of music came clear and gay, Respighi’s The Birds, Adam thought, following him into the living room. Joshua grinned. “It’s the fall of the sparrow I care about, Adam. But who is the sparrow? We run into problems there, too. Now let’s have our coffee.”
He picked up a battered white enamel percolator from the hot plate on one of the bookcases. “Want to go to the Embassy when we’re through?”
Adam watched Joshua pour the dark and fragrant brew. “Why? Do we have to?”
Joshua handed him a cup, indicated sugar and milk. “No. Not if you don’t want to.”
“I’m not sure it would make things any clearer.” Adam put three heaping spoons of sugar in his coffee. “I don’t want to telephone anybody. I mean, why bother Old Doc? I think he feels about me kind of the way you feel about Poly, if you know what I mean, so it would just be upsetting to him to have me ask him to help make up my own mind. I mean, I have to do it msyelf, don’t I?”
“When you get right down to it, yes,” Joshua said.
“And the whole idea of the Embassy business is very confusing to me. I mean, you working there, and then both the O’Keefes and the Cutters seeming to know everybody, and everybody thinking the Embassy’s on their side and it can’t be on everybody’s side. I think I’d rather stay clear of any more confusion for a while.”
“Okay,” Joshua said. “I follow you. I thought it might help, but I see your point. What about your passport, by the way?”
Adam felt the by-now-familiar jolt in the pit of his stomach. “I suppose it’s still at the Avenida Palace. I’d forgotten all about it.”
Joshua reached in his breast pocket and handed the thin green book to Adam. “Here. But it’s something you’d better remember from now on. Think you could do any more sleeping?”
“You wouldn’t think I could, would you?” Adam asked, yawned, and laughed.
“Good. Let’s just have coffee and maybe listen to a little music and go to bed. I’ll take the sofa in here; I’m used to it. In the morning we’ll go to Gaea. I hope you won’t mind flying with me. Actually I’m a pretty fair pilot.”
Without knowing why Adam realized that he would feel perfectly safe with Joshua at the controls of plane, boat, or car. It was an instinct that the wariness acquired in the past three days could not shake, no matter how little at the moment he trusted his instincts.
The Books: “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” – (Mark Twain)
Next book on my adult fiction bookshelf for the Daily Book Excerpt: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer , by Mark Twain When I was a kid, I was obsessed with this book and wanted to slip into its pages. Not…