“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English.”

A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L’Engle
SquareFish (2007)
224 pages

Hm. This was one strange book. Maybe I’m just too jaded — my imagination refuses to go with the images and themes this book presents . . . is that the price of growing older?

I read this book very early in January 2008. The details are already vague right now, and I am tempted to just skip this and the next few books. Fortunately (or not so fortunately), I found this entry under the heading 3 Jan in my planner: “A Wind in the Door (ref to Malory?) by M L’Engle” in my messy scrawl, and the following notes: “perhaps too heavy-handed at points? YA lit, SF, likeable characters, slightly ‘out there’ concepts”. :P I guess I meant the mitochondria part. That gave me strange flashbacks to a book by Isaac Asimov I read once upon a time ago — I can’t even remember what it’s called now. I can’t recall anymore which parts struck me as heavy-handed.

The edition I read has a really lovely cover — in the same style as the one for A Wrinkle in Time. Looking at it actually made me recall more of the plot! Like the first book, A Wind in the Door is well written. Despite the whole plot being rather surreal, it’s a good adventure story, with a lot of interesting new characters. I love Meg even more. She’s such a brave girl. I’m surprised I still like Charles Wallace; I tend to dislike precocious children in fiction, especially the really, really, really smart ones, but he’s just so pleasant and trusting and well-meaning. He reminds me of my brother a bit.

I’m not sure if I care enough to read the rest of the quartet. anchan218 says she did like Many Waters, and another friend loves A Swiftly Tilting Planet, so I’ll probably have a go at them if I manage to find a copy at the library.