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| Edition: | Square Fish (Mass Market Paperback) |
| Author: | Madeleine L'Engle |
| Published: | May 2007 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| ISBN 10: | 0312367554 |
| New: | $3.24 (45) |
| Used: | $0.01 (74) |
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A Wrinkle in Time is a science fantasy novel by Madeleine L'Engle, first published in 1962.The book won a Newbery Medal, Sequoyah Book Award, and Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. It is the first in L'Engle's series of books about the Murry and O'Keefe families.
Plot summary
Meg Murry is a teenage girl, regarded by her friends and teachers as a bad-tempered adolescent. Her family recognizes her problem as a lack of emotional maturity but also regards her as being capable of great things. The family includes her pretty scientist mother, her mysteriously missing scientist father, her five year-old brother Charles Wallace Murry —a nascent super-genius— and ten-year-old twins, athletic brothers Sandy and Dennys.
The book begins with the line, "It was a dark and stormy night," an allusion to the opening words in Edward George Bulwer-Lytton's 1830 novel Paul Clifford. During that stormy night the Murrys are visited by an eccentric old woman named Mrs Whatsit, who has previously made the acquaintance of Charles Wallace. After drying her feet and having a snack with Charles, Meg and their mother, Mrs Whatsit tells an already perplexed Dr. Murry that "there is such a thing as a tesseract."
The following afternoon, Meg and Charles encounter Meg's schoolmate Calvin O'Keefe, a high school junior who, although he is a "big man on campus", considers himself a misfit as well. He eagerly joins Meg and Charles Wallace for further encounters with Mrs Whatsit and her equally eccentric friends Mrs Who and Mrs Which.
Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which turn out to be transcendental beings who transport Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin through the galaxy by means of tesseract, a fifth dimensional concept which is explained as being similar to folding the fabric of space and time. The "Mrs W's" reveal to the children that the galaxy is under attack from a dark cloud, which is the visible manifestation of evil. While working on a secret government project to achieve faster-than-light travel by tesseract, Meg's father was accidentally trapped on Camazotz, an alien planet inside the "Black Thing". The children also discover that Earth is partially covered by the darkness, although great religious figures, philosophers, and artists are fighting against it. Mrs Whatsit is revealed to be a former star who exploded in an act of self-sacrifice to fight the darkness.
The children travel to Camazotz and rescue Meg's father, who has been imprisoned by an evil disembodied brain with powerful telepathic abilities, which the inhabitants of Camazotz call "IT". However, Charles Wallace is mentally dominated by IT, and is left behind when the others flee, tessering through the Black Thing to a planet inhabited by sightless but wise beasts. When she arrives, Meg is paralyzed, and coldly resentful. Meg recovers through the helpful care of Aunt Beast, and is tessered to Camazotz with Mrs Which, as she is the only one who can rescue Charles Wallace from IT. Confronting IT, Meg realizes that she can free her brother by loving him intensely, because love is an emotion that the evil IT cannot stand. Charles Wallace is freed, and the three Murrys and Calvin return home.
