I have always had a love for Madeleine L'Engle's works ever since I was small. The other day I was browsing through the Fantastic Fiction website and I decided to look at a few of my favorite authors (including a few romance writers because those are my guilty pleasure). I don't remember who exactly I was looking at, but Madeleine L'Engle popped into my mind and so I typed her name in the browser. As I looked at the her list of works I was astonished at the number in which I had yet to read. These two books were among them.
Book #1 was The Small Rain. I believe it was her first book too and for being a first book it was quite stunning and unusual. The flow of this book made it so when i was already half way through it I couldn't believe that I had read that much. The main characters were so very full of life and vibrant. I immediately wanted to befriend them. Aunt Manya and her many pet names for everyone was perhaps my favorite besides the main character, Katherine. Everytime she entered a scene I could almost smell the musky perfume mixed with cigarette smoke. I could imagine her flashy dresses and headdresses. Her personality filled the pages entirely.
Katherine, who is the main character and a girl after my own heart, was a surprising character. She's introduced to us as a ten year old girl who is wise beyond her years. She's already seen her mother in a terrible accident and had her father practically abandon her to her aunt, who isn't really an aunt but just a really good friend of the family. When I was first introduced to her it was hard to see where her character would go and how much she'd actually be able to grow as a character because she already seemed to be a very mature young girl even at just the age of ten. She's at home with adults and she seems to get along and chat amiably with almost anyone.
It's when her mother re-enters the picture after being away because of injuries, both mental and physical, that things begin to turn for Katherine and not always in good ways. Her maturity means she takes on the responsibility of her mother as her mother still suffers from the losses of her accident. And soon after losing her mother she goes through a series of events that, while strengthening her character, also show an immaturity that I didn't see at first. Being put in a girls boarding school shows her weakness when it comes to her peers. She's not likable to girls her age. They think her odd. Her interactions with men are spontaneous and sometimes not always appropriate, but growing up as she did, she doesn't always understand that. Her focus is always on her music and unfortunately that makes it hard for her to develop real and lasting relationships. Her piano playing is always what gets in the way with everyone but the one person who strove to help her become the best she could.
The end of this first book we see her on her way to see Justin, her beloved music teacher from the boarding school she hated so much. Her relationship with him was always a little complicated. I think she has feeling for him, but because of her love of music I'm not sure if they're real feeling or if they're tied up in her piano playing. Being the one person who pushes her to be her best, Justin is the one character that I'm not really sure of. His feeling for her are a little confusing to me as well. You can tell that he has feeling for her, just like she has feeling for him, and there is an attraction between the two of them, but I can't wait to see what the next book brings as Katherine goes to study with him.
Book #2 is The Severed Wasp. We start by revisiting an old friendship with Katherine in this book. It takes place many years in the future and at first you find out only the bare minimum about what happens to her in the time between. This did make me mad at first. You find out that she does marry Justin, her old music teacher whom she had fallen in love with at school. YOu find out that his leaving the school was because he had begun to have feelings for her (although it was rather obvious even if it wasn't specifically stated). You find out that she has two children a boy and a girl. You find out that she was put in a concentration camp during the second world war. This is also really the first time you get a sense of the time period. You find out that she was young during the war and that her and Justin had just gotten married before them being arrested. Now, I find all of these things out, but I didn't want to just know them. I wanted to experience them the way I experienced her time in the boarding school and her times with her mother and her times on stage. I didn't want to find out about these things by reading her reminiscences to someone else. I wanted to go through as she went through them throughout a book.
I have to say that after how much I loved the first book, this book was a bit of a let down. There were new characters that were introduced who were very colorful, but again, this book just didn't do it for me. I am sad to say that I was not able to finish it all. But I'm really not too mad about not finishing it. There are very few books that I don't finish and that's mostly because I hate quitting on a book. However, I'm trying this thing where I read books that I like in an effort to put as much content on this as possible.
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