Melody Murray's Books

I never realized as a kid that L'Engle just can't write believable dialogue. She really had a tin ear. And it really doesn't matter. It's interesting to me how, as I work my way through the L'Engle on my shelves, I keep complaining about it and following the complaints with "but it really doesn't matter". It's true, though. The bones of the writing are so good that the flesh ... wait, it's L'Engle, so: the soul of the writing is so good that the flesh is inconsequential. Her examination of matters spiritual and philosophical is so absorbing and important that the wooden dialogue and clumsy plotting becomes invisible.This character study of Katherine Forrester gets under my skin a little because of L'Engle's treatment of homosexuality, in a very disturbing scene in a bar in the Village as well as some decidedly odd scenes from boarding school. It foreshadows the weirdness in A House Like A Lotus, I think.