MADELEINE L’ENGLE: hey remember that book about ecumenical Episcopalianism and quantum physics and resisting conformity you loved so much
READERS: yeah
MADELEINE L’ENGLE: how about a sequel featuring your favorite character’s sexy twin brothers going back in time and learning about boners and childbirth before God drowns everybody
READERS: uhhh
MADELEINE L’ENGLE: here you go
***
SANDY: remember how Mom put time travel in her computer
let’s mess with it
DENNYS: oh no it’s bible times now
no one can spell my name and everyone is interested in the sexual implications of twinship
NOAH: hi I’m Noah
don’t fuck anyone here or you won’t be able to touch unicorns
YALITH: women don’t wear shirts here
SANDY: I would like to touch the breasts of Yalith
DENNYS: I also would like to do this thing
YALITH: I literally cannot distinguish between the two of you as separate people
EBLIS: we’re sex angels
ADNAREL: we’re angels too but we don’t have sex with anyone
also when the women have sex with the sex angels their angel babies are so big that they die in childbirth
so
watch out
TIGLAH: I have sex with angels
I would like to have sex with twins
SANDY: go on
DENNYS: no
don’t
TIGLAH: I also have red hair
(because of whoreishness)
DENNYS: in our world, angels don’t have sex with any of us
YALITH: my breasts are like apricots
SANDY: your breasts are like apricots
EVERYONE: Yalith’s breasts are like apricots
NOAH: also there are teeny tiny wooly mammoths in this desert for some reason
and God will drown everyone for having sex with angels
SANDY: let’s leave before everyone drowns
DENNYS: we’ve grown to love them but it’s drowning time
AARIEL: you must return to your own time
DENNYS: what about Yalith
AARIEL: don’t worry
i’m taking her to heaven for sex
DENNYS: i thought you were the angels who didn’t have sex
AARIEL: it is time for you to go now
Tags: books, literature probably, madeleine l’engle, many waters
Yeah, this is pretty much how I remember it.
Currently reading; this is exactly correct in every way. Particularly the bits where Yalith’s breasts are like apricots and why are there tiny mammoths?
…eerily enough, this covered exactly what I remembered about this book: twins, angels, and apricot breasts.
ALSO, that people used to live to be SUPER OLD back then.
Old and short!
This book sure did give preteen me some weird pantsfeelings.
i don’t remember a single word of the contents but I definitely recall that cover
ditto. Ditto.
Yes! Especially the bit where one twin says “But something’s happened… we’re not just kids any more.” I was like WHAT THING? WHICH SPECIFIC MILESTONE ARE YOU REFERRING TO? I NEED MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THIS AND ALSO CAN I MAYBE TOUCH WHATEVER IT IS
“sexy twin brothers going back in time and learning about boners” is the kind of tagline that would get me to read ANYTHING.
Especially when coupled with that book cover of one twin ripping off his flanel to reveal a crop top underneath! TRY to stop me from reading that shit!
,,.This was one of my favorite books growing up. Which uh. I’m not sure I WANT to think about what that says about me.
But yeah. This is p. much accurate.
Tho I’d also add: WTF was up with that Manticore. I mean, it was obviously sentient, right? I dunno. Drowning a dude because he’s a screwed up scorpion-lion man seems harsh.
And those weird Sand and Den nicknames. Those always bothered me the most for some reason.
And given Oholibamah, it just occurred to me… does that mean we’re all part sex-angel in the L’Engle universe?
Only people descended from Japheth.
This was a really weird book for me to read because it made me realize how different the Christian and the Jewish versions of the story of Noah are, and thus how much Christianity was actually sprinkled in the book, and thus having a moment of disillusionment with L’Engle that was a lighter and softer version of people discovering Aslan was an allegory for Jesus.
Why did you have to bring up Aslan/Jesus? I still feel betrayed!
Aslan is a very nice tabby cat and has absolutely nothing to do with Jesus, ever, thankyouverymuchohmygodIhatedthatbit.
L’Engle isn’t the voice for orthodoxy that Lewis is, though. Wrinkle in Time has been challenged a lot by conservative Christians, including Jerry Falwell, for its eccentric cosmology and witchy characters and the scene where Jesus is named as more or less equivalent to Einstein and Buddha.
So, white people? That’s a troubling bit of racial theology to add in here.
I’m curious as to what kind of differences you noticed. Are there different details, or just very different interpretations?
(To be fair, though, L’Engle’s version of Noah has a lot of differences from the Biblical stories. You do not go to church and hear about how Noah had a daughter with breasts like apricots and was taken to heaven by angels who may or may not be having some sort of romantic/sexual relationship with her. That would be entertaining, but …. no.)
I always love talking about differences between Judaism and Christianity. 😀 Obviously, L’Engle just made up a bunch of stuff to flesh out the story, and I know Yalith and her plotline is a total fictional construct, as are the names and descriptions of Noah’s sons’ wives (though Noah’s wife gets a name in rabbinic literature — Naamah).
The biggest difference is the depiction of seraphim and nephilim — the nephilim are interpreted (at least in my mainstream upbringing, there may be other trains of thought that interpret them differently) as giants, not as fallen angels: there’s nothing divine about them. I remember once I brought home a book of bible stories from the library that referred to the nephilim as fallen angels and my dad refused to read it to me because that mythology was Christian, not Jewish. Seraphim don’t show up at all in the story of Noah, though they are referenced in other, mystic Jewish writings. Several of the seraphim — I’m thinking Ariel and Achsah in particular, I can’t remember all of their names — have names that come from Hebrew, while I don’t think any of the nephilim do: this is also, I believe, an invention on L’Engle’s part. So for me, this was kind of hard to wrap my head around, because many of the words are Hebrew and familiar, but the characters they’re describing are derived from Christian mythology and strange.
The other non-fictional differences are focus and the heroes: in rabbinic literature, Shem is depicted as the youngest brother, not Japheth, and is the best of the brothers whose name comes first because of his merit. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Torah traces a direct descent from Shem to Abraham. Japheth is traditionally seen as the ancestor of Caucasian people, so maybe that’s why L’Engle picked him as her focus (though this train of thought barrels into some historical bullshit racist theories, which to her very great credit L’Engle does not reproduce at all). Noah also comes off slightly better in rabbinical literature (though the blotchiest stain on Noah’s reputation is what happened in the vineyard, post-Flood): I remember being really surprised that a “righteous man” would come off as such a dick. (I had yet to read The Red Tent at that point, either.)
It’s sometimes hard for me to distinguish between what I was taught in school as being true, which was a particular interpretation of Judaism with a lot of adherence to rabbinic literature/commentaries, and what the actual literal word of the Torah is, which was all that was translated and brought over to Christianity.
(Sidenote: is your username a reference to the Vorkosigan saga, and the most excellent Ekaterin?)
L’Engle’s interpretation of seraphim and nephilim isn’t particularly canonical for Christianity. Or at least not for the evangelical Protestantism that I grew up with. (Did you Catholic or orthodox folks get cool nephilim backstories? Go ahead and increase my theo-mythology envy.) There’s pretty much that once sentence in Genesis that mentions these tall people who had sex with human women, and that’s it.
I remember hearing some conflicting stories about whether Shem or Japheth was the youngest… I grew up thinking it was Japheth but some source somewhere very clearly portrayed Shem as the youngest, which I was confused by. Very cool to know it’s a Christian vs. Jewish thing!
Thanks Oholibamah! (sorry that was just sitting right there)
…finally piecing together why I’ve always felt so funny/stoked about apricots.
Literally all I remember about reading this book as a kid is being traumatized by the childbirth scene. Oh, and being super creeped out by the sex angels.
Right? Like, the sex angels are clearly very old, and they’re busy seducing teen/pre-teen girls??? Slow your roll, angel-dudes.
Well, that and the rest is why El left them to die.
Except for the good, golden sex angels, who ascend with Yalith to have a sexy heaven party.
WAIT IS THAT WHY THEY TOOK HER?
What’s . . . fun, is that the Sex Angels in the Kushiel’s Dart series are supposed to be the same angels, but different story.
Wait whut.
Didn’t the sex angel flip the baby over to look at it’s spine to make sure it didn’t have wings and then say “I AM PLEASED”?
HE DID.
Also one of them was a mosquito? Was it that one, or was that one the komodo dragon?
Ugiel was the one with the baby, though I forget what animal he was. Rofocale was the mosquito, and also Tiglah’s sexfriend! SO CREEPY, the both of them!
Also realizing where the start of my attraction to “bad” guys started (looking at you Eblis et al)
THE PURPLE HAIRRRRR, EVERY SINGLE NEPHILIM WAS BASICALLY LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS
omg that’s right they all dressed/were shaped like(?) David Bowie-esque rock stars?? I need to re-read this.
That’s what Madeleine L’Engle does! Except she writes it as a warning for guys you SHOULD NOT be involved with, but writes them so well that everyone forgets. The Vicky books were terrible for that (Zachary Grey, Adam whatever).
ADAM EDDINGTON IS BEAUTIFUL AND PERFECT. How very dare you impugn his name.
EVERY TIME I read that book I shipped Yalith and Eblis. DOOO EEEEET. HE’S HOT WITH WINGS, GURL.
Love the covers. One twin stands by while the other sniffs his armpits. That would definitely have got my hormones raging back in the day. Now I would just say, dude, take a shower, don’t just slather yourself in deodorant.
Excellent username.
Without a title, I would have guessed that this book was titled The Twink Twins.
THE APRICOTS, I’d forgotten but this brought it all back, dear God.
(I loved this book too, mainly because blending fantastical Biblical narratives & emerging sensuality was my JAM, which explains why I devoured The Red Tent which i found at my *Grandma’s house*, while disapproving of it’s theology the whole time. *sigh* adolescence.)
MADELEINE L’ENGLE: let’s justify Noah’s other daughters drowning in the flood by having them act vaguely unpleasant the one time we ever meet them
READERS: hey that’s not very nice of you
MADELEINE L’ENGLE: it’s ok though because all of Noah’s daughters-in-law are pregnant now
on a boat during 40 days of 24-hour storms is the best time to go through your first trimester
I remember the breasts like apricots! And the sex angels.
This book was my faaaaaavorite, and yeah.
Also I’m pretty sure I tried reading Clan of the Cave Bear (bad idea) at around the same age that I read this (bad idea), and man, those were two wildly different reading experiences abt prehistory with more sexy (or rapey) stuff than 12-yr-old me was prepared for.
sex with definitely non-human (not even vaguely humanoid!) ‘fallen’ angel types–> hot, and pretty ok because your patriarch is gonna leave behind all the women to drown no matter who they’re boning
possible 3somes with giant blond twins –> definitely hot, definitely the reason this book was my favorite, also ok bc you will be spirited away into heaven in order to avoid the whole drowning situation
whatever was going down in Clan of the Cave Bears –> nooooooooope no nonono, I had to quit reading bc I was Not Okay.
I will never get over at 13 holding one of the later books by Jean M. Auel in line to check out at the library and having a very nice 70 year old women tell me how much she loved the books.
I know so many people who were misled into reading those books as preteens by grown women who should have known better.
Speaking of Clan of the Cave Bears, I still remember my grandmother telling me as a bedtime story her (heavily edited) children’s version of that book. It took at least an hour, maybe two and was truly epic. When I learned of its true origin years later it made me love and appreciate my funny, weird grandmother even more because who on earth thinking, “My granddaughter wants a bedtime story, what shall I tell? Oh, Clan of the Cave Bear of course!”
OKAY THIS IS SOMETHING I NEVER GET ABOUT TWIN THREESOME FANTASIES, WHY WOULD THE TWINS BE COOL WITH THREESOMES JUST BECAUSE SOME THIRD PARTY THINKS THEY’RE BOTH ATTRACTIVE?? THEY ARE STILL BROTHERS!!
look, my mind was already blown by all the weird sexy stuff happening in the book, it was just a natural progression!! I was just trying to imagine what else could possibly happen.
I actually agree that sandy and dennys probs wouldn’t be okay with it, but also they were definitely like “well we’re both into her, but we’re not going to fight each other over this girl, and also we’re definitely not going to stop ~courting her or whatever, guess we’ll just have to live with the fact that if we’re stuck here forever we’re both going to sleep with her!”
so… I mean they don’t have to be into each other to be in a situation where she gets to sleep with both of them. Which I guess would lead to, not potential threesomes, but definitely bigamy?? And 12-yr-old me would have been super okay with that as well.
Okay so I have definitely maybe been overthinking this slightly, but! Yalith had zero understanding of the concept of “twins” and basically considered Sandy and Dennys to be the same person, split into two bodies, yes? And the twins actually don’t venture too far from that themselves; they often consider themselves to be a divided soul rather than two completely separate individuals. So maybe not full-on three ways, but definitely a relationship with three people seems pretty reasonable.
(This is sort of the setup in the Outlander books, when they have the enclave in North Carolina–one of the girls can’t choose between twins so she effectively marries them both, and they have a healthy relationship as a triad.)
Yeah! I was trying to think of other fictional examples and completely forgot about the Outlander trio! Lizzie’s subterfuge to get married to them both was so great, and I definitely blame Many Waters for giving me a weakness for variations of this storyline.
I do think Sandy and Dennys start out thinking of themselves as more individual, and they just give up trying to explain it to Yalith and the others, to the point where their conception of themselves starts to change? And if they DID start out by fighting over her, or wanting her to choose just one of them, then her inability to distinguish between them would have been a major stumbling block. But as it is…
(wrt fictional twins that /would/ totally be into threesomes, my mind went straight to Ouran High, sooooo *shrug*)
Ahaha yes! (I know there’ve already been a few posts here on Outlander, but I’d love to read a deep dive into all the wackadoo subplots in the sequels and spinoffs. I just finished book 7 and I can’t stop reading them even though they keep getting weirder but overall less interesting…)
Have you read about the ATL twins??
“Yesterday I was in my hotel room in Atlanta iChatting about my son’s teething with my wife when my roommate, Jonathan Mehring, came in and said, “We just met these ganster ass twins who sleep in the same bed and only fuck the same girl.” I said goodbye to my wife, put on my shoes, and told Jonathan, “Take me to them.”
It’s uh, NSFW
WOW
Ah, right, I remember them. “Let’s get this straight right now: ain’t no fag shit, ain’t no gay, incestuous shit about our gig. Understand that we grew up together… we’re the same person in two bodies” Just like it’s not gay if I time travel and do it with myself.
Um, speaking of reading Clan at too young an age (10 for me), have you seen this? It’s hilarious, and should speak to you! http://jezebel.com/5021551/the-clan-of-the-cave-b…
Shit, I just remembered that at age 12 I was in a teenage reading group at my local library that ASSIGNED Clan of the Cave Bear….There’s no way those books were written to be anything but porn (and the first one is definitely rape fantasy porn). Like you, at that age I was also reading books that I wasn’t prepared for, and have you noticed that sex in books for adults, if described, is rarely happy or consensual?
Yeah, my 9th grade English class was assigned Clan of the Cave Bear. I have no idea why this seemed like a good idea or how our teacher got it into the curriculum. We also watched the movie in class (partially edited for content, except the bits she missed cutting out and had to hurry and fast forward past).
Yikes. I read Valley of the Horses at age 8 (sequel to Clan of the Cave Bear; still lots of cavepeople sex but WAYYY more consensual), and it was… formative, that’s for sure. I’m SO glad it happened to be that one I picked up and not COTCB, that would have been terrible. It was lying around at a cabin we visited for a week in the summer, and I remember at one point my mom saw me reading it and said, “Are you sure you want to be reading that? Doesn’t it have sex scenes?”
“Oh, does it? I guess I skipped those parts,” I replied airily, lying like a god damn little rug.
“Oh,” said my mom, “okay then,” and she walked away.
My most vivid memories of this book involve the terrible canning pun & the hideous sunburn. A few years ago I was a parade marshal of Chicagos Gay Pride Parade (the year floats were sabotaged) & I forgot sunblock/a hat. My entire face/scalp turned into a scab. I kept thinking about this book.
Oh god the sunburn. And oh god, Sandy (or Dennys) being thrown into a garbage pit and then rubbing off his skin in the sand to get clean.
Yup yup yup. Horrific yet familiar.
OMG yes! The gore stayed with me much more than the sexy bits. I forgot about the apricots, but DEAR GOD the garbagy skin being rubbed off with sand brings it all back. *shudder*
Yup. No memory of the apricot breasts, but oh god the garbage skin.
This cover was like 75% of my sexual orientation when I was twelve.
Right there with you. Doesn’t help that the twins look pretty much exactly like my first crush, whom I had a thing for from the second day of kindergarten until my family moved away halfway through 3rd grade. All those sad-preteen-pantsfeelings came welling right back up with this book cover.
I read dozens of her books, but this one only once. It’s been bugging me for some time now that I frequently remember stuff I saw/read as a child way better than stuff I’ve read recently, so I thank you for this, as an example of a book that I read back then that I obviously remember _absolutely_ nothing from.
I just remember being disappointed that the angels weren’t weird looking like Proginoskes in A Wind in the Door. 🙁
Stupid nephilim.
L’Engle wrote a picture book using the Giotto frescos, and she has this great comment about how considering that the first thing angels do when encountering humans is shout “DO NOT BE AFRAID!!” it does kind of raise some questions about how they looked. (Possibly not like slightly unfocused Renaissance dudes.)
Yes yes yes it’s the Toast post I’ve been waiting my whole life for.
Also wow…when you recap it this way, it sure explains a lot about my youthful understanding of religion, sex AND Biblical history.
I got Noah for my Torah portion, about 3-4 years after reading this book, and I kept being disappointed to find all the things that weren’t there.
YES YES YES
but where is my post about A Swiftly Tilting Planet that’s obviously the best one i need to talk about it for hours with other people
Thirded yes please ANY TIME NOW
YES PLEASE LET’S START NOW
I NEED THE NEXT EDITION OF “THREE GROWN ADULTS DISCUSS” ASAP. I WILL BE THE THIRD GROWN ADULT, I CAN TALK ABOUT MADOC/MADDOX/MAD DOG ALL. DAY. LONG.
And WELSH CULTURE AND NEW ENGLAND AND PATAGONIA
I spent so long trying to find Vespugia on my globe.
v glad this wasn’t just me
I dated a guy with the surname Maddox in my mid-20s. He was a good person but I’m pretty sure I stuck the relationship out several months past its expiration date because of the hope of marrying into that surname. Solely because of aSTP.
I want to be best friends with Gaudior. CAN THAT HAPPEN?
MMKAY I distinctly remember the sequence when there was 3 CLONES OF THE HORRIBLE TEACHER (did Charles Wallace turn into a horrible teacher? It was a Mr. C? 11 yr old memory is fuzzy) and I decided I could NOT read L’Engle books before bed. Because it was terrifying. Even if I loved it.
I both loved that book and hated it. My main issue was the “MEG USED TO BE UGLY BUT NOW SHE’S HOT. AND PREGGO. WITH REALLY AWESOME HAIR!!!!” part.
Me too! I missed awkward Meg, who I identified with so much better. Also I secretly wondered if being pregnant would make me hot. So glad I didn’t find out, tho.
I loved that bit, because it gave me hope! Perhaps I, too, could learn to wear contacts and someday have nice brown hair instead of terrible brown hair!
I know it’s cheesy, but I prefer the Princess Diaries version (the book) where her grandmother and a team of stylists do the best they can with what she has (which turns out pretty well, but is a lot of upkeep)
yesssssssssssssssssssss x1000
Accurate.
When I was in elementary school, my dad read these books aloud to us, and I don’t think he’d read Many Waters before that. He kept being surprised to discover that he was in the middle of describing breasts.
#dads
The level of Dadness in this post is Adorable.
(dads are forever being surprised by breasts, especially in media they fondly recall from childhood. I remember my Dad harrumphing and fast-forwarding through whole *sections* of Caddyshack, insisting he Did Not Remember This Part.)
I’m picturing him just midsentence like “… like apric– aw, dang it, not again!”
Lots of “Yalith came into the tent and…oh ho ho, huh, uh, skipping ahead a little…”
Also the tiny mammoths were great and also very intelligent and I want one
Yessss. I had forgotten about the mammoths!
Still want a tiny mammoth tho.
everything about this i love. i immediately clicked the madelin l’engle tag and was shocked there isn’t 5+ articles in it, multiple on each book?!
How do breasts like apricots work? I’m envisioning very small, but also very round? Maybe apricots come in bigger sizes than I am aware of. My primary experience is with ping pong ball-sized ones.
I did not understand when I read it that there was such a thing as a fresh apricot. I thought they just fell off the trees and into bulk bins at the supermarket already shriveled and wrinkly.
They’re also very small people, these antediluvians, despite all their cross-breeding with giant sex angels, so scale and proportion is hard to peg. And despite being 200 years old or whatever, Yalith is barely an adult in their terms. So, there’s a bunch more creepy things to think about.
There’s something so alluring about ping-pong sized breasts, no?
I am glad I am not the only one baffled by that description. My first thoughts were orange and a bit fuzzy, neither of which are characteristics I normally associate with breasts.
Also I read all of these books on a family vacation in the Adirondacks the summer after high school (having read A Wrinkle in Time earlier in childhood) and all I really remember are the mitochondria. Clearly time to read them again.
I read this book when I was about 10 and boy howdy was I ever not ready to learn about boners etc. But I was also kind of into it? And re-read the dirty parts that I didn’t understand? I don’t want to examine that too closely. In conclusion, 10/10, gave me the experience of re-reading the book without wasting any time.
I read this years after reading the first three with Meg and Charles Wallace and I loved it. Something about the normal siblings getting their own adventure really appealed to me (because they always came off as kind of jerks in the Meg books? I don’t know). But yeah it was crazy. I tried to ask my mom about the bible stuff (this was the extent of my religious research, no follow up or verification then or since) and she basically agreed with L’Engle: crazy times were crazy.
I love the bit when Sandy and Dennys are trying to remember how many women are named in the Biblical story of Noah, and when they can’t come up with any, they go “oh no, Yalith and all these other women are going to die!” instead of “it looks like the person who wrote that section of the Bible chose to ignore women.”
Yalith’s breasts are like apricots
time to update my Tinder bio
So I read basically every other L’Engle book except this one because I was like “The fuck is this about? Meh.”
I WAS APPARENTLY MISTAKEN.
Real Madeleine L’Engle talk though, did anyone ever read “And Both Were Young”? I read my copy so many times the cover and then the first few pages started to fall off and then I had to go buy another one to read to death. It was just so, so, so, sweet, and Flip being very lonely and finding friends gave me so much hope at a time when I was also very very lonely. Plus, SWISS BOARDING SCHOOL! and cute Swiss boys living in mountain chalets!
I LOVED that book!
OH GOOD. I never knew anyone else who’d read it and loved it like I did. Somehow I knew Toasties would have read it. 😀
Poor Flip. She was so awkward. So, so, so awkward.
I still love that book. Especially because the moral of the story is all about getting along with people and finding your niche instead of being a sullen jerk who whines about not being understood.
I was so happy when Flip finally started making real friends. It gave me hope for my own awkward youth.
I was all over Camilla. I thought it was SO. Romantic. And then I grew up and moved to New York and it was far less romantic in reality – there were no cute boys dying to play Holst’s the Planets for me.
(As an aside, Frank from Camilla later shows up in a very minor role in A House Like a Lotus.)
YES! I must have checked that out from the library 50 times. It was some lovely escapism for shy, bullied early-teens hysterietta.
A Wrinkle in Time was one of those books that I read because I felt like I had to, but didn’t really like because it seemed to jump around among a bunch of different science fiction tropes at random; first they talk about tesseracts and that was cool, but then there’s talk about some nebulous evil force out there, and then they’re on a planet being controlled by a giant glowing brain, which is a familiar trope, but then Meg is getting a naked rubdown by some eyeless furry lady and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I didn’t look at the sequels.
I am so glad I am not the only one who first saw this cover and thought “Yes this is the porn I need in my life” before I really knew what porn was.
Also, the twins are Devon Sawa, right? We remember him? From Little Giants? And Now & Then? The guy Casper the Friendly Ghost turns into for Christina Ricci? This guy? Clearly the twins?
THAT’S who that is! Thank you, I was squinting at the cover art and trying to figure it out. “Like… two baby Leonardo DiCaprios, maybe?”
Devon Sawa as Casper the Friendly Ghost for like 5 seconds while he dances with Christina Ricci at the party was my adolescent crush. So much so that when I finally rented it on video I rewound and rewound to watch him be dreamy for that whole five seconds.
You and I are kin in this.
There is a type of boy that is very, very pretty that I feel a lot of adolescent girls go through on their way to figuring out what kind of guy they are actually going to be attracted to as full-blown sexual creatures. Devon Sawa was mine.
Then I went on directly to Aragorn, I think.
I thought I was the only one!
MASSIVE crush on him in that
Yeah, that was one of the main sleepover activities for my group of friends until Now and Then came out. We did it after talking about which boy we had a crush on that week (there were only 20 boys in our grade and our crushes never changed, but it had to be done, like approving meeting minutes), but before Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board.
you have just connected the two parts of my sexual awakening. mind fuckin BLOWN
They both definitely have Shawn Hunter hair though.
HOW DID YOU KNOWWWWW
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcher_%28angel%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kushiel%27s_Dart
Both are based off of the Grigori (Also, you remember those BIG stone things in Noah, that burst into pillars of light defending the arc? Same thing.)
This is amazing.
ALSO apparently the Grigori are mentioned in Supernatural.
Semi-related question: how do you pronounce “Dennys.” Is it like Dennis? Denise? I read this book twenty years ago and I still don’t know the answer.
I definitely pronounced it like the restaurant (Denny’s) in my head when I read these books as a kid. Now that I am older and (questionably) wiser, I suspect it is just an obnoxious spelling of Dennis.
Same. Ever so disappointing.
It took me AGES to get the Hebrew-plural pun when someone (Japheth, I think) identifies the twins as Dennysim after he introduces himself. And those goyish boys get it and correct him, and it sailed right by me.
Yeah I think it’s “Dennis,” but a ~*~qUirKy~*~ spelling for reasons that shouldn’t apply to scientist parents.
I loved, and love, this book unapologetically, even while acknowledging how deeply weird it is. But it’s the weirdness I love. I was raised with a Christian theology that was simple, limited, and crystal clear, and distinctly not encouraged from probing beneath that in unauthorized ways. Madeleine L’Engle gave me a lot of vocabulary for articulating a theology that allowed for ambiguity, for non-neat answers, for sexuality beyond “marry minister, have babies,” for coexistence with science instead of covering my ears and saying, “La la, can’t hear you!”
The first time I read Many Waters as a teenager, I was uncomfortable with the bit where Sandy and Dennys were upset about how the Flood narrative in the Bible ignored women’s stories because it was written by men in a man-centric context. But that little discomfort, that irritant, stuck with me and eventually prodded me toward an inclusive, egalitarian faith where I know my story is as precious as any man’s.
Madeleine, I owe you big.
Amen, amen.
And I cannot verb today. Please read “I was distinctly not encouraged to probe,” etc. I was fighting off a migraine when I wrote that.
Once you’re done this book and would like more gender fuck, disturbing sexy tiems and/or black forest cake in your Noah novelizations; can I recommend Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley and Boating for Beginners by Jeannette Winterson?
Yet another book I loved when I was around eleven and now side-eye so hard.
Well this is 100% accurate and also the EXACT POST I needed for my birthday!!
This book is part of the reason my cat is named Maddy.
The book that forever changed the way I pronounce “onions.”
“ON-YONS! ON-YONS!”
No one else I know in the real life has read that book, so no one else remembers that griffin and Tiglah’s gross long toenails kicking at it while it screams about “on-yons!”
Mmm, that cover. This book gave pre-teen me all sorts of feelings.
This book was 90% of my sexual awakening when I was 12 or so.
me too. that and devon sawa.
Actual conversation in my house just last week:
Husband: I watched that Russell Crowe Noah movie. It was weird.
Me: (not Listening) Oh really?
H: There were these angel things
Me: (Perking up) Were they sexy fallen angels? Or were they the good but not as sexy regular angels?
H: I don’ t know – they were like rock angels. And Emma Watson was on the ark, but she wasn’t Noah’s daughter…
Me: Because she was the daughter of one of the sex angels? Was she married to one of Noah’s sons?
H: (confused) later she was – I don’t know whose daughter she was…
Me: And were there tiny mammoths?
H: I DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT.
So just if you’re wondering, the Russell Crowe Noah movie is not a film adaptation of Many Waters. Maybe it should have been I bet all the apricot breasts would fit right in on HBO.
THIS. Yes. Yes.
Um, was anyone obsessed with the Vicky books? I am literally planning to go to Antarctica next year due to an obsession that started with Troubling a Star. Though in hindsight, the Vicky-Adam love connection was super creepy because, ew, he was old.
I read A Ring of Endless Light over and over and over as a teen. Adam, yummmm. Zachary Gray Eyes, dangeryummm.
The dolphins! The seizures! Grandfather! (Nose bleeds!) Hippie guitar family times! The resilient pewter dolphin skin! The mind melding!
And oh the later feelings of semi-betrayal when my (Jewish) adult self reread and recognized all the Christian overtones.
Also, Wikipedia just told me THIS, WHICH I CAN NEVER NOW UN-READ:
“In a television movie adaptation of this novel, which aired on Disney Channel in 2003, Vicky was played by actress Mischa Barton.”
Also I found this: http://jezebel.com/5052461/a-ring-of-endless-ligh…
holy shit I have developed a recent preoccupation with going to Antarctica, which must be put off until grad school ends, and I have some kind of disposable income, but everything about my desire to go to Antarctica has to do with Troubling a Star. I am pretty sure that it will be exactly like Troubling a Star when I go to Antarctica as an adult.
Thou canst not stir a flower without the troubling of a star or something like that
The book confused me so much at age 8-ish when I tried to read it. But our edition did have an awesome ALL THE L’ENGLE BOOKS family tree in it.
Chronos: ordinary, wristwatch, alarm-clock time.
Kairos: real time, pure numbers without measurement.
Those who cross and connect chronos and kairos.
This rates among my favorite L’Engles. Tiny mammoths and mythical things! Breasts! Sexy maybe MMF! Sex angels! Bible fanfic! Everything tween me needed in the world.
Between Many Waters and Song of Songs, what else does a Christian Teen really need to get the job done?
Song of Songs: one of the hotter things I have ever read, even as a Real Grown Up Lady (my own vineyard I did not guard indeed…)
I was obsessed with this book as a kid and yet I remember absolutely NOTHING about it, all of this is very mysterious to me.
I LOVE THIS BOOK MORE THAN POSSIBLY ALL OTHER BOOKS omg seeing it in the Toast sidebar made me almost choke on my tongue. Topless cavemen girls! Sexy angels! Unicornsssss! (I haven’t even read the article yet, I had to come keymash this out first.)
Age 9-12, I read this over and over and over again but didn’t understand sex at all (No siblings, lived in Oklahoma), so consciously I was like “Cool, apricot breasts,moving on.” But subconsciously, I guess I was like a teenage boy with a pile full of Penthouses found in the woods.
Oh my god, I knew I had read this book but this brought it all back. I totally remember red-haired Tiglah and apricot breasts and wow even the the mammals. Wowwwwwww
(…I should re-read.)
See, I thought the sex angels were hot. And was totally on Team Sex Angels Who Actually Have Sex, And Also Have Cool Colored Wings; I didn’t, like, *resent* Team Metallic Boxtease, but still.
TEAM METALLIC BOXTEASE! Thank you for giving them their true name!
God I hope so. That wasn’t how I read the book, but it’s much better than my reading, which was “Yalith gets taken away without ever getting even a little bit laid by anyone,” and therefore kinda tragic.
I’m here to help. 🙂
Once you’re done this book and would like more gender fuck, disturbing sexy tiems and/or black forest cake in your Noah novelizations; can I recommend Not Wanted on the Voyage by Timothy Findley and Boating for Beginners by Jeannette Winterson?
My personal childhood Madeleine L’Engle disappointment was this:
“Hey, remember that wild book about quantum physics, religion, non-conformity, zooming through alternate dimensions, with unicorns and aliens and evil Big Brother worlds and stuff?”
“Hell yeah! Is there more like that?”
“Check this out! A girl goes on a camping trip across the country with her family. They go through Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. She meets this hot guy who is kinda grumpy. Later, she meets another hot guy who is kinda boring. In the end she chooses the grumpy hot guy. That’s it.”
I loved this book. I thought apricot breasts were great. I read it over and over again. It was also much less scary than A WRINKLE IN TIME, A WIND AT THE DOOR or A SWIFTLY TILTING PLANET. I was always very worried about Charles Wallace being eaten by Satan. MANY WATERS is the only L’Engle book I’ve read more than once.