Wild Nights Part One // SO MANY FEELINGS #awrinklereread

Join me as I reread, react to, and recap childhood classic and soon-to-be blockbuster A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle!

If you missed it, check out my introduction to this blog series here. Also: spoilers ahead. Ye be warned.

Chapter One: Mrs. Whatsit

YOU GUYS. I remember nothing. Nothing! I have a lot of questions, most of which revolve around Charles Wallace. He's a weird, weird little five year old, and I half expected someone to wake up with him watching them like that girl from The Ring, but it's not that kind of book. I don't think. What is this kid's deal? He's a genius, walking around unsupervised, meeting strange (otherworldly?) old women and scolding them about stealing people's sheets? There's so much I need to know. Also Meg says he "just knows things," so make whatever you want of that.

Okay, let's get into the recap! It was a dark and stormy night. No, really. That's the first line. In a typical pre-teen fashion, Meg is feeling a lot of feelings...about school, about life, about her braces. Life is rough. She's got mousy brown hair and a wild imagination, so basically she's every YA protagonist ever.

She's scared to ride out the storm in her creepy attic bedroom, so she decides to go make some cocoa. When she gets downstairs, Charles Wallace is waiting for her with cocoa, somehow having - psychically? - predicted that this is what she needs. Mrs. Murray soon joins the fun, "a scientist and a beauty," which is pretty progressive, I think, for a book published in the 60s. She's got violet eyes. Every time I read a character description of someone with violet eyes I think about how I don't think I've ever met someone with violet eyes and I think about how nice it would be to have violet eyes. It's really distracting.

Anyway...Meg is struggling with feeling as though she will never be as smart or beautiful or normal as the various members of her family - again with the feelings - but her self-absorption is interrupted by a noise, and because apparently Mrs. Murray has never seen a horror movie, she goes out into the storm, alone, to see what's up. Meg, however, is totally on my wavelength and wails a great deal about the sheet-stealing tramp who may murder them. Seriously - she is described as having wailed twice in the span of three pages. So many feelings.

Mrs. Murray disappears in the direction of her lab and returns with a curious and curiously-dressed old woman whom Charles Wallace calls Mrs. Whatsit. He scolds Mrs. Whatsit for stealing some sheets from a local lady, but Mrs. Whatsit does. not. care.

There's a weird scene where Mrs. Whatsit enlists Mrs. Murray's help in removing her rain boots, which ends with Mrs. Whatsit saying my favorite line of the chapter: "Have you ever tried to get to your feet with a sprained dignity?" We've allllll been there, Mrs. Whatsit. Some of us were in a department store dressing room at the time...but that's a story for another time.

Mrs. Whatsit says a few things of little importance and one thing of huge importance before departing as abruptly as she arrived: there IS such thing as a tesseract. A-HA! I always suspected. But wait - what exactly is a tesseract? For the answer to that, and to (hopefully) find out whether little Charles is a serial killer in the making, we'll have to read chapter two. Until next time, keep an eye on my Twitter, where I'll be live-tweeting each chapter as I read it!