It’s not a surprise to me that this book has spectacularly failed as a cinematic or televisual adapation twice.
I used to love it as a kid and on re-reading I can’t love it so much, for reasons that have a lot to do with why I think it’s not very adaptable.
To adapt it well you have to junk some of the speculative elements that made such a strong impression on many of us many years ago. But if you do, there’s not that much left—to get the story up to conventional movie length, some kind of narrative and situational padding is required.
The initial setup is great: the strangeness of the witches, the complicated situation in the Murray home, the mystery of what’s happened to Mr. Murray. But the payoff feels simultaneously kind of bloated and really thin all at once.
The book depends a lot on convincing us of the (almost literally) heavenly wondrousness of Uriel, the first stop that Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace make after they set off to rescue Mr. Murray—and as I read it now, it’s a lot of telling rather than showing.
In general, the relatively abstract spiritual imagery of much of the book feels generic. Evil is a Black Cloud. Mrs. Whatsit is a former star. Humanity is shrouded in darkness. It’s a problem YA-aimed fantasy used to have much more than it does today: cosmic, manichean conflicts full of portent where evil and good are mostly detached from the lives of the youthful protagonists. Meg and Charles Wallace face concrete violence and hostility at school, but that kind of specific experience doesn’t scale into or relate to what they’re contending with once they’re off on their adventure. (Though this is the great thing about the second book, A Wind in the Door, when Meg’s principal gets involved in the story. That book feels much more vivid, grounded and imaginative.)
Camazotz is a boring Cold War cardboard setting. It’s mostly unpersuasive as the planet of ultimate evil. There just isn’t that much story.
I also think at this end of things, reading backwards, that I’m tired of cosmic beings with great powers and wisdom who send children to fight their wars while withholding information from them. That wasn’t as worn out a device when L’Engle published the book, but it’s become so in the interval in between then and now.
There are two things that really do hold up for me, though, which I still have a lot of affection for. The first is Meg Murray herself. She remains a great character: contradictory, complex, and very vividly real. Considering when this book came out, that is enough to earn its place in the YA pantheon. The other great aspect of the book is tied to Meg, and that’s Meg and Calvin’s gentle romance. I remember finding it so thrilling—that sense that these two were really made for one another, that Calvin so readily subordinated himself to Meg’s judgment and needs and showed so much gentle empathy. It’s a rare case of a YA romance fated to end in lifelong partnership that completely convinces me that this is a great thing, even now. Compare it to something as forced as Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley getting together, or any number of other examples where it just seems wrong that teenagers who adventure together are sentenced to form life-long romantic bonds. (All-time worst example: Lyra and Will in The Amber Spyglass.)
This is where I confess that Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander far surpassed L’Engle in my YA love—and still do surpass her. The Wrinkle in Time film was unwatchable to me. And, for my money, give me the Edwardian E. Nesbit every time. She remains my ultimate favorite. Tim, agreed on Lyra, who should end up with no grand love interest at all. IMHO.
I re-read this a while back, and was surprised at how little of it there was. It's a book that loomed very large in my memory, but turned out to be very slight. I also recall really liking the third in the series for the poem that frames it-- probably second only to Susan Cooper in the fantasy-poetry power rankings for YA me-- but I haven't gone back to re-read that one.