Rating: Summary: A VERY touching, deep book Review: This isn't L'Engle's books about Meg or Charles Wallace, but about a girl from a rather normal family called Vicky Austin. There's a number of relationships and deaths - everything is described well. I also like L'Engle's style of writing that comes out sometimes, like in the very last page, with no commas or periods. After I read this I was like, 'woah,' and I felt a little dizzy (perhaps it was because I read it in the car). I read it about three times and every time it touches me. It is a MUST read.
Rating: Summary: Helped me become who I am Review: I read this book the first time when I was in junior high school. I loved it then, and read it a number of times.I recently picked up a copy for my own daughter. I re-read the book, and this happened to be soon after the death of a very important family member. The book explores death and how it affects a family in a very positive way. I found it actually helped me deal with my own grief - not something I expected when I started to read it. As a child, I adored this book. As an adult, I have an even greater respect for the philosophies in it. I can see now, from the perspective of a few years, that this book really did help me develop my own spiritual beliefs and understandings. It's a very meaty story, but don't let that deter you. It's easy to read, enjoyable, with engaging characters. Madeleine L'Engle is one of the best!
Rating: Summary: Intriguing, Excellent, and Dolphini Review: A Ring of Enless Light is a really really good book!! It's about a girl named Vicky Austin (she's also in other books before this one by Madeline L'Engle) who comes to the island for the summer to spend time with her dying grandfather whom she really loves. She's in the middle of three boys, Zach - sophisticated but troubled; Leo - who really likes Vicky and just wants some romance; and Adam - who gives her a chance to work with dolphins!!!! This is a really good book about dolphins and a girl who is really easy to relate to!! Madeline L'Engle wrote it really well!! READ IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Rating: Summary: L'Engle at her finest! Review: Vicky Austin knows that this will be her last summer on Seven Bay Island with her beloved grandfather, because the scholarly retired clergyman is dying of a fast-moving form of leukemia. 15-year-old Vicky stands on the dividing line between childhood and adulthood. As a budding poet, she promises to retain childhood's heightened and sometimes painful sensitivities even after she crosses that border. That's a bond she shares with her grandfather, but not with the rest of her loving yet far more scientifically inclined family. Complicating this already trying time for Vicky are three young men. Leo, a lifelong friend of her family, wants more from her than the companionship and sympathy she is ready to offer him. Zachary, a severely troubled and wealthy youth who was her first real boyfriend, follows her to Seven Bay Island and alternately charms and frightens her with attentions that her family would prefer she didn't accept. And Adam, her older brother John's friend from MIT, assumes an important place in her life when he discovers that Vicky's extraordinary (and unexpected, and unexplained) ability to communicate with dolphins can transform his summer project at the Island's oceanographic research station. While Vicky's romantic and other feelings for this trio are central to the story, this is not a conventional tale of young love in which the girl's choice of suitor is the whole point. Vicky Austin is a complete person, and not about to treat romance at age 15 as the be-all and end-all of her life so far; nor as the defining influence on her future. Until now she has been something of a misfit, with her physician father and scientifically inclined older brother and younger sister tech-talking over her head. This summer, finally, "dreamy Vicky" who often slips away to write verses comes into her own. Which, as so often happens in real life, can only occur as she is tested by life. And by death, and by her responses to both. L'Engle at her finest! Although I'm of grandmotherly years now, "A Wrinkle in Time" was among my own girlhood's defining books. I must now go out and find the rest of the Austin books. This writer's works have something to offer any reader, not just youthful ones. --Nina M. Osier, author of "Love, Jimmy: A Maine Veteran's Longest Battle"
Rating: Summary: A Classic!!! Review: What a beatiful,well written book! This is about Vicky Austin who finds herself wondering why being a teenager is so hard. After a treasured friend dies,the attention of three boys is set on her. Zachary is a sophistacated,troubled boy who is mixed up about life. Leo is the deceased man's son who is an old friend aching for comfort and romance. Adam is a boy who treats Vicky like a little child when she is ready to become a adult, but he also offers her a chance to work with dolphins. Now I should mention that this book is very much a book for all of you dolphin lovers. Vicky feels she can talk to them when she meets a male dolphin called Basil. The dolphins are very good friends and even help her save her brother's life. Also, if you have a liking of poetry, this book is for you. This is a beautiful book!!
Rating: Summary: A Book you just can't put down Review: "A Ring of Endless Light" is a book everyone can relate to, especally teens. It gave me a new understanding of life and death. The characters all have so much dimention. Vikky Austion learns so much about life.
Rating: Summary: For the teen who wants a little more Review: As a fifteen year old girl, I often find myself slipping into the void of fluffy girly novels (The Princess Diaries and the likes), and while these are quite enjoyable, they lack substance. L'Engle writes with a passionate pen, and her prose draws you in. Though it is not the easy, quick page turning pace that is found in many of the "Young Adult Novels" today, it is neither dense nor boring. And yes, there are boys (three of them in fact), but they're not the main attraction in this novel, though they are very involved. This is the book for you if you either a)enjoy L'Engle's other novels or b)are looking for an escape from the day to day superficial, seemingly meaningless droll of teenage life.
Rating: Summary: Looking at this book in a new way... Review: There are those books that make you wiser. You obtain some intangible thing at the end. A Ring of Endless Light is such. Most of Madeleine L'Engle's novels seem to strike a chord inside. When I read I can see L'Engle trying desperately to show you something that means a lot to her. I enjoy authors who really work at teaching you just a bit of their knowledge. The character of Vicky Austin is very empowered. She feels the frustration, anger and confusion that all those who grow-up do. Unlike most teenage heroines she comes from a "good background". I would say her parents gave goals and limitations, and even while trying her wings she has duties to her family. L'Engle knows the healing power of good honest work. Vicky is almost-sixteen and is maturing fast. The summer holds many pains but only Vicky can provide the love and joy. Grandfather, whom you grow to love and admire, has leukemia and the Austins have gone to the stable/house on the beach for his last summer. Adam, a friend of Johns, works at the marina. He gains Vicky's respect and admiration . His project on dolphins takes an unexpected turn when he takes Vicky to meet Basil a wild bottle nosed dolphin. He becomes something sure in Vicky's spinning summer. Adam isn't the only one that wants Vicky's attention, in fact his affections seem more condescending then Leo or Zachary's. Leo is drawn to her in the strong binds of pain and fear. Vicky loves him first for his father and then later for himself, though the love is merely (if friendship is ever 'merely') that of a fellow life traveler thrown together. Leo wishes for more but waits. Zachary, dashing, dangerous and deathly maddens "Vicky-O" with his brushes with death and his obsession of the jaded. Vicky seems compelled to "bear another's cross" for him. Going through pain himself the two clearly demonstrates the ways people deal with the unknown. L'Engle writes in a passionate, attached way. She sees so much in what seems to be so little. At first it comes over as over dramatic but as Vicky's Grandfather says 'there are no consequences'. So shouldn't a trail of events be observed. Madeleine's view of death, horror and pain is of one very young. She brings out the smaller points till you feel they overcome the larger. Highlighting a need for a thing we must give to receive. I believe the feeling is a want for God, though she does not put that in her book. Her poems are haunting, she entwines them into her writing till it engulfs you. The way she brings events around till everything is connected is wonderful. A gripping, thought provoking look at life through the eyes of it's alive. A Ring of Endless Light gives hope and joy if you know how to interpret it.
Rating: Summary: Bak MSOA student review Review: Dolphins have taught us many new ways of communication, thinking, and learning about what's around us. But to Vicky Austin, dolphins have taught much more. The lesson they teach her is something that she will never forget. A lesson that takes most people a life time to discover; something that has baffled scientists for years. The lesson of life and death. Vicky has a gift. A rare ability, that comes with her beautiful sense of poetry. She can communicate with dolphins. And because of Madeleine L'Engle poetic and descriptive writing style, Vicky's blessing seems to come alive. This is one of the most powerful elements of the book because it has such an effect on the reader's view of the plot. Another contribution to the novel's effectiveness is the characterization. L'Engle does a fine job of creating diverse and interesting characters that almost anyone can identify with. Take for example the character Zachary. Zachary is your average "bad boy" stereotype. But because of Zachary's luxurious but troubled childhood, this characteristic that he seems to have is really a mask that only Vicky can see through. Zachary's character plays an interesting role in the book by teaching Vicky that some people are not always truly as they seem. Packed with detailed descriptive writing and interesting plot elements, A Ring of Endless Light is a must read. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who has a desire to read a heart-warming tale of self-discovery. Read it and experience for yourself the beauty of the sea.
Rating: Summary: My Favorite Book Review: Vicky Austin is at a confusing time in her life. She is a fifteen-year-old girl with three siblings. Her family is spending the summer on Seven Bay Island where her grandfather lives. They are there to spend his last days with him because he has leukemia. There, while she is going through her difficult years as a teenage girl, she becomes the object of affection for three extraordinarily different boys. There's Zack, an old friend who is dark and mysterious, yet troubled in his own way. Then there's Leo, a lonely young man who is at a difficult point in his life. Lastly, there is Adam, a friend of her older brother. He gives her the opportunity to help with his secret dolphin experiment, to which she becomes an important and indispensable asset. This becomes a life-changing experience that ties in to her unforgettable summer at Seven Bay Island. I loved this book by Madeline L'Engle. She is my favorite author and this is my favorite book. I liked this book because in it Vicky learns a lot about the patterns of life and in some cases death. She goes through some hard times and experiences that a lot of people who are questioning life and death can relate to.
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