An Acceptable Time

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Summary: The same wonder and excitement as A WRINKLE IN TIME
Review: Polly O'Keefe, daughter of Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe from L'Engle's beloved A Wrinkle In Time, moves in with her maternal grandparents when the schools on remote Benne Seed Island prove inadequate for her abilities and interests. The two elderly but still active scientists supply the challenges Polly needs with their unique brand of home schooling, and their oldest grandchild savors the peace and undivided attention after a childhood spent as the oldest in a brood of seven. The calm of rural New England in autumn doesn't last, though. The Murry house sits on a spot that 3,000 years ago was considered sacred by those who lived in their valley then, and a retired Episcopal bishop who's their nearest neighbor has inadvertently opened a time gate to that era.

Zachary Grey, the self-absorbed young man who appears in several earlier L'Engle books (particularly the Austin series), shares Polly and Bishop Colubra's ability to pass through the gate and to see ancient folk who make the reverse trip. When the gate closes with that unlikely trio on its other side, Polly soon finds herself revered as a goddess - and at risk, made far more deadly by Zachary's cowardly actions, of being sacrificed by tribal leaders desperate to bring their drought-stricken people rain.

Of all the later L'Engle time novels, this one came closest to spinning the same magic spell for me that the first book did. It has the same wonder and excitement, but with a slightly harder edge that comes from having a slightly older and more experienced heroine. Or, perhaps, from being written for a different generation of young readers? Anyway, this not-so-young reader (I first read A Wrinkle In Time 40 years ago, at age 11) couldn't put An Acceptable Time down without finishing it. Superb, and - also like the first book - guaranteed to make you think!

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Summary: Very Good, But Some Might Think It Sacreligious
Review: This book is good, but as the title said, it might seem sacreligious to some. It might because it is heavily involved with druids who use their powers to travel through time gates. Polly O'Keefe is caught in the time gate so that she can easily go from her time to 3000 years ago and back again. There are some advantages to this, however: She is able to learn the ancient language of the area and communicate back then, and her grandparents get a dog that comes into their time and decides to stay as a protector and friend. On the downside, the ancient druids are seriously considering sacrificing Polly to their gods to end a drought! This all leads up to a scene with her, the local bishop, a friend called Zachary Gray, the dog, and a snake all trying to survive 3000 years before their present! This is a wonderful book, but the druids might bring some doubt to the minds of others. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a combination of realistic fiction, fantasy, and science fiction.

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Summary: Slow, boring, hard time finishing.
Review: I really, really did not enjoy this book. It was way too dry and boring. The description was tiresome and slow and the characters didn't add to any of the already boring set-up. I have not read any of the previous books (with absolutely NO intention) so i'm not very familiar with any of the characters.

Just the book as a whole was just so.....slow. It got so annoying. The back of the book says Polly gets stuck in past, as if that's the first thing to happen. It takes 3/4th's of the book for this to occur. The ending with her best friend made no sense. This was my first fantasy book and it's a wonder i didn't stop reading books right there. Don't waste your time on this sorry excuse for a decent fantasy novel.

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Summary: The Fire Behind The Story Sparkles
Review: An Acceptable Time is another book in the L'Engle cannon that explores truths of reality through fantasy. At times, in fact, it carries with the book a firy truth that seems more actual than reality. Polly, the red-headed heroine, is at her most interesting if not her most believable. She is, admittedly, probably too much of the traditional hero: skilled in the right areas, good, and afflicted with an interesting situation, but these character traits only improve the book. The "interesting situation" is Polly's being stuck in a link between two time circles, so that she can walk freely between Time at her grandparents' home (the Murry scientists!) and Time in the same place hundreds and hundreds of years before. The Native Americans who have always lived in the place and the Druids who have been there more recently make all of the characters unique and historical and at the same time, appropriately fantastic. The highlight of the drama, of course, is that the Time Gate is closing, and Polly's stuck on the wrong side, and even worse, she's taken for a goddess on the side she's on. This is bad only because the goddess is deemed perfect for a sacrifice... The true treasure of this story is not just its plot, which definitely kept me reading, rapt, from beginning to end. Nor was the treasure its characters, which include Canon Tallis, a unique religious friend of the Murry's, two Druids with equal power but opposing philosophies, and Zachary, the weak but interesting friend of Polly's. The true treasure of An Acceptable Time lies in the heavy examination of philosophical questions that underlies the plots. The examination of "leigh lines" to explain the somewhat random connections between people and places and things throughout the real world, the mingling of Christian and ancient religious thought, and the astounding ideas of time, however fantastic, all create a fire behind the story that draws the reader not only to read once, but once again.

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Summary: What is it with this family and time travel?
Review: I've read this book three times: twice when I was twelve (six years ago) and once in the past year. I must admit I enjoyed it much more back then, but it holds up decently. A time travel novel much like A Swiftly Tilting Planet, this one follows Polly O'Keefe as she flits between the present and 3000 years ago. As her uncle Charles Wallace discovered, it is up to her to figure out why she keeps entering a different time-- and how she is supposed to affect it.

To this day, at odd moments, I picture Louise slithering around purposefully, saving lives and scaring madmen. Ahh. Trust L'Engle for memorable characters.

Rating:
Summary: An acceptable time
Review: With the comtinuing series of a Wrinkle in time , the book An Acceptable time is the last book of the series. It is an amazing attribute to the series. This exciting science fiction book will please you all. The story's main character , Polly , is the type of person who is willing to risk her life for someone else: like when she orered her Indian friends to to take her back across the lake to save her friend. I liked the part when the two tribes made peace and the fighting stopped. If you liked Madeleine L' Engle's other books, you'll love An Acceptable Time.

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Summary: Another wonderful L'Engle book
Review: Once again, Madeleine L'Engle manages to take us through a fantastic, yet believable world. In this novel, Polly, Meg's daughter, is spending time with her grandparents in New England, when she is suddenly transported through time to the village of a 3000-year-old culture. Polly learns to live with these people and the difficulties they are experiencing, all the while trying to figure out how to get home to her own time.

This novel weaves interesting bits of ancient history into the story, and by doing so, makes the story feel real. While reading this book, I almost felt as if I were one of the characters, experiencing the story through their eyes. L'Engle makes Polly believable as an intelligent and sympathetic character.

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Summary: This Fifth is Vintage L'Engle
Review: The thing that first pricked my interest to read this book was a negative review about it written, I think, in a library journal. We all know that writers in library journals have axes to grind since a good review guarantees that most libraries will stock the book. Look at the [books] in libraries these days (and pity kids looking for something to read) and you'll see my point. The fact that some knucklehead didn't like this book wouldn't normally have swayed me, but like many detractors she went too far, and described it in order to slam it. Just her description of the story, which she found "far-fetched," convinced me of two things: she had no imagination, and this sounded like a great book. No, I'm not being fair to the reviewer, who perhaps simply had no taste for L'Engle's brand of fantasy, but man, did she make me want to read this book.

Like many L'Engle books this one starts slow. Not put-the-book down slow but unpretentious, unassuming, making no attempt to hide the narration. No plunging into the plot, nothing blowing up, not at all Hollywood. Almost too obvious to keep reading. Almost. Almost too simple and kid-level. Almost. But a couple pages in and I couldn't put it down. An Acceptable Time ranks as one of my all-time great reading experiences, hot on the heels of L'Engle's amazing, awe-inspiring Many Waters. The sad thing is that Many Waters features as the fourth book of the Time Quartet, but no one knows that An Acceptable Time is the fifth. Take hope oh forlorn reader--you who have finished Many Waters and long for more L'Engle--another reading experience of great power and wonder yet awaits you.

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Summary: Another fantastic work of time-travel fantasy
Review: Polly O'Keefe is the daughter of Meg Murry and Calvin O'Keefe from Madeline L'Engle's famous Time Quartet. In this book she follows the family tradition of traveling back very far in time. Except this time it's 3,000 years before our time, to a time where druids and Native Americans populated the United States and life was much different from it is now.

Polly O'Keefe is looking foreword for a nice quiet visit to her grandparents house and it starts out like that. She spends her time talking with her genius grandparents and reconnecting with her old friend Zachary. Then strange things begin to happen. It all starts when she starts seeing people dressed in strange clothes. It continues further when she is magically transported back 3,000 years in time. Polly is shocked and doesn't know what to do. When she travels back to the present she discovers from her friend, who also happens to be a bishop, who these people really are and what she's involved in, a tesseract. Polly knows she must not contact these people from the past ever again if she wishes to live, unfortunately they have other ideas and the next time she travels back in time she won't be so lucky.

I haven't read a book by Madeline L'Engle since I first read the Time Quartet in 5th and 6th grade but I'm glad I picked up this one. Polly's travels back and forth through time are absolutely fascinating. The "People of the Wind" (the culture of Native Americans she encounters) is a fascinating race, one with it's strengths and flaws that is very different from people today, but just the same in some ways. I found out part way through the book that this is in fact part of a series. Unfortunately for me it's also the last book in the series. Although I usually hate to get into series like this I would actually recommend this series to people who have and have not read any Madeline L'Engle books. It's one of those kinds of books that you can read with or without really knowing the characters in the first place. I would recommend this series to anyone that's looking for something beyond stereotypical fantasy fiction. I look foreword to reading more tales of Polly O'Keefe.

Rating:
Summary: More than acceptable! Find the time to read it!
Review: With "An Acceptable Time", the "Time Quartet" (beginning with the award winning "A Wrinkle in Time") became the "Time Quintet". And what a terrific addition to the series this is! This is certainly one of the more outstanding entries in the series! Unlike some of the earlier novels, it is not hampered by speculative theology or attempts at Biblical science fiction, but is very much plot driven. It features an exciting and generally plausible plot where the idea of time travel is central, carrying the suspense until the last pages. The heroine is Polly O'Keefe, daughter of Meg and Calvin. Polly is spending the summer with her grandparents, Meg's scientist parents. Using her familiar twelve-chapter formula, L'Engle describes Polly's adventures as she enters a time gate and goes back 3000 years together with her friend Zachary and her grandparents' friend Bishop Colubra.

But as Polly's grandparents remark: "Wandering about in time doesn't strike me as particularly safe." Back in time Polly finds both friends and enemies. Here she befriends Anaral, Karralys and Tav, part of the People of the Wind, who are in the grip of a tribal struggle with the People Across The Lake. As she crosses the threshhold of time on several occasions and moves through the circles of time, Polly herself becomes intimately involved in this struggle, because her blood is being sought as the necessary sacrifice in order to bring rain. Can Polly work peace between these two warring peoples? Can she bring rain and avoid sacrifice? And what role will the enigmatic Zachary play in the events that follow? These questions and more result in a spine-chingling tale of suspense and excitement.

In the process, L'Engle weaves a tale with important implications about a very real spiritual struggle: "The bright angels and the dark angels are fighting, and the earth is caught in the battle." Even the title itself is derived from Psalm 69:13. Perhaps more than in the other books, L'Engle affirms the validity of a Christian worldview and the importance of Jesus Christ: "I am not turning to the old gods. No, the God I have tried to serve all my life is still good enough for me. Christ didn't just appear as Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago don't forget. Christ is, will be, and certainly was ... just as much as now." Despite the assertion of the the abiding validity of Christianity, L'Engle's apparent acceptance of primitive Celtic religion is still somewhat troubling. The religion of the People of the Wind in serving "Earth Mother", "The One", "The Presence", "The Maker of the Universe" is not presented as erroneous paganism, but as a valid and simplistic shadowy form of the true religion. What particularly made me uncomfortable was the apparent legitimization of various terms and practices in this primitive religion, by the incorporation of occultic elements such as All Hallow's Eve (Samhain). As in some of the other books, there is a strange and persistent emphasis on the patterns and lines in nature, where "The stars will guide you. Trust them." Polly herself also has no clear perception about the afterlife. In my view, these elements detracted somewhat from the Christian element of the novel and a consistently Christian worldview.

Of the many important themes running through the novel, two especially struck me. Firstly, the notion of human sacrifice has obvious allusions to Christ's sacrifice. L'Engle makes this connection explicit, pointing out that the sacrificial death of Jesus was a voluntary act of love "I don't think that God demanded that Jesus shed blood unwillingly. With anguish, yes, but with love." The parallels with the human sacrifice demanded by the People Across the Lake are not fully worked out, but perhaps they are best understood as a contrast. They demand that "the sacrifice must be unblemished" in order to provide healing and rain, but ultimately the sacrifice that saves is not one that is demanded, but given freely in love. Polly's willingness to return to her captors to attempt to save Zachary typifies such selfless sacrifice. Unfortunately this important theme is not sufficiently worked out to be entirely successful. The bishop's words "It is never expedient that one man should die for the sake of the country" added to the confusion, because they seem to conflict with what John 11:50 says. Rather than focus on the gospel, L'Engle seems to focus more on the need for us to break down the barriers of division by showing selfless and sacrificial love to others.

Secondly, Zachary needs physical healing and hope because of his heart condition, and is terrified of dying. His physical condition becomes an important metaphor for his need for spiritual renewal from selfishness. "Can you say that only his physical heart was healed?" In working out this important image, L'Engle makes some important observations about the significance of the heart as the source of spiritual growth: "The rites themselves cannot give life. Indeed, they can be hollow and meaningless. The heart of the people is what gives them life or death."

These and other important spiritual themes, as well as a gripping plot, make this novel easily one of the best and most enjoyable reads in the series. There is a great deal of fantasy here, but what is cloaked in the garb of fantasy are eternal truths, and a great story to boot. It's a modern fairly tale that speaks to adults as much as it does to children, perhaps even more. So when you have some acceptable time, make sure you read it!