Rating: 
Summary: One of my all time favorites books!
Review: I love this book! I have read it four times, and I get drawn in every time. This my favorite Madeleine L'Engle book and I wish that she would write something more on Polly other than Acceptable Time. Such a good book!!!
Rating:
Summary: one of L'Engles Best
Review: I personally thought this was a really well written book. I am hoping to find sequels to it!!!!
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Book
Review: I read this book for the first time when I was 11 years old, and I enjoyed it then but it was not my favorite of L'Engle's novels. When I read it again in high school, I identified with Poly more than any other character I'd ever read. Ten years later I am still finding new reasons to appreciate it. This story is moving and grows with the reader, so it is appropriate for just about anyone.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best L'engle books ever
Review: I too have read this book countless times. I am currently reading it aloud to my fiancee, who is also fascinated by it. The characters of Polly, Max, Renny, and Zachary are incredible ones. I especially love L'engle's ability to cross and connect the various worlds she has created in her novels. Truly an inspiring, and at the same time depressing and uplifting book. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
Rating:
Summary: This isn't just for youth!!
Review: I was so desperate for a good book while on vacation. Wanted a Madeleine L'Engle book and this was the only one available. (OK. I'll admit that I'm along way from 'youth' status!) Phew. I was blown away. Just proved to me once again that a good story with profoundly good character development is ageless and timeless. Polly sure runs the gamut of emotions but gets lots of help from her friends.....we should all be so lucky!! Is there a message and direction for youth and adults in this book---you bet there is!
Rating: 
Summary: Controversial yet Nice
Review: Madeleine L'Engle brings us yet another thought provoking book. She reunites us with characters from her beloved time trilogy. Meg and Calvin's oldest daughter, Polly, is on an educational trip to Greece and Cyprus. Once she is there, she starts to relive her recent troubling past. One year before she arrives in Greece, Polly meets Maxa, an intelligent and wise elderly woman. Polly idolizes Maxa, because Maxa helps Polly to overcome her troubles. One day, a drunken Maxa makes the mistake of hurting Polly, and she discovers the startling truth that Maxa is only human. Will Polly learn to forgive Maxa? The novel has many controversial issues in it, and should not be in the young adult section. But the book still shows the meaning of trust, love and honesty.
Rating:
Summary: another gem!!
Review: madeleine l'engle has always been a source of light to me and does not let me down in this book. she deals with delicate matters such as homosexuality, loss of virginity, and family relations so well i was astounded. the plot never got confusing despite it's many flashbacks. i would recommend this for any girl who is searching for answers but not for the weak of heart because this is an extremely emotional book. read on!!!
Rating: 
Summary: 17-year-old Polly learns about herself, life, and love.
Review: Polly O'Keefe (daughter of Calvin and Meg Murray O'Keefe from L'Engle's Time trilogy) reveals the inner thoughts and experiences of her 17-year-old life. Polly has confusing feelings about many of her relationships, such as with the older and brillant Maximiliana Horne, and with male friends Renny and Zachary. The plot complicates when Polly goes to Athens and Cyprus and her consciousness bounces between the present and the past. In the midst of her experiences, Polly learns that she can still love the people who disappoint or hurt her. Althought the story is somewhat slow at times, and is occasionally idealistic, there is a wonderful depth and development of the main character as well as a poignant theme about life and love.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a "novel for teens"!
Review: Reading as a Christian, I was extremely disappointed in this L'Engle book. I have enjoyed many of her works, which explore time, emotions, and ideas very bravely and realistically. I have enjoyed her examination of the possibility of other worlds and cultures and ways of life. But she has tactlessly explored too much this time. Her open-mindedness regarding religions and ideas displayed in other books is revealed as empty-mindedness and fence-sitting in this one. The heroine, Polly O'Keefe, doesn't seem to have many ideas of her own. She floats through the book absorbing ideas without determining whether they are good or bad. This empty-mindedness results in an explicit sexual encounter about which the reader is given entirely more detail than is necessary or decent. The heroine is never even sorry that it happened. The author fell off of the fence -- and on the wrong side! The back of the book says that it is a "novel for teens about people who think," but I definitely would not put this into the hands of a teen. I am sorry to have discovered this story. My confidence in the author is severely shaken.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book that calls it down the middle
Review: Spoiler warning. The person who wrote the review "Good old fashioned homophobia" has clearly not read "A House Like a Lotus" thoroughly. To call Maxa a "tormented alcoholic lesbian" and a "straw figure" is to severely underrate her character. She is, throughout the book, an excellent mentor to Meg and Calvin's oldest daughter, Polly. She is, however, suffering from a terminal and painful disease, which has nothing to do with her homosexuality. It is the fear and pain from her illness that causes her to momentarily forget herself and make a drunken advance on Polly in the key scene of this book. As somebody else noted, the homosexuality of the character is incidental to this event. Had Maxa been a man, the scene would have had as much, if not more power. As such, it is interesting to note that Madeleine, for good measure, has Polly suffer through a leud *heterosexual* proposition soon after this event, producing, essentially a sexless two-part rape of poor Polly, which is the key to her pain in this story. When Polly reaches out to the sympathetic Rennie after all of this, it is tellingly the actions of the man that is topmost on her mind and not Maxa's advances. And I figure that Calvin's anger when his son Xan and his niece Kate bring home some very hateful homophobic talk should leave no doubt as to the tolerance of Calvin and Meg's position on homosexuality. Maxa could hardly be accused of being in the closet, and yet Calvin and Meg are quite willing to trust Maxa with their daughter. And as for Meg forsaking her docterate for her husband, again that's an example of poor reading. She did it for her children's sake, not for her husband, and she does help her father's scientific activities, especially when mathematics is involved. I may not agree with her decision to postpone her docterate while she had her children, but the ultimate decision lies with her and who are we to tell her otherwise? As you can see from some of these reviews, it appears that Madeleine has ticked off both liberals and conservatives with her book. She's falsely accused of homophobia, and she is criticized for a "dirty" heterosexual sex scene which is, in my opinion, tastefully and tactfully handled. Clearly, to tick off both sides suggest that Madeleine has done something right.
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