256 pages
Published Nov. 7, 2017 by Square Fish.
Like visiting an elderly relative. Rambling but you feel duty-bound not to leave before it's finished, referencing religion constantly like everyone knows what they’re on about, entirely without malice but painfully patronising. I'm left feeling guilty about being resentful of being narrated to as if I'm a bit simple. (Maybe I am though, I only picked this up after it was mentioned in Ted Lasso
I read this as a child and remember liking it a lot, so I reread it this week in preparation for the new movie coming out. It's a fanciful, magical, sentimental book focused around the heroine Meg, who is struggling with being unpopular at school and a missing father. Reading it now as an adult, it's an extremely quick read with very simple character development; I don't remember this bothering me as a child, but this is definitely a book aimed at younger readers, not the level of detail of a Harry Potter or even Narnia. Still, it has some interesting ideas and concepts, like Meg's struggle with self-dislike, her realization of the love in her family that she's taken for granted and learns to appreciate more, the concept of the tesseracts and aliens, and lots of strong female role models (her mother is a dedicated scientist for example). I'd …
I read this as a child and remember liking it a lot, so I reread it this week in preparation for the new movie coming out. It's a fanciful, magical, sentimental book focused around the heroine Meg, who is struggling with being unpopular at school and a missing father. Reading it now as an adult, it's an extremely quick read with very simple character development; I don't remember this bothering me as a child, but this is definitely a book aimed at younger readers, not the level of detail of a Harry Potter or even Narnia. Still, it has some interesting ideas and concepts, like Meg's struggle with self-dislike, her realization of the love in her family that she's taken for granted and learns to appreciate more, the concept of the tesseracts and aliens, and lots of strong female role models (her mother is a dedicated scientist for example). I'd happily give it to a child maybe in the 7-10 year old range, teens might be starting to find it a little brief.
I have a vague recollection of DNFing this as a kid because it was boring.
I decided I had to read it before the movie came out. Turns out I still think it is really boring and I seem to viscerally hate Meg.
I'll probably still see the movie because I like Ava Duvernay's work. Hopefully she can make something good out of this.
So happy I finally read this book. A magical and fantastic journey that left me smiling.
