Yes, there will be spoilers, but, seriously, it doesn't matter, because you don't want to read this book.All right. So this book deals with Sandy and Dennys, who have been little better than side characters in the other books. They are Meg and Charles Wallace's "normal" brothers. Twins. It also takes place prior to A Swiftly Tilting Planet, while the twins are sports stars in high school. The impression I got is that they are probably juniors and about 17 years old. Basically, the boys walk into their mother's lab and, when they walk out of it, rather than going back into the kitchen of the house, they end up in the days of Noah. Yes, that Noah. The one that built the big boat. Hence the title of the book.There's never any firm conclusion as to how they got transported back in time. It may or may not have had to do with an experiment that was going on in the lab, though the type of experiment is never explained, or it may have had to do with them messing with their dad's weird computer, or, maybe, it was just God.They end up in the desert. Of course, they're wearing winter clothing, which they soon discard... all the way down to their skin. Because that's always a smart thing to do in the desert. Get nearly naked, that is. The end result of that is that about 1/3 of the book deals with them being nursed back to health by Noah's family, who mistake the twins for giants, because no one in Noah's day was even near to being 5' tall. A lot of this section of the book also has the repeated conversation with, well, every freaking character they meet, "We're not giants." And it's not that I don't think they wouldn't have had to have had that conversation, but does L'Engle really need to repeat it 10 or so times.This book also follows the pattern of all of the books in the series: The characters really don't ever do anything. Sandy and Dennys talk a lot about how they will get home... um, no, wait... They ask that question a lot. Every few pages it seems. "How will we get home?" "I don't know." "What should we do?" "Let's go garden." Seriously, that's their solution every time the question comes up, to work in Noah's father's garden. Basically, they end up being observers to the action going on around them and that's pretty much it. And what that comes down to is that the rising action in this book is about like a road in West Texas with a speed bump on it when Sandy gets kidnapped.Aside from the lack of any real story or character development, the book is full of all kind of ridiculousness:1. There are mammoths. Yes, in the desert. But these are not the mammoths you're thinking of. You know, the big, hairy elephants. No, these are tiny mammoths. Terrier-sized mammoths. In fact, they pretty much are small dogs that look like mammoths. The mammoths can scent things and follow trails like a bloodhound, but they are also used as dowsing rods to find water. Which explains why the desert people keep them as pets, I suppose, but how did they get tiny? Well, evidently, they... evolved to be that way? The explanation is something along the lines of them having grown smaller and smaller over a great time.2. However, the Earth in this book is a brand new Earth. A very young planet still going through its growing pains, so the whole thing with the mammoths doesn't really make any sense. L'Engle seems to want to have the Earth both be billions of years old and only 5000 (or so) years old as in the strict Creationist viewpoint.3. There are manticores and griffons. Or a manticore and a griffon. It's never clear on whether there are more than one of each. The manticore is "bad" and just shows up rather like a cartoon character to shout "hungry" and try to eat the little doggy-mammoths and have to be shooed away. The griffon shows up to chase "bad" girls away from Sandy and Dennys.4. L'Engle seems to have a thing with unicorns, because there are more unicorns in this book. Virtual unicorns, as the twins call them. They don't always exist, only when you decide you believe in them and, of course, they can only be approached by virgins. The annoying thing with the unicorns is that even after the boys have experiences with the unicorns, they go on and on about how they can't believe in them because they don't exist, so they can only believe in the unicorns when the unicorns are actually standing right in front of them. I have to suppose that they ceased to believe in their family, too, when their family quit being right in front of them.-- The issue with all of this is that L'Engle, from what I can tell, wants us to accept this book as being set in reality, our reality, and, yet, she undermines reality by introducing all of this mythological stuff into what we're supposed to believe is the actual pre-flood setting. It's more suspension of disbelief than I could handle, and I haven't even gotten to the Angels.5. Oh, yes, the Angels. The pseudo conflict in the book is between the seraphim (the good Angels) and the nephilim (the bad Angels). In fact the whole "conflict" revolves around a girl, Yalith, who everyone is in love with, so it becomes a matter of whom she will choose: one of the twins (or both) or Eblis, the nephilim. It's an empty conflict through which L'Engle seems to deliver her message of "bad things don't happen to good people" (a message which makes me wonder what reality L'Engle lived in, because it's the same kind of message all of her books have: Love will always win and, ultimately, nothing bad happens to people who believe in love).Speaking of Yalith and male/female relationships in general in this book: This may have been the most difficult part of the book for me to deal with. Yalith is the youngest child of Noah; she's nearly 100 years old (because people in Noah's time lived much longer (Noah is 700ish)), but she's basically a teenager. Because, you know, living longer means slower growth? Which makes me wonder how long would remain a baby in this time. 20 years? Because, man, if I was a mom, I'd be pissed. Having to care for an infant for 20 years... I can't even imagine it, especially since pregnancy still only last nine months (because there was a birth during the book). You could end up with, well, a lot of babies. Actually, what I think she wants us to believe is that everyone ages normally until they hit puberty when they, for whatever reason, quit developing. Still, that means around 90 years as a teenager! That would be the worst!Oh, back to the twins and male/female relationships:So Sandy meets Yalith; Yalith is basically naked, because the people in Noah's time only wear loincloths. In the desert. Because we have examples of people today who live in the desert but only wear loincloths? At any rate, Yalith is all but naked, and Sandy is a teenage boy confronted with a naked girl and his response is to get a "funny feeling." Um, what? A funny feeling? What does that even mean? And that's how all of the interactions between the twins and girls go: They get funny feelings. I'm sorry; these boys are supposed to be 16 or 17 years old, and L'Engle is treating them as if they're, at best, 10. It's ridiculous.The twins do end up back at home after spending at least a year in the desert with Noah. One of the Angels removes the boys' tans and, I suppose, the year or more they had aged, although that's not actually mentioned. So they end up back at home right at the point they'd left and nothing has changed. There was no character growth for the twins and nothing of consequence affected in the past. The flood still happens and all of that. It's a book where the goal is to return to the status quo but without even the benefit of the characters learning anything from the journey. In fact, the boys pick up talking about getting their driver's licenses as if nothing had even happened.
I've always thought that Madeline L'Engle had a way of transporting readers to different dimensions with an interesting level of detail and intrigue in her writing and overall works. "Many Waters" was no exception, though the story is quite different from the usual "Time Quartet" travels, in that it has more biblical ties and features a set of characters who hadn't previously ventured on their own dimensional travels in the primary storyline with Meg and Charles Wallace.Enter Sandy and Dennys, the usually skeptical, practical twins who end up having an adventure of their own, one that transforms them remarkably. Seeing them in their own story was something that excited me the first time I picked up the book. I had a different version of the cover than this one the first time I picked it up from the library. It was a picture of the elder, blond twins - one of them shirtless, the other in cutoff jean shorts and a plaid shirt, in the middle of a vast desert with an ark, an angel and a snake on the cover.The best summary I can give of this is a reinterpretation of Noah's Ark, with Sandy and Dennys separated between the realms of the seraphim, nepheilim, mammoths (who are actually tiny!) and tiny people and creatures that roam the world. I remember laughing when the twins were first considered giants upon their arrival into the world, and how fascinated the people were with the concept of twins (in the case that Sandy and Dennys looked alike). If I remember correctly both of the twins were sunburned, but one of them got it so bad he had to be treated medically by those that found him. It's been a good ten years or so since I've read the novels.There's an interesting amount of politics and focus on the relations between them in this world, one that fascinated me. It's surprisingly well done for the kind of relationships, work, and ethics that Sandy and Dennys learn in their time there, and I enjoyed the interactions between the characters and the collective mythos of the world.
What do You think about Many Waters (2007)?
In a departure from the main characters of the first three books, Madeleine L'Engle's Many Waters follows Sandy and Dennys Murry, the twin brothers of the Murry family that had little to do in the first three novels. While this was unexpected, L'Engle recaptures a great deal of the mythic tone in this novel that was so clearly present in the first of her Time novels.And it is precisely because of that mythic quality that I like this novel so much. L'Engle, who sends her protagonists back to the biblical era of Noah, uses the setting to touch more directly on the underlying theological roots that these novels have running through them. For it is here that we can see beauty and goodness in more elemental forms, yet in ways that continue to be accessible to human beings. Her clever rendering of many of the unspoken details of the Noahic story exhibits close attention to the biblical account, and creative solutions to some of its more puzzling elements.This book touches on the grand tradition of myth-making, reminds us of the fundamental importance of the old stories, and affirms that not all change or "progress" is necessarily for the better. Truly, a wonderful novel.
—John
I didn't enjoy this one as much as the others in the series. Book 4 got a bit preachy. Literally. Sandy and Dennys (my fav characters in the preceding books) mistakenly go back in time to when Noah was building his arc (which, okay, I guess we can pretend like theres no question whether or not this really happened. Sure.) It's written well and it does bring up some great points about how sexist Noah's story actually is (primarily the fact that his wife and his sons wives names are never mentioned but they can name his 4 times great-grandfather.) but I wouldn't really consider it a kids book. It actually gets pretty racy and violent at times. Also there's a heavy dose of slut-shaming which was pretty uncomfortable to read. And the Bible stuff was way off in some parts. Not terrifically well researched. But I gave it some leeway because it is a young adult book and it was written 30 years ago.
—Catherine McGinnes
You know that sliver of Genesis between the interminable lists of old dudes ("And Methuselah lived 969 years, blah blah blah...") and the tempestuous God-rage era of Noah and the Flood? Yeah, that's the setting for this book. Sandy and Dennys, the unbearably logical Vulcan-esque children of Mr. and Mrs. Murry, end up in biblical times through an accidental encounter with their parents' magic computer. Noah's son, Japheth, rescues them from the desert heat with the help of two unicorns (more unicorns!!!), and they find themselves in a Genesis they never knew existed. In addition to unicorns (!!!), Noah's desert oasis also offers us tiny mammoths, and two varieties (races? species?) of supernatural humanoids: seraphim and nephilim. While the seraphim reflect the glory of El (God), the nephilim are somewhat more complex. The intentions of the nephilim are unclear: they are pointedly commingling with humans, but also wary of El's undefined plan for Earth. Eventually, L'Engle reveals the nephilim as (view spoiler)[a source of evil incarnate, kidnapping Sandy and Dennys and attempting to torture or kill them off before they can fulfill El's plan (hide spoiler)]
—Jordan
