Customer Reviews

An Acceptable Time (Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet)

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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.

This was the first book by Madeleine L'Engle that I ever read and I fell in love with her writing and her characters. I was ecstatic to find out that she had written more books about the same characters and I now own nearly every work of fiction she's ever written.

I love this book so much because I discovered it at that time of life when you bumble through adolescence and you aren't really sure who you are and where you're going yet. You also aren't exactly sure anymore where you stand with people. Reading this story of Polly helped me to realise the same thing she does through the course of the novel: Friendship works both ways. Friends will always try their best to help each other and support each other. Friends do not sacrifice one another for personal gain. Friends love each other because of who they are. True friendship is forever and can cross time and space.

Madeleine Langle is Classic, and so are her books. I am a fan of hers, my first being A Wrinkle in Time. This book was strikingly wonderful with interesting facts of science, and history. Not only does this open up your imagination, but you learn from it too. This story has a lot to do with time lapses and going back 5,000 years ago to a tribe a peaceful living people called The People of The Wind. On an accident of walking around, Polly gets mixed in an issue concerning two times, sacrifice, love, and the change of history, possibly. It's a mind boggler and a wonderful book to read. I really recommend people to give it a try. Try everything once within reason!

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.

This is a very good, exciting fantasy, although it tends to jump about. The plot develops TOO slowly. The story is very interesting, though, and very exciting. Mrs. L'Engles fantasy terms, like "time circles" aren't as convincing as tesseracts (A WRINKLE IN TIME) or farandolae (A WIND IN THE DOOR). By which I mean just sounds weird, instead of almost feeling like fact during the course of the story as in her other books. It is exciting, though, and combines a lot of fantasy, family life, teen issues, friendship issues, and, interestingly enough, archaeology. When you go back 3000, you'll be transformed.
Highly reccomended, although first-time L'Engle readers may be turned off. (p.s. fix the adult form cause I'm 15)

For me, this is one of those books that had, and keeps having, a huge positive impact. Yes, this is a time-travel tale, but more than that, it is a story about the kinds of sacrifice love is willing to make. Nobody gets beat over the head with the lesson here, but it will stick with you. Heads up: parts of this will be pretty heavy going for younger/more sensitive juvenile readers as blood sacrifice is discussed pretty frankly (though not at all graphically) here.

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.

Polly (Meg's daughter! ) is staying with her grandparents when she gets mysteriously sent back in time 3,000 years back. she meets druids, some peaceful and some who believe in human sacrifice. after a couple of times of this mysterious time travel, polly finds herself in a couple of sticky situations. i liked a wrinkle in time a bit more, and i look foward to reading the rest of the murry family boks.

When Polly O'Keefe goes to stay with her grandparents, doctors Kate and Alex Murry, she expects life to be fairly sedentary. Kate is a microbiologist and a Nobel Prize laureate, and Alex is an astrophysicist studying the space/time continuum. Polly has come to live with them to study for a few months. However, life at the Murry residence isn't quite what Polly expected it to be. Far from being quiet and relaxing, strange things begin to happen, with no believable reason behind them.

With an earthquake and a brilliant flash of lightning, everything Polly has felt was certain in life, and has even taken for granted, is changed. A time gate has opened on the Murry property and three people are caught up in the tesseract's sphere of influence: Bishop Colubra, Polly, and her acquaintance Zachary. Leaving the area of its influence could well mean death for them all. The time gate leads to a period roughly three thousand years in the past. A time when people still believed in human sacrifice in order to appease the gods and bring about their desires. A time when nothing could be certain, not even the safety of love.

Bishop Colubra has found three ogam stones and believes the site of the Murrys' indoor pool was once sacred ground. His avid interest in ogam enables him to be able to speak and understand the language of the people on the other side of the time gate, and Polly is a quick study with languages. Neither had thought they would actually encounter Druids on the other side of the gate. The Druids, however, have no more control over the time gate than Polly or her companions. And their friendship may not be enough to keep Polly from becoming the next Samhain sacrifice.

Madeleine L'Engle builds the suspense up extremely well. And not everything is quite what you'd expect from the clues she expertly drops along the way. Although this book is written for children, it too is a wonderful adventure from start to finish, and complex enough to keep an adult mind occupied and guessing at the outcome. I certainly had problems putting it down for any length of time, and even when I did manage to, I was thinking about it almost constantly.

Review Originally Posted at www.linearreflections.com

My friend Kristen let me borrow her copy of an acceptable time because I'm a huge fan of Madeleine L'Engel and I missed this book some how.

The story starts off by us meeting Polly, the daughter of Meg and Clavin O'Keefe. If you remember from the previous books, Meg is the oldest of four children(Meg, the twins Dennys and Sandy, and Charles Wallace) and she has already been in four books(aka the time quartet). This story is about Polly, the first born from the O'Keefes. Polly discovers a time warp in which she travels back 3,000 years before when what we'd consider Indians lived. Also in the story is Zachary. If you've read other L'Engel books you'll remember him from A Ring of Endless Light. In this book, he's sort of Polly's boyfriend but he's got a really bad heart. Also in the story are Polly's grandparents, Dr. Louise, and Louise's brother who happens to be a Bishop. The Bishop, Polly, and Zachary all end up going back to the time when Annie and Karayls lived and what happens, well you'll have to find out for yourself.