Customer Reviews

And Both Were Young

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Before I read this book, I was already a great fan of Madeline L'Engle's work. However, And Both Were Young confirmed my admiration for her as a person and left me once again in awe at her amazing abilities as a writer! Though the book was originally written quite some time ago in L'Engle's youth, it holds more feelings and displays more emotion and wit than thousands of novels that have been written later in the author's life.
First introduced is Phillipa Hunter, or Flip, a teenage girl who is struggling with life after the death of her mother and the new lady friend of her father, Eunice. Wishing to follow in the steps of her father to become an artist, Flip is devastated when she learns that her father is going to China to sketch without her. Eunice then sends Flip to boarding school in Switzerland while she and Flip's father tour China. Recognizably different from the other students at the school, she is automatically excluded and spends most of her time in solitude, until she happens to stumble upon an ancient chateau. Inside the chateau she meets Paul, a young boy, not unlike herself, searching for answers amidst a past of brokenness and carefully shrouded mystery. As their friendship grows into love, each learns from the other, and Flip's heart finally begins to heal after a year of loneliness and mourning for her mother. However, Paul's wound is not so easily healed. As Flip finds her niche in the school's society and some friends of her own, she now has to help Paul recover his past and face the many fears it encompasses. As new acquaintances come into Flip's life, she learns how to be true to herself and to others.
The journey of this girl into womanhood is heartfelt and well written in my opinion. I have read this book nearly three times now, and I know I will read its pages many more times still. Flip is a character we can all relate to, and many of her insecurities are our insecurities. This is an excellent book for teenagers who are thirsting for romance, struggling to find themselves, or simply avid book readers, such as myself. Once again, Madeline L'Engle displays her magnificent ability to reach into the hearts of all of us and put down into words what the rest of us are struggling to comprehend. I guarantee this book will move your heart and enlighten your mind!

When young Philippa (Flip) is forced to leave her father, and her home in Connecticut, and begin attending a Swiss boarding school, she couldn't be more heartbroken. She knows instantly that she isn't like the other girls at school. She isn't sophisticated, or knowledgeable about boys. In fact, even the thought of boys leaves her tongue tied. The only time Flip really feels good, is when she's by herself, wandering in the mountains, or sketching. But when she meets a French boy named Paul during one of her walks, everything changes. As their friendship (and relationship) grows, Flip's self-confidence grows with it. If only they didn't have to hide their romance. After all, only seniors were allowed to date, so Flip and Paul's romance is forbidden. With new obstacles being faced everyday, Flip now has to help Paul confront his past, if she hopes to one day have a future with him.

L'Engle has done it again. AND BOTH WERE YOUNG is an amazing book written with characters who are poised, confident, intelligent, exciting, and intriguing. Flip is a female character who any teenage girl can relate to. What with her spunky, and spirited personality. Paul is the guy whom every girl will fall in love with, and feel sorry for, as they continue reading. This is a must-have book for all L'Engle fans. Especially those who loved CAMILLA.

Erika Sorocco

I started AND BOTH WERE YOUNG because I knew it was about a girl who leaves for school. Since I am about to leave as well(except for college) I thought it would be an interesting read. I was not disappointed.

Flip and Paul are beautiful characters, full of doubts and pain. However, in each other they find answers to their doubts and a balm for their pain. Watching their relationship unfold is sweet in every way first loves should be.

L'Engle's writing is beautiful and captivating. My mind had little room to wonder. Although the book is classified as young adult, I feel like any age will find it as a great read that can transport them out of their surroundings into the snow-covered country of Switzerland.

I am not a romance reader, but I am a fan of L'Engle. "And Both Were Young" is a well-written romance for teens that touches on darker issues. The novel deals realistically with death and with a daughter's feelings of betrayal when her father, a widower, dates another woman. The horror of World War II and its affects on the characters, especially Paul, is realistic, but still leaves hope for the future.

Phillippa (Flip) Hunter has to go to boarding school in Switzerland. It's not as if she wants to, she's being forced to go because her father will be away on trips in China all year with the awful Eunice (who consequently is not that awful.)Flip believes that Eunice is trying to replace her mother, who died the previous year in a car crash, and as such completely dislikes her. Since Flip is being sent to boarding school without her own consent, it is quite normal that she despises it. She never knows how to reply to the girls, she can barely participate in gym due to her stiff knee, and some of the girls find her quite strange. One thing that consoles her is a French boy named Paul who has seemed to have an awful past that he can't remember. (Paul was in concentration camps when he was younger; the book takes place a few years after World War 2.) Flip helps Paul overcome his past, and learn to live in the present. Another person who really helped Flip in the beginning of the book was Madame Perceval, the art teacher. Madame Perceval was quite understanding of Flip. Flip was an excelling student in art, and as such she was planning to become an artist like her father. Throughout the book, Flip grew and matured while helping everyone around her, and realized that she didn't need somebody else to instill faith into her, as she could find it on her own.

I have always loved Madeleine L'Engle. I started reading her books when I was about ten and still go back to them now (I'm 20). I love her no-nonsense take on love and how hard life can be. I love that she doesn't hold it back just because her readers are young.

This book especially has always been one I come back to. Flip's story is totally compelling. I wanted to have a dashing and mysterious friend like Paul when I first read this (indeed, when I read it now!). This is a good one to read on a rainy day.

This is one of my favorite L'Engles, although it is definitely one of the lesser known. I had the luck to be able to read both editions, the earlier one and the revised one. Reading them both made me appreciate the newer version that much more. Unlike many of her other books L'Engle has focused on a loner, who doesn't have much of a family to turn too(even when they feel outcast, most of her other series characters do still have their families) Her father has left her at a boarding school while he travels the world painting the children who have been orphaned by WW II. How she learns to deal with her life at a boarding school and a first romance are essentially the plot, but is a good read and reread. oh Scott Dell wrote Island of the Blue Dolphins and Zia

I think this may have been the last Madeleine L'Engle book I read (for the first time) as a teenager. And for some reason it holds a sort of distinction in my head because of that fact. I, like most other readers I know who love her books, got in on the whole thing with A Wrinkle in Time, moving on to the other Murry and O'Keefe family books and then the Austin family series and so on from there. I must have been somewhere around ten or so when I first read the Time series and by the time I got through all the others and worked my way around to her standalones I was a bit older. Although one of my very favorite things about her body of young adult work is that there are so many connections between them. And while AND BOTH WERE YOUNG is probably one of the most standalone of them all, for the discerning reader there is a very lovely, very oblique reference to its main character in L'Engle's much later novel A Severed Wasp. Interestingly, I don't think I ever realized just how old this book is. Originally published in 1949, it was actually her first young adult novel. Incidentally, my copy features the old 1983 cover. But a lovely new hardback edition was just released on Tuesday and, as it is one of my very favorite of L'Engle's books, I wanted to highlight it while I convince my local bookshop to order a copy into the store.

Phillipa Hunter, better known as Flip (oh, how much I love this), never wanted to leave her father and her Connecticut home to come to a Swiss boarding school. That was her father's new "friend" Eunice's bright idea. Since her mother passed away, Flip has grown even closer to her artist father and the idea of leaving him and attending a foreign school among a host of strange other girls terrifies her. But her father is bound for China to draw and Eunice is traveling with him instead of Flip. And so Flip tries to hide her trembling and put on a brave face for her father's sake. But boarding school is just as alien and difficult as she feared. Though the girls hail from all over the globe, Flip finds it hard to fit in. Long-limbed and lacking in coordination, she watches her fellow students from the sidelines and prays for the year to be up soon. The one bright spot in the gloom is her art teacher Percy--a young woman who seems to understand Flip's solitude and need to filter her kaleidoscopic emotions through some sort of creative act. Then one day out exploring further than she ought to be above the school grounds, Flip runs into a young man named Paul. Paul lives with his father in a small cottage not far from the school. These two dispossessed young teenagers form a friendship and, in the process, find the kind of acceptance and understanding in each other that they've been searching for.

Flip is the kind of foot-in-her-mouth, arms-and-legs-everywhere protagonist that I connected with instantly as a teen reader. I loved her for her haplessness and the way that she just kept on stumbling through her outer coating of awkward to a place where she could voice her thoughts and experiences so that someone else could see them and appreciate her for who she was. In my eyes, that made her admirable--that drive to keep going despite the many misconceptions and deliberate slights of those around her. That was what was so hard for me at that age, and I like to think I drew a little strength from watching her try and fail and try again and succeed. It helped that her interactions with Percy were so poignant, particularly in the wake of having lost her mother and being without her father. The other girls at the school were especially well done as well. At first you think they will be mere stereotypical characterizations, the way Flip almost expects them to be, but they each emerge from their initial roles to play an important part in Flip's development. And then there's Paul. Lovely Paul. He has long reminded me of Jeff Greene from A Solitary Blue and a kinder, less destructive Zachary Grey. Yes. You will fall in love with Paul just as much as Flip does. And the even more gratifying thing is that the story is not just about Flip's journey to self-discovery, but Paul's as well. It's not all the way he fills her needs, but how she fills his as he has an unusually dark past that he is rather successfully steadfastly refusing to deal with until Flip comes along. This is an eternally sweet and moving book. Like so many of L'Engle's books, I turn to this one when I want to be reminded that the world and the people in it can be beautiful despite the darkness.

I started AND BOTH WERE YOUNG because I knew it was about a girl who leaves for school. Since I am about to leave as well(except for college) I thought it would be an interesting read. I was not disappointed.

Flip and Paul are beautiful characters, full of doubts and pain. However, in each other they find answers to their doubts and a balm for their pain. Watching their relationship unfold is sweet in every way first loves should be.

L'Engle's writing is beautiful and captivating. My mind had little room to wonder. Although the book is classified as young adult, I feel like any age will find it as a great read that can transport them out of their surroundings into the snow-covered country of Switzerland.

If you are currently roaming the various written reviews deciding whether or not to read this book, stop, and read it. I guarantee you will not find a better written yet beautifully simple story. I believe this book will appeal particularly to teens (I say so because I am one) if not any age, and believe me when I say this, I do not (emphasis on the not) write reviews, but this book just demanded one even at 2:oo in the morning. To any readers who like romance, this is my favorite type, awkard in just the right way and deep yet relatable (not in a complicatly confusing manner as some books tend to gravitate towards). No doubt this book is well written, and in my opinion this book is better than A Wrinkle In Time, which I also love dearly. The scenes are described so vividly, and in such a straight forward manner with every word leaving a lasting impression. This is truly a must read, and once again, very relatable. I am so glad I stumbled upon this rare discovery! Despite being an avid book reader it has been a while since I've been so blown away.