98: A Ring of Endless Light

I finished reading A Ring of Endless Light this week for the first time. I wish I'd had it when I was fifteen and angry, although I'm not sure I would have known what to do with it when I was that age. Even if my teenage self didn't read it back then, I can read it for her now. It's a book for children (I can feel my teenage self bristling at being called a child, although it's true), but the best stories for children are written with a kind of clarity that I find illuminating.

It doesn't feel like most of the other children's books I've read. A Ring of Endless Light begins at a funeral, with the main character, Vicky, watching her dying grandfather give a eulogy for another man who left before his time. The whole book is full of unexpected comings and goings. It's set on an island where Vicky's family usually spends a couple of weeks every summer, and everyone, even the residents, feel as though they are just passing through. This summer is a turning point: Vicky's grandfather has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, her family is about to move back to a smaller town after living in New York City for a year, and Vicky, nearly sixteen, has the attention of three very different boys–one local, one rich, and one doing research with the island's dolphins for the summer, a thread that flirts with science fiction as the dolphin researchers attempt to communicate with their test subjects.

Vicky is a believable teenager mostly because of her confused certainty about the world. She doesn't know what she wants from her life yet. She's bracing for the death of a beloved grandparent, a hard form of prolonged grief because it involves mourning the loss of someone before they're fully gone. L'Engle never lets up on the sadness, which keeps coming from new angles with every chapter. New small disasters keep cropping up as the summer wears on. Vicky gets swept up in a medical crisis at a hospital late in the book, in a plot development that feels distinctly unfair. The local boy is in love with Vicky, but she can't love him back; she's entangled with the rich boy, who has all the money in the world, a desire to end everything, and a manipulative habit of telling her that she's the only person who understands him, who can keep him tethered to reality. If that all sounds like too much for a few short summer weeks, try being a teenager.

As a teenager, I resented being told by books that I needed to cry over them. This instinct has carried over into my adulthood. I can cry easily, depending on the circumstances, but I don't like feeling manipulated into doing it. A Ring of Endless Light encourages the act of crying, and at times it feels like the only appropriate response. It's a very sad book. I teared up before the end of the first chapter. But the parts that made me weep were the parts that startled me with their grace: Vicky's grandfather repeating, "Alleluia," after piling fresh dirt into an open grave, and another being repeating the word in response to Vicky's confusion about the beauty and the pain of the world around her. The book–like its author–is up-front about its belief that someday the whole world will be redeemed. It was easy for me to repeat those words as a teenager, even when I didn't feel like I needed to believe them. It was good to be reminded of them, simply and plainly, as an adult.

What I wrote about:

My coverage of True/False 2024 is now up at Bright Wall/Dark Room. Most of the movies I saw at the festival had to do with a search for moral clarity, and for community, in a post-truth world.

What I'm watching:

Have you heard the good word about David Cronenberg's 1983 film Videodrome? Because I finally caught up with it this week and it's haunting me.