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A review by annieeditor
The Joys of Love by Madeleine L'Engle, Léna Roy
3.0
After reading "And Both Were Young" and recently thinking about a passage in "Camilla" that I've always loved, I figured it was time to finally read "The Joys of Love." As the world's greatest Madeline L'Engle fan, you'd think that I would have picked this up the moment it hit the shelves. A lost L'Engle book! One of her first! But I was worried that the reason it was released after her death was because she didn't think it was good enough to print in the first place, and the estate just wanted to make some money. Turns out I was wrong. According to the introduction, the reason it wasn't printed was because it was turned down repeatedly before L'Engle's surge in popularity, and she eventually put it away and then gave it to her granddaughters.
It certainly isn't as strongly written as her other work, and tends to a more popular YA style (read: it describes clothes a lot). But it still has those signature L'Engle elements that she learned to nurture later on, such as a keen insight into human behavior and relationships, a need to connect to the world on a larger scale and a love of art and its transportive abilities.
It's also interesting because this is her most biographical work, apparently, drawn from who she was as a teen and her work in the theater before becoming a writer. It's the closest I will get to meeting her and she must have been an interesting person to know. I have to agree with some of the characters that Elizabeth is a little too sheltered and prudish in her outlook, and for a modern reader, she comes off a lot younger than the college-graduate she is. That also might be from the time gap — this book was written in the late forties. But in the end, you can't resent Elizabeth for her inhibitions because she doesn't impose them on others and is learning to be herself, even if that doesn't line up with what others want.
It's also a love letter to theater, and reading this made me long for it. "The Seagull" is a part of the plot, which makes me happy, that L'Engle loved this play as much as I do, and that she uses it as a way for her own character to discover her own motivations and to learn about life.
It certainly isn't as strongly written as her other work, and tends to a more popular YA style (read: it describes clothes a lot). But it still has those signature L'Engle elements that she learned to nurture later on, such as a keen insight into human behavior and relationships, a need to connect to the world on a larger scale and a love of art and its transportive abilities.
It's also interesting because this is her most biographical work, apparently, drawn from who she was as a teen and her work in the theater before becoming a writer. It's the closest I will get to meeting her and she must have been an interesting person to know. I have to agree with some of the characters that Elizabeth is a little too sheltered and prudish in her outlook, and for a modern reader, she comes off a lot younger than the college-graduate she is. That also might be from the time gap — this book was written in the late forties. But in the end, you can't resent Elizabeth for her inhibitions because she doesn't impose them on others and is learning to be herself, even if that doesn't line up with what others want.
It's also a love letter to theater, and reading this made me long for it. "The Seagull" is a part of the plot, which makes me happy, that L'Engle loved this play as much as I do, and that she uses it as a way for her own character to discover her own motivations and to learn about life.