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A review by chime_detroit
Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
This is a love-hate sort of book and and old haunter of mine. L'Engle's messaging and portrayals of sexuality is both intensely erotic, dignifying, and thought-provoking; and intensely distressing and insulting. On some level the violent narrative misogyny and brutality with which the daughters of men, such as Mahlah and Tiglah, are treated with as a result of their relationships with Nefilim increase the eroticism, especially for a fascinated preteen reader, and the emotional poignance and descriptive honesty of what a 'price' for these desires incur. However, the disingenuous twisting of situations that explain the motivations behind precocious sexuality (precocious both in young age and in the level of ambition of desire, as seen here in not only Mahlah and Tiglah, but also the dynamics between Yalith being torn between Sandy & Dennys vs the Nephilim, and the approaches towards human women of the Nephilim as opposed to the Seraphim, is far more infuriating.
Regarding this last point, the narrative seems terrified and cowed -- rather than uninterested -- in properly exploring female sexual desire for the more-than-human. It couches these girls' desire in terms of expectations of human-like love and a hope of ennobling from worthlessness, and their attempts to overreach past 'normal' relationships with 'normal' men in intensely patriarchal social structures as something that they could have been easily avoided and which if avoided, could have allowed them to attain normal satisfactory happiness instead. These are the structures that feel contrived and manipulative, in a way that eg the emotional and physical consequences of a sexual relationship with Nephilim do not. Neither of these are believable, though the blend of desperation and predatory deception the Nephilim treat the human girls with, and the casual misogyny Sandy and Dennys are saturated with, is.
But given the structures the author sets up, the emotional poignancy and electric soup of sexuality, awakening, unreadiness, tenuous self-control, and clashing inequalities of Knowings -- Sandy & Dennys's knowing of the future and the biblical story of Noah and the fates of these people in the Flood, their inability to know why it is happening, their struggling between their hunger to Know carnally and their instincts to hold back in the face of temptation due to their youth and many other conflicting factors, the things Tiglah knows that Yalith doesn't, and vice versa -- are all explored in a fascinating, aching, way. In the sexuality and the depictions of unnamably complicated emotions, surrounding desire and power and knowledge, L'Engle provides by depiction and narrative infliction, the reminder that desire is an emotion and experience in its own right, rather than the mere indication of a gap to be filled. Sandy, Dennys, and Yalith are able to luxuriate in this, and preteen readers are able to sit with and get used to without pursuing knee-jerk repression or fulfillment to immediately quench the desire before it's fully felt, before tasting the pleasure and flavor of experiencing and being able to identify one's own experience of desiring. L'Engle projects an honesty and respect for middle-grade audiences that I doubt many middle-grade books provide.
But I honestly think the bar for treating preteens and young teens like people is so low that's not as strong a compliment as it could be. I think kids could do better still -- something that admits what kinds of societal unbearableness can shape and justify desires, and that focuses on reminding what the prices of desires are, rather than policing the internal experience of desires.
Regarding this last point, the narrative seems terrified and cowed -- rather than uninterested -- in properly exploring female sexual desire for the more-than-human. It couches these girls' desire in terms of expectations of human-like love and a hope of ennobling from worthlessness, and their attempts to overreach past 'normal' relationships with 'normal' men in intensely patriarchal social structures as something that they could have been easily avoided and which if avoided, could have allowed them to attain normal satisfactory happiness instead. These are the structures that feel contrived and manipulative, in a way that eg the emotional and physical consequences of a sexual relationship with Nephilim do not. Neither of these are believable, though the blend of desperation and predatory deception the Nephilim treat the human girls with, and the casual misogyny Sandy and Dennys are saturated with, is.
But given the structures the author sets up, the emotional poignancy and electric soup of sexuality, awakening, unreadiness, tenuous self-control, and clashing inequalities of Knowings -- Sandy & Dennys's knowing of the future and the biblical story of Noah and the fates of these people in the Flood, their inability to know why it is happening, their struggling between their hunger to Know carnally and their instincts to hold back in the face of temptation due to their youth and many other conflicting factors, the things Tiglah knows that Yalith doesn't, and vice versa -- are all explored in a fascinating, aching, way. In the sexuality and the depictions of unnamably complicated emotions, surrounding desire and power and knowledge, L'Engle provides by depiction and narrative infliction, the reminder that desire is an emotion and experience in its own right, rather than the mere indication of a gap to be filled. Sandy, Dennys, and Yalith are able to luxuriate in this, and preteen readers are able to sit with and get used to without pursuing knee-jerk repression or fulfillment to immediately quench the desire before it's fully felt, before tasting the pleasure and flavor of experiencing and being able to identify one's own experience of desiring. L'Engle projects an honesty and respect for middle-grade audiences that I doubt many middle-grade books provide.
But I honestly think the bar for treating preteens and young teens like people is so low that's not as strong a compliment as it could be. I think kids could do better still -- something that admits what kinds of societal unbearableness can shape and justify desires, and that focuses on reminding what the prices of desires are, rather than policing the internal experience of desires.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, and Sexual content
there is a graphic depiction of a difficult childbirth involving vaginal tearing, and of severe full-body burns