Kirjailijakuva
2+ teosta 117 jäsentä 4 arvostelua

Tietoja tekijästä

Sisältää nimet: Lena Roy, Léna Roy

Tekijän teokset

Associated Works

And Both Were Young (1949) — Johdanto, eräät painokset778 kappaletta
The Joys of Love (2008) — Johdanto, eräät painokset255 kappaletta

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Why is this book combined with other books?, Bug Collectors (huhtikuu 2018)

Kirja-arvosteluja

Highly recommended to all fans of Madeleine L'Engle's books, to young people who have specific goals, especially if they want to be writers or artists or have aspirations to succeed in a particular field or endeavor. This book is a gift to fans of her books. Children and teens who have passion for writing will be particularly interested in this biography. I also recommend this to readers who’ve had an important grandchildren-grandparent bond because that part of the story clearly comes through too.

I inhaled this book in less than 2 days. It’s a book I wish I could own.

I have loved this author since I was 9 years old and read Meet the Austins/Meet the Austins published two years earlier, and A Wrinkle in Time newly published that year. Those two books helped me get through my childhood and have never been off my top 10 list and that is saying a great deal. Despite being a huge fan of many of her books, and researching many people throughout my lifetime, for some reason I’d never made a point to learn much about her life. Readers can glean a lot about her early years without reading a biography. It’s obvious just from reading her books that she must have commonalities with Meg, with Vicky, with Camilla, with Flip, but this book gives details and they were so much fun to learn. She also wrote autobiographical works of her later years, but I’ve read just one or two.

Now I’d like to read even more about her, but this book was extremely satisfying. The authors, her two granddaughters, deliberately chose to cover her life only up to the point of the publication of A Wrinkle in Time, and given that the book is written for middle grade readers, I think it was a sound decision, but now as an older adult I’d enjoy an account of her entire life, more than what she revealed in her writings.

The photos and journal entries and letters, all the materials were wonderful to see. Marvelous for fans to have access to these things!

I was impressed with what an accomplished person she was!

I will say that some of the images of her early poems, letters, and journal entries were so tiny on the pages that I needed a magnifying glass to read some of their text. It was well worth the effort to do that.

Bonus points from me: Not too far into this book I realized something about my own parents, similar to Madeleine’s in one way, and so I learned a bit about my life too.

The book is well written and very well organized, and I appreciate that this account shows Madeleine as a well-rounded person, with many positive attributes and with flaws too, and shows happy and difficult events in her life. I appreciated the Epilogue and Author’s Note at the end of the book. Though some tragedies are mentioned along with her triumphs, I do think the book is suitable for middle grade kids and adolescents and adults can enjoy it too. I certainly did, maybe even more than I would have as a young person. I was completely engrossed while reading this.

It was incredibly hard for me to write a review for this book because I knew I couldn’t do it justice. I’ve never been able to write proper reviews for any of this author’s books; as usual, it’s hardest for me to write reviews for books I’ve loved the most.

And now I want to reread her books all over again and read ones I haven’t yet read. L’Engle was a prolific author.

Since this is a biography these aren’t spoilers in the traditional sense but I think it would be most satisfying for readers to read this information in the book proper, so I’m putting the rest of the review in spoiler tags:

I LOVE this quote (on page 79) from a journal entry she wrote while in college: “I made a discovery yesterday. I don’t suppose it’s an original sort of discovery at all, but at any rate, I found it for myself. When you write anything – a poem or a story – it’s yours only as long as only you know anything about it. As soon as anybody reads it, it becomes partly theirs, too. They put things into it that you never thought of, and they don’t see many things that you thought plain.” (If only every author understood this.)

Wow! Now I know from where she gets the store from in the Meet the Austins book.

It’s so funny re the recent AWIT movie which I’m unlikely to see despite a great choice of actress for Meg – I’ve been saying it should have been unknowns for the Mrs Whatsit & Co (and not Oprah, Reese, Mindy) because the book is about Meg, and Charles Wallace, and Calvin, not about the Mrss and too much attention is being paid to them in the movie trailers, so it was fascinating to see her working title for A Wrinkle in Time.

I actually was going to add a lot more parts of the book that particularly struck me, but I’m hoping that readers will read the book for themselves.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
Lisa2013 | Apr 20, 2018 |
Edges opens with seventeen-year-old Luke settling into a trailer outside the Moonflower Motel in Moab, Utah, his home since he fled New York City and his alcoholic father. He moved west alone and cobbled together a family headed by Clare and Jim, the Moonflower’s owners. The story shifts between Luke’s present, New York in the past when Frank and Luke cope with the death of Luke’s mother, and New York in the present when Jim and Clare’s daughter Ava, a shiny new college student, attends Alcoholics Anonymous and meets Frank. A journey of forgiveness and redemption brings the characters together, but the novel never feels contrived. I believed it was possible for lives to intertwine and become stronger together.

I admired Léna’s unflinching portrayal of addiction. In college, a dear friend attended Alcoholics Anonymous and told me the most difficult thing about being sober was that she no longer had something to orient her day. Though she was about Ava’s age, drinking had been the objective of each day, and it was difficult to get through without another. I see that struggle truthfully and painfully portrayed in Ava, and I loved Ava for her strength and selflessness, even when it would be easy to focus only on her own recovery. Families torn by alcoholism are stitched back together, but Edges doesn’t ignore the scars that will remain, an awareness that makes the novel more moving.

Addiction I was okay with, but I’ll admit, at first I was hesitant about the mystical elements in the book. There was never once a reason to roll my eyes; instead, I respected the beliefs and storyline because I respected the characters. Léna, unlike many authors I’ve read, did not use mystic events to add drama and mystery to the plot. Her novel focuses on characters the reader can love, and because the mysticism is part of the characters’ lives, I don’t doubt the novel’s sincerity.

Lastly, the setting. There are books that make you want to pack your bags and travel. And there are books that bring the setting to you. Edges is both.

“Luke let Tangerine climb up the cable first. He was panting by the time he got to the top. The sun’s angle on the earth deepened the color of the rocks to a dark watermelon. The drop into the canyons was spellbinding. The world was vast, unknowable.”

The Utah landscape, both dangerous and comforting, is an apt canvas for the novel’s relationships. Few first novels find that delicate symbiosis.

I enthusiastically recommend Edges, an able debut of an author who, I know, will give us many years of enjoyable stories.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
KristiTuckAustin | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Mar 9, 2011 |
Edges opens with seventeen-year-old Luke settling into a trailer outside the Moonflower Motel in Moab, Utah, his home since he fled New York City and his alcoholic father. He moved west alone and cobbled together a family headed by Clare and Jim, the Moonflower’s owners. The story shifts between Luke’s present, New York in the past when Frank and Luke cope with the death of Luke’s mother, and New York in the present when Jim and Clare’s daughter Ava, a shiny new college student, attends Alcoholics Anonymous and meets Frank. A journey of forgiveness and redemption brings the characters together, but the novel never feels contrived. I believed it was possible for lives to intertwine and become stronger together.

I admired Léna’s unflinching portrayal of addiction. In college, a dear friend attended Alcoholics Anonymous and told me the most difficult thing about being sober was that she no longer had something to orient her day. Though she was about Ava’s age, drinking had been the objective of each day, and it was difficult to get through without another. I see that struggle truthfully and painfully portrayed in Ava, and I loved Ava for her strength and selflessness, even when it would be easy to focus only on her own recovery. Families torn by alcoholism are stitched back together, but Edges doesn’t ignore the scars that will remain, an awareness that makes the novel more moving.

Addiction I was okay with, but I’ll admit, at first I was hesitant about the mystical elements in the book. There was never once a reason to roll my eyes; instead, I respected the beliefs and storyline because I respected the characters. Léna, unlike many authors I’ve read, did not use mystic events to add drama and mystery to the plot. Her novel focuses on characters the reader can love, and because the mysticism is part of the characters’ lives, I don’t doubt the novel’s sincerity.

Lastly, the setting. There are books that make you want to pack your bags and travel. And there are books that bring the setting to you. Edges is both.

“Luke let Tangerine climb up the cable first. He was panting by the time he got to the top. The sun’s angle on the earth deepened the color of the rocks to a dark watermelon. The drop into the canyons was spellbinding. The world was vast, unknowable.”

The Utah landscape, both dangerous and comforting, is an apt canvas for the novel’s relationships. Few first novels find that delicate symbiosis.

I enthusiastically recommend Edges, an able debut of an author who, I know, will give us many years of enjoyable stories.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
KristiTuckAustin | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Mar 9, 2011 |
Lena Roy has written a terrific book for young adults on the subject of addiction.

After the death of his mother, Luke’s father, Frank, starts drinking again after a long period of sobriety and is quickly reduced to a soggy, hopeless wreck. Overwhelmed by the demands of caring for an active alcoholic, and coping with his own grief, 17-year-old Luke flees New York for the Moab Desert, where he and his parents once traveled. He finds a job at the Moonflower youth hostel and lives among the quirky inhabitants.

Ava, a student and sometime waitress, has recently joined Alcoholics Anonymous and although she's trying to deal with her addiction, she's having a hard time. Through AA, she meets Frank, Luke's father. She's alienated from her parents, who have themselves moved to the Moab Desert -- and that's where the miraculous connections begin to weave together.

The story is told in Luke’s and Ava’s alternating points of view. It's well handled. The novel will inspire any young person dealing with addiction, autonomy and self-awareness. The issues are complicated -- God, synchronicity, life and death, our responsibility to others, forgiveness... Lena Roy shies away from nothing. Her clear-eyed portrait of what AA looks like to a newcomer is refreshing, and although she illustrates, quite beautifully, why "the program" works, she never talks down to her reader, nor does she preach. The characters are well rounded, the story intriguing, the possibilities inspiring.

Highly recommended.
… (lisätietoja)
 
Merkitty asiattomaksi
Laurenbdavis | 2 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Dec 27, 2010 |

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Teokset
2
Also by
2
Jäseniä
117
Suosituimmuussija
#168,597
Arvio (tähdet)
½ 3.7
Kirja-arvosteluja
4
ISBN:t
10

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