THE ARM OF THE STARFISH

Now this is more like it. After being mildly underwhelmed by Meet the Austins and The Moon by Night, I did myself a great service by choosing to read the next Madeleine L’Engle book in chronological sequence, rather than the next one in the Austin series. Odd-sounding, I know, but basically: L’Engle wrote four novels about the Murry family (aka the Time Quartet, which includes A Wrinkle in Time, etc.), five (plus some short Christmas books and other ancillary material, which I am ignoring) about the Austin family, and four about the O’Keefes (Meg Murry, her husband, Calvin, and their children), plus a number of other semi-standalone books. L’Engle divided her main body of work into “Kairos” (extraordinary time, the Murrys and O’Keefes) and “Chronos” (ordinary time, the Austins), but there are characters who overlap between them. Although The Arm of the Starfish is technically the first O’Keefe book, centering on Adam Eddington, a marine biology student who travels to an island off the coast of Portugal for a summer job in Dr. Calvin O’Keefe’s lab, it takes place between The Moon by Night and the next Austin book, The Young Unicorns, and introduces two characters (Adam and Canon Tallis) who will reappear in later Austin novels. Confused yet? L’Engle’s refusal to write in straightforward sequence is admittedly why I missed out on so many of these books as a kid, and the rich intertextual entanglements are why I’m so excited to be tackling them all now. But I think The Arm of the Starfish would work pretty well as a one-off read too, if you’re so inclined.

While Starfish doesn’t have the magical elements I loved in the Time Quartet, it definitely has 100% more battle-between-good-and-evil drama than the first two Austin books. You could call it science fiction, since the confrontation is waged over Dr. O’Keefe’s scientific discoveries (concerning the properties of the titular sea creature), which are based in reality but definitely fantastical in scope, but it functions more as a thriller, full of international intrigue—kidnapping, spying, secret documents, covert meetings, exotic locales…In fact, although it’s intended to take place in an unknown future, the book was written in 1965 and has very much the atmosphere of an early James Bond film. My only complaints are as follows:

• Adam takes a frustratingly long time to choose sides, despite the fact that the mysterious lady who attempts to seduce him into helping her is such an obvious Bond-girl type—(a) her name is Kali, (b) her father is a powerful diplomat named Typhon Cutter, who resembles a spider and accuses his rivals of being in league with the communists—classic villain material, and (c) she pulls that old familiar “Oh, I want to be redeemed, save me from my evil self” crap a lot. (I don’t usually picture book characters this specifically, but I kept vividly envisioning her as being played by Rosamund Pike for some reason.) I know the point is that Adam is trying to be rational and that his decision to align himself with the O’Keefes is something of a spiritual journey, but the other side was just SO OBVIOUSLY EVIL that I occasionally wanted to slap him and tell him to snap out of it.

• It’s definitely interesting to see Meg and Calvin as adults with kids of their own, but having known and loved Meg as the main character of several books with Calvin in a supporting role, it’s a little hard to see Calvin as the pivotal figure and Meg barely present. We know that she’s very beautiful and a loving mother of seven (!) children, but other than that, she’s a mere shadow of her rad teenage self. (This is much like reading Little Men et al and finding rebellious Jo March converted to a wise matriarch.) I would have liked this book to have more Meg.

• Although Starfish is written in the third person, it’s definitely third-person limited from Adam’s point of view, so L’Engle’s habit of using “the boy” as a synonym for his name (“The boy worried about what he would do…”) seems really clunky and jarring.

Beyond those minor quibbles, however, this book was full of the kind of intelligent excitement I’ve come to expect from L’Engle—a singular mix of elements that would be crazypants in anyone else’s hands (Human limb regeneration! Telepathic dolphins!) with lovably grounded, realistic characters (most notably the eldest O’Keefe child, Polly, who will feature prominently in later books) and sweeping moral struggles.