A Ring of Endless Light by Madeleine L'engle

One of the things I love about Madeleine L'Engle's books in general is the way characters from one book will pop up in another. A Ring of Endless Light is no exception, featuring characters who skip between both of the main series - the Austin family, which A Ring of Endless Light belongs to, and the O'Keefe family. One of these characters, Zachary Grey, comments in a later book, An Acceptable Time, upon the events of A Ring of Endless Light:

"Listen. Once I was with a girl I really liked. Her grandfather was sick, dying, really, and we went to the hospital to get blood for him, and she was upset, of course, really upset. And there was a little kid she knew there, and the little kid was having a seizure - well, Polly, the thing is that I really don't know what happened because I ran out on it."..."I ran away. I couldn't take it. I got into my car and drove off. I just left her."

The girl Zachary ran out on is Vicky Austin, the main character in A Ring of Endless Light. The book tells the story of a particularly difficult summer in her life - it starts with the funeral of a family friend, ends with the death of the little girl; her grandfather is dying; of the dolphins she is working with, a pup is stillborn; and Zachary Grey himself is coping with his own mother's death, and his own impeding death of heart failure, which has lent him suicidal tendencies.

The book is about learning to cope with death, and to see the good as well as the bad in the world, and it is with the little girl's death at the end of the book that Vicky has a breakdown.

"And Binnie was dead and I couldn't accept the gift. It was outside the ring of endless light. Or perhaps I was caught within it, caught in a black hole in the centre, a singularity where no light would ever come, a place of annihilation." "'Empty yourself, Vicky. You're all replete with very thee.' No, no. Not with me. With darkness." Vicky will not listen to her family and friends when they tell her not to let knowledge of death destroy her, and at the end of the book they take her to the ocean, to swim with the dolphin pod, and when the presence of their joy will not bring her from her self-absorption - "Suddenly she rose so her flipper was raised, and then she brought it down, wham, on my backside". It works. So the message is this: to keep 'the gift of laughter' no matter what life serves you, to leave yourself open to love.

It is this theme of positivity that I love in the book. It’s one that affects me, that I can learn from and feel safe in the hope that it gives. The characters aren’t necessarily good or bad, they are just human, and part of Vicky’s journey is accepting their humanity, just as she must learn to accept the inevitability of their death. The whole book works towards this particular journey in Vicky’s life, and in that, helps you understand it in your own.