 First edition | |
| Author | Madeleine L'Engle |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Camilla Dickinson |
| Genre | Young Adult |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Publication date | 1951 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback, Paperback) |
| Pages | 245 pages (Hardback) |
| Followed by | A Live Coal in the Sea |
Camilla Dickinson is a 1951 novel by Madeleine L'Engle about the first romance of two teenagers from dysfunctional families in New York City. In 1965, it was republished in slightly different form under the title Camilla.
Fifteen-year-old Camilla Dickinson narrates an important period of her life spanning approximately three weeks in November 1950. Camilla lives on Park Avenue in New York City with her wealthy parents Rose, who is beautiful yet irresponsible and overdramatic, and Rafferty, a stern, responsible architect. The quiet, thoughtful and undramatic Camilla dreams of becoming an astronomer, but must deal with the constant ups and downs of her parents' troubled marriage. Rose has begun an affair with a man named Jacques, which Camilla accidentally discovers when she walks in on Rose and Jacques kissing. Rose begs Camilla to keep it a secret, but Rafferty wants Camilla to be honest and tell him the truth. Rose and Rafferty fight, and Rose ends up attempting suicide, which has the desired effect of bringing Rafferty back to her. Camilla is torn between her loyalty to both parents, and begins to realize they are very imperfect people. She also has difficulty dealing with her feelings towards her parents, and initially does not want to discuss her situation with anyone outside the family.
Camilla's new best friend, Luisa Rowan, has parents with a similarly dysfunctional marriage who fight constantly and seem likely to get a divorce. In contrast to Camilla, Luisa's family is not affluent, she lives in Greenwich Village with bohemian parents, and she is more open to discussing her family problems. Luisa aspires to become a psychiatrist and at one point attempts to psychoanalyze Camilla.
Camilla then meets and befriends Frank, Luisa's older brother. Frank understands Camilla's problems and assists her in accepting her parents' flaws. Frank encourages Camilla to define herself, not by her family, but to define herself as who she truly is. Frank also takes the sheltered Camilla to see people and places that she has never experienced before, including visiting a young, disabled war veteran who ends up giving Camilla her first kiss. Frank and Camilla have deep conversations about life, religion, philosophy, growing up, and dealing with difficult situations, and the pair begin to form a romantic attachment, much to the chagrin of Luisa. Despite Luisa's anger, Camilla feels that Frank is the one person she can really talk to.
Just as Camilla is getting comfortable with the way things are, everything changes again. Frank and Luisa's parents break up, and Frank is forced to suddenly move away with his father, without even telling Camilla goodbye in person. Camilla's parents decide to work on their marriage and go on a European vacation together, sending Camilla to boarding school while they're gone. While Camilla is heartbroken by the loss of her closest relationships, she uses the inner strength she has gained in the past weeks to deal with the changes in her life.
Spirituality is a major theme found with Camilla and many other of Madeleine L'Engle's works. As Camilla continues to grow, explore, and experience life, she is beginning to further question and seek to understand God. The reader sees Camilla go talk to and discuss God with different individuals all throughout the story. Some, like Camilla's dear friend Luisa claim there is no God, yet desire to believe there is one. Camilla discusses her different views with Frank and together they work through their own understanding and how to deal with the empty pieties of their elders.
Families play a vital role. They influence the way that Camilla and her peers (specifically Luisa and Frank) view love and family. The Stephanowskis bring hope back the story when the reader sees their family and their relationships with each other. This brings hope to Camilla and Frank as well. L'engle shows how important families are in building and creating a person's views on the world and themselves, but also the work that it takes to be a family because it is not one mass thinking unanimously. These are individuals with individual thoughts and ideas coming together to try and work as one in the best way that they can. There is a lot of forgiving and understanding that goes on.
Throughout the novel Camilla starts out as this naive sheltered child, but as the story progresses, she moves from her innocent state as she experiences and discovers the world around her. Part of growing up is moving away from the protection and sheltered-ness that comes with innocence. Yet, her move from innocence doesn't feel unnatural or bad, it is merely part of growing up and becoming an adult. It is normal for a teenager to begin to look at the world and see new things and ask different questions, it is normal to begin seeking new experiences and gaining new understandings of past experiences. That move out of innocence is normal and while it may seem to have disappeared all at once, does draw away gradually until suddenly it seems, it is no longer there.
Individualism is another major element of this story. Camilla is seeking to find herself as she experiences a loss of innocence and begins to really explore the world around her. She is impressed by many different opinions and ideas, she is pulled in different directions by her parents. At the beginning of the novel there is a great feeling of overwhelmed that comes from Camilla, but as the story progresses and she begins of find what she is really interested in and believes in, her footing becomes more solid. But this individualism isn't just seen with Camilla, it is why all the characters struggle the way that they do. Rose Dickinson is feeling the loss of her beauty with age, and it scares her because that is such a large part of her identity and foundation of who she is, what is she without it? Rafferty is strong and stiff, it is not part of him to show the same affection that Rose wants. Part of coming into individuality is learning to work with others in their individualism. As the end of the story comes, the reader sees this more blatantly.
An adaptation of the novel was made into a film written and directed by Cornelia Moore, featuring Adelaide Clemens as Camilla Dickinson, Gregg Sulkin as Frank Rowan, Cary Elwes as Rafferty and Samantha Mathis as Rose. [1] The project began filming in Spokane, Washington in mid-November 2010. [2]
The film premiered on May 20, 2012 at Seattle International Film Festival. [3]
In 1996, L'Engle published a sequel to Camilla Dickinson entitled A Live Coal in the Sea , in which Camilla, now a grandmother and a renowned astronomer, tells the story of her life to her granddaughter. The Dickinson parents and the Rowans also appear in the sequel. Rose Dickinson continues her promiscuous and irresponsible behavior; Camilla and Frank Rowan (who becomes a publisher) are shown to have later resumed their friendship, but not their romantic relationship, and they marry other people.
Frank Rowan appears very briefly in L'Engle's 1984 novel A House Like a Lotus , as a publisher in Istanbul whose wife was killed in an automobile accident, in which he also lost one leg.
Madeleine L'Engle was an American writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and young adult fiction, including A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. Her works reflect both her Christian faith and her strong interest in modern science.
A Wrinkle in Time is a young adult science fantasy novel written by American author Madeleine L'Engle. First published in 1962, the book won the Newbery Medal, the Sequoyah Book Award, the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award, and was runner-up for the Hans Christian Andersen Award. The main characters – Meg Murry, Charles Wallace Murry, and Calvin O'Keefe – embark on a journey through space and time, from galaxy to galaxy, as they endeavor to rescue the Murrys' father and fight back The Black Thing that has intruded into several worlds.
Many Waters is a 1986 novel by American writer Madeleine L'Engle, part of the author's Time Quintet. The title is taken from the Song of Solomon 8:7: "Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. If a man were to give all his wealth for love, it would be utterly scorned."
A Wind in the Door is a young adult science fantasy novel by Madeleine L'Engle. It is a companion book to A Wrinkle in Time and part of the Time Quintet.
A Swiftly Tilting Planet is a science fiction novel by Madeleine L'Engle, the third book in the Time Quintet. It was first published in 1978 with cover art by Diane Dillon.
"It was a dark and stormy night" is an often-mocked and parodied phrase considered to represent "the archetypal example of a florid, melodramatic style of fiction writing", also known as purple prose.
A Ring of Endless Light is a 1980 novel by Madeleine L'Engle. The book tells of teenager Vicky Austin and her struggle to understand life and significance in the universe as she deals with her dying grandfather, while at the same time finding true romantic love. The title originates from a phrase in the seventeenth-century Welsh poet Henry Vaughan's poem "The World."
The Arm of the Starfish is a young adult novel by Madeleine L'Engle, first published in 1965. It is the first novel featuring Polly O'Keefe and the O'Keefe family, a generation after the events of A Wrinkle in Time (1962). The plot concerning advanced regeneration research puts this novel in the science fiction genre, but it could also be described as a mystery thriller.
A Ring of Endless Light is a 2002 Disney Channel Original Movie based on the Madeleine L'Engle book of the same name filmed on location in Australia, and starring Mischa Barton in the main lead role. In the U.S., it was aired on August 23, 2002.
Meet the Austins is the title of a 1960 novel by Madeleine L'Engle, the first of her books about the Austin family. It introduces the characters Vicky Austin and her three siblings, and Maggy Hamilton, an orphan.
Victoria "Vicky" Austin is one of Madeleine L'Engle's frequently used fictional characters, appearing in eight books and referred to in at least one more. She is the protagonist of the Austin family series of books being the first person narrator of Meet the Austins, The Moon by Night, A Ring of Endless Light, Troubling a Star, and the picture book The Twenty-Four Days Before Christmas. A developing poet and writer, Vicky observes the everyday events in her large family, dates several boys, communicates with dolphins, faces the occasional mortal danger, and reflects on important issues about life and death, faith and family as she gradually comes of age.
The Moon by Night (ISBN 0-374-35049-3) is the title of a young adult novel by Madeleine L'Engle. Published in 1963, it is the second novel about Vicky Austin and her family, taking place between the events of Meet the Austins (1960) and The Young Unicorns (1968), and more or less concurrently with the O'Keefe family novel The Arm of the Starfish. The book marks the first appearance of the character Zachary Gray, who dates first Vicky and then Polly O'Keefe. Although Vicky will later appear in three novels that have fantasy and/or science fiction themes, there are no such elements in The Moon By Night.
The Young Unicorns (1968), ISBN 0-374-38778-8) is the title of a young adult suspense novel by American writer Madeleine L'Engle. It is the third novel about the Austin family, taking place between the events of The Moon by Night (1963) and A Ring of Endless Light (1980). Unlike those two novels and Meet the Austins (1960), it does not center on Vicky Austin specifically, but on a family friend, Josiah "Dave" Davidson.
The Small Rain is a semi-autobiographical novel by Madeleine L'Engle, about the many difficulties in the life of talented pianist Katherine Forrester between the ages of 10 and 19. Published in 1945 by the Vanguard Press, it was the first of L'Engle's long list of books, and was reprinted in 1984. L'Engle began work on it in college, and completed it while an actress in New York.
A Severed Wasp (1982) is a novel by Madeleine L'Engle. It continues the story of a pianist, Katherine Forrester, who was first seen in The Small Rain. Now a widow in her seventies, Katherine Forrester Vigneras returns to New York City in retirement from concert touring in Europe. There she encounters Felix Bodeway, an old friend from her Greenwich Village days, who is now the retired Episcopal Bishop of New York. He asks Katherine to give a benefit concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It turns out to be an unexpected challenge, full of new friends and mysterious dangers.
Madeleine L'Engle, an American novelist, diarist and poet, produced over twenty novels, beginning with The Small Rain (1945), and continuing into the 1990s with A Live Coal in the Sea (1996). Many of her fictional characters appeared in more than one novel, sometimes in more than one series of novels. Other major characters are the protagonists of a single title. This article provides information about L'Engle's most notable characters.
Madeleine L'Engle has published more than fifty books, including twenty-three novels, virtually all of them interconnected by recurring characters and locales. In particular, L'Engle's three major series have a consistent geography, including a number of significant fictional locations. These generally fall into two categories:
And Both Were Young is a novel by Madeleine L'Engle originally published in 1949. It tells the story of an American girl at boarding school in Switzerland, not long after World War II, and the relationship she develops with a French boy she meets there, who cannot remember his past due to trauma he suffered in the war.
Adelaide Clemens is an Australian actress. She was nominated for a Logie Award in 2008 for her role in the television series Love My Way. In 2012, she played Valentine Wannop in BBC's television miniseries adaptation Parade's End. In Hollywood, Clemens has appeared in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Great Gatsby, and starred in Silent Hill: Revelation 3D. From 2013 to 2016, she starred in the television series Rectify.
A Live Coal in the Sea, written by Madeleine L'Engle and published in 1996, is the sequel to Camilla Dickinson, one of L'Engle's earliest novels. While Camilla Dickinson was written for a young adult audience, A Live Coal in the Sea is an adult novel. It continues the story of Camilla Dickinson as a college student, her marriage, her family and the problems that follow. The story is told by an aged Camilla to her granddaughter, who is seeking answers about her family.