The Austins

[ceebeegee]

I don't know who's read the Austin Family books, but they're a series of books by Madeleine L'Engle, who also wrote the A Wrinkle in Time books. The Austins are this "normal" family that lives in a farmhouse in a small town in Connecticut--the father is a GP and the mother is a homemaker. There are 4 kids--John (over-achiever who ends up at MIT), Vicky (sensitive, literary/artistic type from whose point of view most of the series is written), Suzy (interesting stereotype exploder, especially for the '60s when the book is written--she's very conventionally pretty, with blonde curls and blue eyes, and extremely intelligent in a very technical way, and wants to be a doctor) and Rob, who's the "wise child" type a la Charles Wallace, although Rob doesn't have any special abilities as CW does. There are 3 books in the regular series, Meet the Austins, The Moon By Night and A Ring of Endless Light, and a fourth, The Young Unicorns, which is not written from Vicky's POV and is basically a thriller, that takes place between the second and third book. I guess my favorite is Ring which is a very touching story, and there's great character development with Vicky and Zachary Grey, a guy who's interested in her. But Unicorns is fascinating as well, if completely unbelievable--you really get a sense of what NYC (the family relocates there for a year) was like in the late '60s, how out of control it was. Plus there's a lot of action at St. John's Cathedral, which is cool. I'd love it if they adapted it, although it's kind of dated now.

Anyway, I was thinking that melebeth is kind of like a grown-up Vicky, plus the acting (I can't imagine Vicky ever performing). Vicky all grown up and grounded and funny and writing poetry. Take that as a compliment, Elizabeth :)