Editors Reads Verdict
The third Murry family novel is L'Engle's most ambitious structural experiment, weaving multiple timelines and historical periods into a meditation on how individual choices ripple forward through generations. Gaudior the unicorn and the time-travel mechanism are among the series' most inventive creations.
What We Loved
- The multi-timeline structure is ambitious and largely successful, creating genuine narrative complexity
- The exploration of how one person's choice can determine descendants' fates is philosophically rich
- Gaudior is a memorable and genuinely alien presence despite — or because of — being a unicorn
Minor Drawbacks
- The multiple historical periods can be difficult to track without careful attention
- Meg's role is reduced to a supporting observer, which diminishes her relative to the earlier books
Key Takeaways
- → Individual choices carry moral weight that extends through generations beyond what we can foresee
- → History is not inevitable — small moments of human decision create the world we inherit
- → The rune of St. Patrick encodes a vision of creation as community that protects against isolation
| Author | Madeleine L'Engle |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Laurel Leaf |
| Pages | 278 |
| Published | January 1, 1978 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fantasy |
A Swiftly Tilting Planet Review
Published in 1978, A Swiftly Tilting Planet won the American Book Award for Children’s Books and represents L’Engle’s most structurally complex work in the Time Quintet. The familiar Murry family Thanksgiving dinner is interrupted by news that a South American dictator, Mad Dog Branzillo, is poised to start a nuclear war. Charles Wallace, now fifteen, is sent by the creature Mrs. Whatsit into time travel on the back of Gaudior, a unicorn of another order of being, to find the moment where Branzillo’s fate diverged toward violence — and change it.
The mechanism of the novel — Charles Wallace “going Within” historical figures across multiple time periods, experiencing their lives from inside, looking for the critical moment — is L’Engle’s most inventive structural device. The time periods range from pre-colonial America through the Welsh settlement of the continent, and each period contains a version of the same family, with the same faces recurring across centuries as different people make different choices. The argument embedded in this structure is one of L’Engle’s most sustained: that what we are is partially what our ancestors chose to be, and that one person’s decision for good or ill creates a world.
Gaudior is among the Time Quintet’s finest creations — emphatically not a fairy-tale unicorn but a creature of another kind of existence entirely, communicating in a language that is itself a form of music, bearing Charles Wallace through time on breath that is not human breath. The unicorn’s combination of great power and genuine vulnerability gives the relationship between them unexpected emotional weight.
Meg participates through kything — telepathic presence across the distance — which reduces her to an observer rather than an actor. This is the novel’s most significant limitation: the character who carried the first two books is largely passive here. But Charles Wallace, who had always been the more mysterious of the siblings, comes fully into his own, and the novel’s meditation on how the past shapes the future has a gravity that earns the book’s ambitions.
Our rating: 4.1/5
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" about?
Charles Wallace, now fifteen, travels through time on the back of the unicorn Gaudior to change the course of history and prevent a nuclear war, while Meg participates from a distance through kything — a form of telepathic sharing.
What are the key takeaways from "A Swiftly Tilting Planet"?
Individual choices carry moral weight that extends through generations beyond what we can foresee History is not inevitable — small moments of human decision create the world we inherit The rune of St. Patrick encodes a vision of creation as community that protects against isolation
Is "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" worth reading?
The third Murry family novel is L'Engle's most ambitious structural experiment, weaving multiple timelines and historical periods into a meditation on how individual choices ripple forward through generations. Gaudior the unicorn and the time-travel mechanism are among the series' most inventive creations.
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