A CIRCLE OF QUIET

My special place is a small brook in a green glade, a circle of quiet from which there is no visible sign of human beings." It's in Crosswicks, the New England summer home where the author, now 51, spends the summers with her family extending up one generation and down two. This memoir, of sorts, or rather meditation, is addressed to her "dear ones" and "librarians, teachers and students." It might also find some of the Anne Morrow Lindbergh readership — those who don't recoil from the open heartstring encounter. There is the recurrent theme of ontology — "To Be" — during this summer when she learned the meaning of the word and she spends a fair amount of time illuminating her "inner essential self." She also writes about writing; about children — hers and others; about her own failure during the years of her thirties followed by her success (Wrinkle of Time); most of all she is providing "glimpses on the other side of intellect" — of love, creativity, awareness, joy, compassion. These are all immanent qualities to be cultivated particularly when so threatened in the world outside her circle of quiet, but serenity comes hard in this ambit of ever "joyful" beatification.