THE IRRATIONAL SEASON

To those who, for starters, don't mind the notion of a book that tapped its author on the shoulder and said "Write me," this highly personal walk through the Christian year might be uplifting. Madeleine L'Engle's method is to offer a kernel of meaning for each season ("unity in diversity," for example, in the case of Trinity), fleshing it out very loosely with poems and anecdotes from her own life. Her style is heavily with us in every sentence, though, and some rather stiff social values also obtrude ("I sympathize with experiments in communes, but any time we try to go back to the Garden it can mean being led by a Manson"). For readers who'd tire of the repeated image "nightside and sunside" (intuition and intellect), who couldn't thrill to "daisies and dynasties, starfish and stars" or keep anguishing over "slums and battlefields and insane asylums," suffocation warnings are posted.