Madeleine L'Engle, Many Waters. Square Fish.
It's amazing when a cover can throw in all the crucial elements of the story. And I love the illustration style.
I first encountered this book when I was a teenager. It was not my normal reading choice at all. I was in my Agatha Christie phase, I think. But I was sick at home and my dad was going to the library and I asked him (fretfully and in the self-pitying way one has when one is sick) to find some interesting books for me.
Many Waters was one of them. I remember looking at it dubiously. The library book cover was a beige-yellow and had a couple of ribbons of blue. Not my kind of book at all.
But I was sick, bored and started reading it reluctantly - and got totally suckered in. Twins who travel back in time to just before the time of Noah's Ark and the flood - a time when angels, seraphim and nephilim, walked among people. A beautiful, layered and complex story.
I never forgot the story or the title and was very excited when I found it looking glossy and new in a second-hand bookshop.
But there's a bit more to the story. Cut through to the next post.
