2.5/5 0814903517
Note: this book is an excerpt of L'Engle's first book The Small Rain, and was reissued for teenagers (the original is an adult novel).
The author tells the story of Katherine Forrester, an imaginative and intensely creative young American girl who yearns to become a concert pianist, as was her mother. As she learns how to accept the conflicts of her unorthodox home life and then her fellow students in a boarding school in Switzerland, we follow Katherine through all the torment, loneliness, and adorations and passions of a fifteen-year-old girl as she tries to realize her ambitions in the tumultuous world of the arts and make her own way to maturity. Prelude by Madeleine LEngle
I bought Prelude at a book sale, not realizing it was a variation of A Small Rain, which I had already read. But I read it again, as I could never get enough L'Engle. 0814903517 I had read The Small Rain a long time ago but realized I had not read this version of it. But now I have to reread The Small Rain. :) 0814903517 It's really a 5 star story, but for one small problem.
It is an abridged version of The Small Rain.
There is a scene in The Small Rain in which our protagonist complains bitterly about being given books to read that have been abridged to ostensibly make them more appropriate for teen readers.
This is exactly that kind of book... but that scene got edited out! 0814903517 I have enjoyed all of this author's books that I previously read, but this one, not so much. Never could quite get a good reading of a plot, didn't like the characters much either. 0814903517 Thought provoking and heartbreaking, just like all her books. 0814903517
