The Love Letters

Madeleine L’Engle’s The Love Letters (1967) weaves together two stories: one from today, and one from yesterday. Charlotte Napier, fleeing to her mentor (and mother-in-law) in Portugal to rethink her troubled marriage, comes upon a book that relates the inner turmoil of a woman in similar straits centuries earlier. In reading The Letters of a Portuguese Nun, Charlotte Napier meets Mariana Alcoforado, a 17th-century nun seduced by a French soldier whose spiritual journey sheds light on Charlotte’s crisis.

Those familiar with L’Engle will feel at home in the thematic territory of The Love Letters. Life hurts but the pain can be redeemed through love. We are bound together in the human experience. God’s ways are mysterious and unexpected, but ultimately trustworthy. The making of art brings order to experience, but it has integrity only if the artist balances between discipline and inspiration. There are some common character types and plot details, too.

I was interested enough to stay engaged in this novel all the way to the last page. L’Engle keeps us in suspense about the details of Charlotte’s personal struggle until close to the end, and she manages the counterpoint between present and past points of view smoothly. But I don’t think this will go on my favorites list. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t strike me as substantially different from The Small Rain or A Severed Wasp.