fic rec: L'Engle story, curiously familiar setting

[psocoptera]

How like a winter hath my absence been by hesychasm, 5500 words, Vicky Austin/Adam Eddington in Vicky's first year of college, an unnamed Pennsylvania campus that I suspect will also seem very familiar to those of y'all who went to school where I did. (Seriously, this is worth reading just for the pleasant weirdness of characters walking around where you used to live, although it's also a lovely Vicky/Adam piece.)

Comments

[gannet.livejournal.com]

I think you must be right about the campus. And it is a lovely story. Also, I can picture Vicky going to school there.

[mst3kforall.livejournal.com]

That's inspired by the Madeleine L'Engle books, right? I may have to give it a try.

[mst3kforall.livejournal.com]

Just followed the link, where they answer my question in the affirmative

[irilyth]

Huh! Do we know this person?

[ccommack]

They would have to be a current student or very recent alum, since they describe a building layout that has only existed in the last five years or so.

So, of the L'Engle I've read, which is admittedly not very much, one of the things I enjoyed is that there's very little that indicates when the events are taking place, any more precisely than "latter half of the 20th Century". I mean, you can pick up that society has deployed television but not the internet, but beyond that, things like the houses and the trees are just described as old, in a way that renders them equally old in 1960 as in 1990. (People who are actually from New England might pick up on temporal clues that 12-year-old Midwestern me failed to catch, of course.) It gave the stories a weird sort of simultaneous presence/timelessness. So, while psocoptera is being jarred by having the characters appear in a real place, I'm having similar difficulties with the characters appearing in a real time. Heh, go figure. :-)

[mst3kforall.livejournal.com]

I found it slightly surprising and quite enjoyable to find the characters in a place I knew, and in the current time (and also in some of the ways the author's style did remind me of L'Engle). Haha, this was the kind of "updating" that the (in my opinion execrable) attempt at Wrinkle in Time failed to do correctly (and the other one, casting Mischa Barton was just the first mistake of many. At least Katie Stuart had the right kind of spunk and intelligence for Meg, if not directed badly)

Which dorm was Vicky in? I couldn't tell.

[irilyth]

> Which dorm was Vicky in? I couldn't tell.

It sounded to me like a co-ed version of Parrish, which I'm guessing is one of the things ccommack was talking about as a recent change. (Although there may be others too.)

[ccommack]

I also thought it was Parrish, although I thought it was just eliding over the fact that the two connected sides are or are not considered the same hall, depending on context. The mail room is definitely post-2006.

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Heh, interesting point about the time setting. It did feel somewhat unplaced-in-time to me, as there's a mention of a hall phone, but also desk phones, but no cellphones or email; I could totally buy it as being in the past but with the present-day mailroom.

[kelilah.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what started confusing me. And you can't see the belltower from the dining hall, unless you're on the patio; all the windows are on the other three sides that face away. So that was jarring. ...ah, the author mentions that she played around with the details. The dorm was definitely Parrish; that description was a perfect one of my freshman year room. And I don't think there's any other dorm that fits that description.