Speaking of Madeleine L'Engle....

[jenk]

I found an online copy of the 2004 New Yorker profile of Madeleine L'Engle. In some ways it was a bit shocking to see that many members of L'Engle's family disagree with her memoirs.

L'Engle's family habitually refer to all her memoirs as "pure fiction," and, conversely, consider her novels to be the most autobiographical — though to them equally invasive — of her books.

I'd wondered from where in L'Engle's experience she drew the various serial wives of Certain Women or the arrangements in A Severed Wasp. Not that she can't make things up, mind, she certainly does, but ... there are things that experience vastly helps with.