Recommended Book: Two-Part Invention
By: Madeleine L’Engle
two-part invention
By: madeleine l’engle
ISBN: 978-0062505019
QUESTIONS EXPLORED:
- What does love look like in the everyday give and take of life?
- How can we navigate life with resilience and courage?
- What might balancing life and work look like for an artist?
WHAT I LOVE:
As an artist, I can become overly focused on my projects. When this happens, I forget the most beautiful creation I’m making … my creative life. Two-Part Invention reminds me that our responsibility and privilege as artists is to live life meaningfully and with intention. While this book always makes me cry, it also brings me great joy. I read it regularly. Each time, it helps me become a better wife, friend, mentor, and writer.
PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION:
A long-term marriage has to move beyond chemistry to compatibility, to friendship, to companionship.
As Newbery Medal winner Madeleine L’Engle describes a relationship characterized by compassion, respect, and growth, as well as challenge and conflict, she beautifully evokes the life she and her husband, actor Hugh Franklin, built and the family they cherished.
Beginning with their very different childhoods, L’Engle chronicles the twists and turns that led two young artists to New York City in the 1940s, where they were both pursuing careers in theater. While working on a production of Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, they sparked a connection that would endure until Franklin’s death in 1986. L’Engle recalls years spent raising their children at Crosswicks, the Connecticut farmhouse that became an icon of family, and the support she and her husband drew from each other as artists struggling—separately and together—to find both professional and personal fulfillment.
At once heartfelt and heartbreaking, Two-Part Invention is L’Engle’s most personal work—the revelation of a marriage and the exploration of intertwined lives inevitably marked by love and loss.
