Dragons in the Waters

Madeleine L'Engle's 1976 novel Dragons in the Waters was another find from City Basement Books. I looked at it quickly and it didn't ring a bell, so I was pretty sure I hadn't read it before. And it didn't ring a bell as I was reading it, either. But lo and behold, when I went to file it on my bookshelf, what should I discover but... another copy of Dragons in the Waters! Oh, dear. I'm not sure when I first acquired it, but it must have been a long time ago, and it seemingly made No Impression Whatsoever on my reading brain.

You would think it would be memorable, because it involves a ship sailing to Venezuela (I paid extra attention to that because Venezuela is in the news at the moment -- and particularly because the plot line concerned smuggling, which is the issue that Trump is objecting to). It also centres on a stolen portrait, an idyllic indigenous community, a flawed white explorer... This makes me think that this book might have stayed with me more securely if I'd read it more recently, because it does deal with subject matter in which I now take a keener interest than I did say, fifteen years ago. Not saying that I necessarily agree with the way that L'Engle handled those topics, but I certainly had opinions about them.