A Severed Wasp
| Author | Madeleine L'Engle |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Muriel Nasser |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Katherine Forrester |
| Genre | Suspense novel |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus & Giroux |
|
Publication date
|
1982 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 388 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 8805735 |
| 813/.54 19 | |
| LC Class | PS3523.E55 S4 1982 |
| Preceded by | The Small Rain |
A Severed Wasp (1982) is a novel by Madeleine L'Engle. It continues the story of a pianist, Katherine Forrester, who was first seen in The Small Rain. Now a widow in her seventies, Katherine Forrester Vigneras returns to New York City in retirement from concert touring in Europe. There she encounters Felix Bodeway, an old friend from her Greenwich Village days, who is now the retired Episcopal Bishop of New York. He asks Katherine to give a benefit concert at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It turns out to be an unexpected challenge, full of new friends and mysterious dangers.
During the novel Katherine is befriended by several recurring characters from other L'Engle novels, including Mimi Oppenheimer from A Winter's Love, Josiah "Dave" Davidson from The Young Unicorns, and Suzy Austin (now Dr. Suzy Davidson) from the Austin family series (which L'Engle called her "Chronos" novels).
The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, which figures prominently in the plot of A Severed Wasp, is also the setting for the 1968 L'Engle novel The Young Unicorns. The author herself was librarian and writer-in-residence at the same cathedral for several decades.
This story takes place last in the L'Engle canon of "Kairos" and "Chronos" stories, as it features the adult Suzy Austin and the adult Josiah Davidson. No novel published after A Severed Wasp took place during or after the events of this one.
Mimi Oppenheimer from A Winter's Love and Suzy Austin Davidson and Josiah "Dave" Davidson from the Chronos series (Austin family series) all appear in A Severed Wasp.
In addition, Philippa "Flip" Hunter, the protagonist of the early L'Engle novel And Both Were Young, is mentioned repeatedly in A Severed Wasp as a successful and respected artist, who painted a portrait decades earlier of Katherine Vigneras with her young son. The story of Flip, a talented artist who in her youth was initially miserable at a Swiss boarding school (as recounted in And Both Were Young), closely parallels that of Katherine Forrester (later Vigneras) in The Small Rain, and loosely parallels L'Engle's own experiences in boarding school.
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