Donoghue has written, with crackling intensity, about power to destroy - Stephen King * New York Times Book Review *Ī riveting allegory about the trickle-down effect of trauma * Vogue *ĭonoghue mines material that on the face of it appears intractably bleak and surfaces with a powerful, compulsively readable work of fiction * Irish Times * Heartbreaking and transcendent and almost religious in itself - Sarah Lyall * New York Times *Ī fine, fact-based historical novel, an old-school page turner. Like The Turn of the Screw, the novel opens irresistibly, when a young woman with a troubled past gets an enigmatic posting in a remote place. Must we depend on Divine intervention or will one woman’s courage to abandon her career, her heart and perhaps her soul save the child? The Wonder proves itself to be a feast for any reader.Emma Donoghue's writing is superb alchemy, changing innocence into horror and horror into tenderness - Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wifeįascinating. The reader feels helpless, conflicted, hopeful and resigned all at the same time. Lib is desperate to save the child, who has become more than a patient to her, but how?Īs she did in her novel Room, Donoghue builds the tension to a breaking point. She is displaying acute symptoms of starvation: loss of hair, bleeding gums, peach fuzz on her face, bruises, and jaundice. She remains aloof and clinical throughout the first week, but suddenly Anna begins to fail.
Lib considers herself superbly trained and superior to the superstitious, ignorant Irish. The other is Elizabeth (Lib) Wright, an Anglican Englishwoman who trained with Florence Nightingale and served with her in the Crimea. One nurse is Sister Michael from the House of Mercy. A commission hires two nurses for two weeks to sit with Anna and record all that they see. Others in the community suspect chicanery by the family or the Church because no person could live so long without someone sneaking her food. Word of Anna’s fast spreads wide and far so pilgrims and townsfolk come to the O’Donnell’s cabin to pray with and meet a “future” saint and gladly leave donations in a box by the door. Once she has accepted the host, she refuses to eat any food for four months claiming that God is providing her with ‘manna’. Eleven year old Anna O’Donnell celebrates her first communion in April.
The novel is set in 1859 in the Irish hamlet of Athlone. It is a story riddled with secrets, superstitions, faith, rituals, myth and tradition. Room author, Emma Donoghue, returns with her new novel The Wonder, a historical novel with a premise which is equally interesting and extremely atmospheric.
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