“The Wonder” By Emma Donahue
“The Wonder” By Emma Donahue
One review described this book as, ‘Absorbing, truthful, beautiful’. Another as, ‘Powerful, compulsively readable.’ One member of our book-club described it as – ‘Dark, dismal, disturbing.’
It is fair to say that most of us found the book compulsively readable rather than beautiful!
The story is set in post-famine Ireland and follows an English nurse, Lib and an Irish nun who have been commissioned to watch over, rather than ‘nurse’, a supposedly miraculous 11-year-old girl, Anna, who has survived without sustenance for four months. It appears that certain local people wish to claim her as some kind of miracle. Lib and the nun are to provide independent evidence. There is an unexpected ending to the story.
As with Emma Donahue’s most famous novel, ‘Room’, most of this story is set in one dark room in Anna’s house and indeed the impression of most of the novel is of darkness; the bedroom, the weather, the peat, the lack of artificial light – an old lamp has to be requested in order to ensure surveillance during the night as well as the day.
A film has been made of the story, and this too gives an impression of general darkness in the way it was filmed.
The story is perhaps most about faith versus science and certainly generated a very lively discussion on many fronts. Overall, the group scored it at 7.