The Wonder / Emma Donoghue

In a humble house, in a rural part of Ireland, lives a girl said to have eaten not a crumb for the past four months. A committee of eminent locals calls upon two women to closely observe Anna O'Donnell and present their report on this "miracle": Lib Wright, a widowed English nurse who trained under Florence Nightingale and worked under her during the Crimean War, and Sister Michael, a nun with extensive nursing experience.

Over the course of this two-week vigil, Lib remains under the reader's eyes at all times, in exactly the same way as she is required to follow Anna's every move when on duty. Her war experience has given her a high opinion of herself and her profession, yet her mind has remained closed to much of the world. She can neither understand nor respect the Irish and their deep piety, constantly perceiving duplicitous intentions behind their words and actions. She's fully confident that she'll quickly expose the O'Donnells' preposterous fraud.

To this end, Lib implements immediate measures, confining Anna to her bedroom, prohibiting all but the briefest physical contacts with her parents, and forbidding all visits from "pilgrims" to the home of this miraculous child. She can barely conceal her scorn for Mrs. O'Donnell and her twice-daily demonstrations of feigned affection towards Anna, given that the woman is essentially condemning her daughter to a slow death from starvation.

While dismissive of Anna's incessant prayers, Lib is devoted to reason and the tangible world. She faithfully records her observations about the girl's state of health: pulse, respiration, teaspoonfuls of water drunk, as well as any telltale signs of illness: hair loss; swelling in face, hands, legs and feet; bleeding gums; downy hair all over body... This intimacy begins to eat away at her prejudiced views; is the child a skilled deceiver or an innocent victim of her parents' thirst for notoriety?

To complicate matters, Lib starts to suspect that something else is at play — something that goes far beyond whether the girl's fast is genuine. With time running out and the clues thrusting her towards a terrible conclusion, she also discovers the depth of her convictions and courage, which will now be tested to their breaking point.

This is the second novel set in rural 19th century Ireland I've read this year (you'll find my review of The Good People here), and both have earned a spot of my list of favourites in spite of breaking my heart into tiny pieces.

I can't say enough good things about the way in which Emma Donoghue brings her characters to life. They're paradoxical, elusive, perplexing... so very human. Despite Lib's frankly annoying prejudiced views at the beginning of the book, I grew to genuinely admire her. Prickly, all high and mighty, looking at everyone with such disdain — well, it all made sense after a while why such wariness may be warranted. As a stranger in this strange land, surrounded by treacherous peat bogs, baffled by the mixture of Catholic beliefs and ancient superstitions that steeps everyday life, her point of view serves the story well.  I also became surprisingly attached to Anna, a vulnerable 11-year-old left to mourn her brother with only the means her unshakeable faith puts at her disposal... although I have to confess I was torn between wanting to give her a hug or a hearty slap at times. Mrs. O'Donnell, hardened by life's blows, did stir my sympathy to some extent. And I can't forget William Byrne, the ambitious journalist who tries to get an "in" on Anna's story through wit and charm — what an excellent character!

The author's remarkable ear for dialogues contributes much to making these characters live on the page. The frequent biblical references, the persuasive arguments, the curt replies, the veiled criticisms, even the silences, all reveal aspects of their personalities, and not a single word is superfluous.

As the novel's "action" unfolds in an area still reeling from the terrible famine that left Ireland debilitated and depopulated, there's a numbed quality to the life of its inhabitants, as though only part of themselves has survived, and the rest is deadened to the world. The religion-thickened air of the O'Donnell home feels as oppressive to the reader as it does to Lib from the very moment she crosses its threshold, adding an intangible element to this already unfamiliar environment. Also, by setting much of the story within the confines of Anna's small, bare room, the author transforms this space into both a womb and a prison, swaddling and comforting but also constricting and choking, which made the conclusion doubly significant in an even more poignant way.

The Wonder is a thought-provoking exploration of conflict between people, between belief systems, and within oneself. The questions it raises go far deeper than faith; since turning the last page I've been asking myself: if it ever came to a matter of conscience and duty, would I say "nevermind orders"?

I borrowed this book from my local library.

Rating: ****½