The Wonder brings so many of my favourite elements together – a mystery, faith, a love story, and Ireland. It basically hit all the right notes for me. Anna is a young Irish girl, who is gaining fame for being able to live without eating for weeks. Lib, an English nurse and self-proclaimed skeptic, is hired to observe and substantiate the claims that this is an honest-to-goodness miracle. Tensions develop between Lib and Anna’s family, as well as members of the community, as she tries […]
Room
Can you imagine being locked in an 11 ft by 11 ft room for your whole life and never knowing more than the four walls around you? That’s the case for five year old Jack who lives in a small room with his mother, who was taken by a man many years ago. Room is told from the perspective of a Jack, which can make it hard to understand at times. It is when Jack turns five that his mother tells him that what she once told […]
Strays
The premise for this collection of stories is pretty interesting and right in my wheelhouse for a type of novel I often like. Emma Donoghue is mostly known for her novel Room and for good and obvious reasons. But her background as a writer in much more involved in historical fiction ala Sarah Waters. And also, she is Irish-Canadian and have a PhD, so well-researched trans-Atlantic literature is a perfect fit. I really liked her novel from this past year The Wonder and so this one was […]
Wonder No More, This Book is Good!
The wonder mentioned in the title is a young girl named Anna who lives in a small village in Ireland and has reportedly not eaten any food for four months. The protagonist is a widowed English nurse, trained by Florence Nightingale, who comes to the village as an impartial judge to examine the claims of the village. The nurse is judgmental of the poverty of the Irish village and skeptical of the community’s claim that this girl is somehow getting nourishment from God. Lib the […]