The Wonder
Ratings53
Average rating3.6
"Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who is said to be living without food, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl. As Anna's life ebbs away, Lib finds herself responsible not just for the care of a child but for that child's very survival. Haunting and magnetic, The Wonder is a searing examination of doubt, faith, and what nourishes us, body and soul. Written with all the propulsive tension that made Donoghue's Room a huge bestseller, it works beautifully on many levels -- an intimate tale of two strangers who transform each other's lives, a powerful psychological thriller, and a spellbinding story of love pitted against evil." -- from back cover.
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About 100 pages into this book, I was not really liking it and wondered if I was even going to make it through. But, then it got better. It was well worth finishing.
Read this one a while back but wanted a reread. I'd forgotten how genuinely stunning and heartwrenching this book is. Also it's impressive to get me to hate So Many Fictional Characters, so props for that! I don't think I actually realized on my first readthrough that it was the same author who wrote Room, but on rereading I remembered that and could really tell. Donoghue has a talent for like, low grade creeping horror, and revelations that hit the reader as the same time they hit the characters and you find yourself utterly horrified by what this character just told you.
Couldn't remember the title when I was trying to find this to reread it, so I typed in what I could remember into Google:
“girl child saint book fiction incest starvation manna”
Turns out multiple people have actually done academic articles on this book!
Fair warning I was caught Very off guard by the super super aggressive racism about the Irish! I'd entirely forgotten that. I know it's accurate to the time and it makes a ton of sense for the character but also, yikes, I was actively unprepared for the main character to just be moaning about how awful this entire country and all her people are!
I'm usually not much for stories set in old times (this one is set in the 1850s). I've previously read Room by Emma Donoghue, and I like stories with mysteries to solve; so I gave this one a chance.
Donoghue has written a story of a young girl who claims to not have eaten anything for four months (and doesn't need it either). An English nurse and a catholicism nun are hired to observe her for a period of time. I like that I, as a reader, spent most of the story wondering whether religion or science (biology) would win... I wasn't even sure which side I was rooting for.
