Currently reading
Alex
The Glass Room
Peter the Great: His Life and World
If I Can't Have You: Susan Powell, Her Mysterious Disappearance, and the Murder of Her Children
Skin Deep
The Good Daughter
A Boy in Winter
The Tie That Binds
The Idiot (Everyman's Library, #254)
The Velvet Hours
The Wonder
4.5 Stars Spell Binding and so atmospheric, The Wonder is one of the best Irish historical novels I have read in a very long time where facts and fiction come together to create a story that gets under your skin.
Clearly the Irish Midlands were a depression where wet pooled, the little circle in a saucer"(Quote from The Wonder)
The setting for Emma Donoghue's novel is the Irish Midlands about seven years after the end of the potatoe famine in Ireland. This location is approx 20 miles from where I reside and I was eager to see how this historical novel would read for me.
An eleven-year-old girl stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story. Set in the Irish Midlands in the mist of a close knit Catholic community in the 1850s. The Wonder - inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth.
This is such an atmospheric novel, and the author really captures a wonderful sense of time and place. The harshness of the landscape and the lifestyle of the people really draws the reader in. The country people are ruled and in fear of their religion. The customs and language and superstitions of the time is so accurately portrayed in this beautiful written tale and while not new to me being Irish and very aware of my heritage I appreciate historical fiction well written and based on facts.
She wonders - Did the Irish hate food. (Quite from The Wonder)
This novel is a brooding and moving story that is haunting and wonderfully athmospheric. Another good reads's friend said it reminded her of [b:Burial Rites|17333319|Burial Rites|Hannah Kent|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1384207446s/17333319.jpg|21943144] and I couldn't agree more.
I had intended to listen to this book on audio and did try the audio sample but this one worked better for me on kindle and my thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this one.
