The Wonder

by Emma Donoghue

Hardcover, 2016

Status

Available

Call number

Genres

Publication

Little, Brown and Company (2016), Edition: 1st, 304 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML:In this masterpiece by Emma Donoghue, bestselling author of Room, an English nurse is brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle �?? a girl said to have survived without food for month �?? and soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life. Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, 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. Written with all the propulsive tension that made Room a huge bestseller, The Wonder works beautifully on many levels �?? a tale of two strangers who transform each other's lives, a powerful psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil. Acclaim for The Wonder: "Deliciously gothic.... Dark and vivid, with complicated characters, this is a novel that lodges itself deep" (USA Today, 3/4 stars) "Heartbreaking and transcendent"(New York Times) "A fable as lean and discomfiting as Anna's dwindling body.... Donoghue keeps us riveted" (Chicago Tribune) "Donoghue poses powerful questions about faith and belief" (News… (more)

Original publication date

2016

Media reviews

The Age (Victoria, Australia)

Historical fiction can give us rare insight into lives we might never have imagined, beliefs we could not otherwise have understood. The believability is what engages us, and this requires that a story retain some of the mysterious quality of real life: the inexplicable suffering, the ineffability.

The Wonder wanders away from this and into the realm of happy-ever-after. In this it is not so wondrous after all.

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Newsday

After making my way through several recent novels written in tiresome hey-look-at-me prose (Emma Cline’s “The Girls” comes to mind), “The Wonder” arrived as a welcome relief. Donoghue’s prose is as sturdy and serviceable as a good pair of brogans, but never nondescript...After making my

way through several recent novels written in tiresome hey-look-at-me prose (Emma Cline’s “The Girls” comes to mind), “The Wonder” arrived as a welcome relief. Donoghue’s prose is as sturdy and serviceable as a good pair of brogans, but never nondescript..Even less palatable is the distracting romance Donoghue loads onto the second half of her tale..These are flaws, but not fatal ones. For the most part, “The Wonder” is a fine, fact-based historical novel, an old-school page turner (I use the phrase without shame).

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MacLeans Magazine

Emma Donoghue leaves little to Wonder about in the plot of her latest novel..Clever and seductive as its premise is, the novel is ultimately marred by the explanatory overwriting that has sometimes affected Donoghue’s work in the past. Donoghue’s prolificacy extends not just to books (she’s

written nearly 20) but to the page: cudgel-like repetition is too often used as a means of emphasis. That, combined with too many ponderous nudges and winks, means there’s little we don’t see coming from early on. Plot-wise, there’s little to wonder about in The Wonder.

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National Post (Canada)

Part mystery, part supernatural thriller, part meditation on religious fundamentalism, Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder serves questions in triplicate about this very matter, through the mind and body of an 11-year-old Catholic girl who does not eat and yet continues to

live.....The Wonder rides high on the acclaim of Room – which explored the lives of Jack and his mother as they lived in captivity in a shed belonging to the man who raped and kidnapped her as a teenager – and shares in its many themes. In Room, the pair lives in a claustrophobic physical space, but also a spiritual one that at times makes it a difficult read..The Wonder rides high on the acclaim of Room – which explored the lives of Jack and his mother as they lived in captivity in a shed belonging to the man who raped and kidnapped her as a teenager – and shares in its many themes. In Room, the pair lives in a claustrophobic physical space, but also a spiritual one that at times makes it a difficult read

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