The Biblio Blogazine

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (2001)
Historical Fiction, 308 pages
Published by the Penguin Group

Synopsis taken from the author’s website:

This gripping historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the “Plague Village,” tucked in the rugged mountain spine of England. In 1666, when an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to the isolated settlement of shepherds and lead miners, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna’s eyes the reader follows the story of the plague year, as her fellow villagers make an extraordinary choice: convinced by a visionary young minister they elect to quarantine themselves within the village boundaries to arrest the spread of the disease. As the death toll rises and people turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting, Anna must confront the deaths of family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of illicit love.

Exploring love and learning, fear and fanaticism, and the struggle of science and religion to interpret the world at the cusp of the modern era, Year of Wonders is at once a story of unconventional love and a richly detailed evocation of a riveting moment in history.

My only issue with the above is the mentioning of the “lure of illicit love” and “a story of unconventional love”, as this implies it’s a major theme in the book. I did not sense this aspect until toward the end of the novel.

For me, the theme is much closer to something I read in the author’s afterword when she notes how she was struck by the size of Eyam and how she related it to living in a rural Virginia village: “…the story of the quarantine and its costs grew even more vivid…What would it be like [she wondered] to make such a choice and to find that in consequence, two-thirds of your neighbors were dead within a year? How would faith, relationships, and social order survive?”

There is also this in her Introduction: “In episodes that illustrate both the best of human nature and the worst, the townspeople grapple with their grief and fear.”

After finishing the book, I feel that last statement sums it up best. Geraldine Brooks took a true story and fictionalizes it in a manner that had me page turning late into the night. Even though I knew what was going to happen in the main plot, the sub-plots were what sustained and entertained me throughout. Those were the unknowns that kept me going, chapter after chapter.

It is a well told story, and even though the style is formalized to give the reader the sense of the time, it is not so overdone that it makes the narrative difficult to read. I never once felt that the flow was impeded by the tone used.

Initially, the reader may wonder how dour a story they are about to read as Anna, the heroine, remembers the village as it once was:

These memories of happiness are fleeting things, reflections in a stream, glimpsed all broken for a second and then swept away in the current of grief that is our life now.

And…

The plague is cruel…Its blows fall and fall again upon raw sorrow, so that before you have mourned one person that you love, another is ill in your arms.

However there is so much more, and an ending that must be reached. I will not spoil it for you, but it is not a happy ending – at least not as you would expect. I wasn’t sure at first if I liked the way it was handled and left, but as I let it stew, I do like it as it is more realistic.

It’s just that when the “love” part comes more into play and my emotions were pulled in, I had hoped Anna would find what she’s wanted for so long. She does find it, but not in the way I thought.

Just goes to show how involved I became with the book and its characters.

Oh dear. I really wanted to be harsher this year in my assessments, but lately I’ve made such great choices, I’ve had a hard time giving any read less than 5 Stars out of 5 – this book included. I should have known though, as March was a good read even though I gave it only 4 Stars.

And why am I complaining??? Good grief. We all should be so lucky to pick a winner off our TBR shelf nearly every single time. Doh!

So yes, Year of Wonders gets 5 out of 5 Stars and a one of my highest recommendations.

Her latest novel, People of the Book, is inspired by the true story of a mysterious codex known as the Sarajevo Haggadah.