Year of Wonders

by Geraldine Brooks

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer.

Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition.

As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love.

As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Book Club, Historical, British Literature, Audiobook, Adult

323 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Australian-born Geraldine Brooks is an author and journalist who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, and attended Bethlehem College Ashfield and the University of Sydney. She worked as a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald for three years as a feature writer with a special interest in environmental issues.

In 1982 she won the Greg Shackleton Australian News Correspondents scholarship to the journalism master’s program at Columbia University in New York City. Later she worked for The Wall Street Journal, where she covered crises in the the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans.

She was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction in 2006 for her novel March. Her first novel, Year of Wonders, is an international bestseller, and People of the Book is a New York Times bestseller translated into 20 languages. She is also the author of the nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence.

Brooks married author Tony Horwitz in Tourette-sur-Loup, France, in 1984. They had two sons– Nathaniel and Bizuayehu–and two dogs. They used to divide their time between their homes in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and Sydney, Australia.

Reviews

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rarely has a book so captivated and then disappointed me with such a 180 turn to what I called utter "dreckage". Year of Wonders managed to do this, infortunately.

In order to review, I have to break the book up between pages so that you can see where the trainwreck happened for me, and why I'm so PO'ed I could almost cry....

REVIEW FOR PAGES 1-255
Rating: 5 stars (I'd give it 10 stars if Goodreads had that designation, but since 5 stars means it was amazing, then 5 stars it is)

Year of Wonders: Pages 1-255 is a beautiful, incredibly moving fictional account of a real event that happened in Eyam ("Eem"), Derbyshire, England in 1665-1666. Today, road signs point out the direction to "Plague Village", so I think you get the idea of where this story is going to go....

The villagers of Eyam were ground zero for an outbreak of bubonic plague that had apparently been introduced to the remote village from flea infested bolts of cloth brought into the town. Best guess estimates of the population in 1665 set it around 380 villagers. By the fall of 1666, only about 120 were left. While people all over London and other places in England were hurriedly leaving the areas of plague infection, the villagers of Eyam, under the strong guidance of their pastor Michael Mompellion, decided to stay put, self-quarantine themselves and ride out the storm. They saw it as a test of their faith and trust toward God, and felt that they would be blessed beyond all measure once the plague left them.

Author Geraldine Brooks tells this story through the eyes of Anna, a young widow with 2 very small children to support. Anna's role in helping Michael Mompellion and his high born wife Elinor shines the light on all that was the very best of human nature during a time of crisis, as well as what was the very worst in human beings stretched physically, emotionally and spiritually beyond their endurance. Brooks married the two extremes so well, weaving a highly readable tale of immense pain, degradation, fear, and ultimately faith. I was appalled later, (when I googled Eyam), to learn that many of the incidences Brooks used in the book were true. Human beings definitely have the capacity for both extreme nobility of spirit, as well as extreme barbarism.

If Brooks had left the story of the plague village at page 255, I would have happily accorded this wonderful book a cherished slot in my bulging bookcase and marked it as "favorite" on these, my Goodreads shelves. Alas, the book was 304 pages long. Therefore, we come to book-review-within-a-review:

BOOK REVIEW FOR PAGE 256-304
Rating 1 star (My feeling for these final 50 pages can best be summed up by the word: aaaarrrggghhh.)

Year of Wonders: Page 256-304 must be read in connection with the first 255 pages to be fully believed. It is EPIC FAIL at it's most EPIC. It is so crammed with schlocky, hokey, trite piles of plot shite that I can hardly believe that it's written by the same author as my beloved book, Year of Wonders: Page 1-255. How is this possible? Did Brooks suddenly seize up and hand over the pen to some Harlequin romance writer? (please, no PO'd posts by Harlequin fans - I happen to enjoy Harlequins in small doses myself, but there IS a difference in quality between the two writing mediums).

What Brooks did so perfectly in pages 1-255, she completely decimated in pages 256-304. Was she attempting to pull off her own mini-plague by killing off all the good and noble and faithful ideas her story fostered? WTH happened to plot continuity? To the characters? I am so confused by her ending that I don't even know what to say about it, except that I'M PISSED, PISSED, PISSED and I know I need to calm down and go drink some herbal tea...




...back from my herbal tea break:

OK, so now I've come to the end of my rambling, stupid review. I've had a chance to read some 1 and 2 star reviews from other more gifted GR reviewers, and I see that they did a 100% better job of detailing why this book had so much ruined potential, so I'll just stop.

[JanB · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would have given this a higher rating if not for the strange ending.

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 4 out of 5]

“My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly. I used to wonder if it was so because the memory of Heaven still lived within them, so that in leaving here they do not fear death as we do, who no longer know with certainty where it is our spirits go. This, I thought, must be the kindness that God does for them and for us, since He gives so many infants such a little while to bide with us.”

1666 was not a good year for England with bubonic plague killing 100,000 people followed by The Great Fire of London which destroyed 80% of London or about 13,000 homes. It is hard for us to conceive of a disease that can show up one day and within a few short months kill 75% of the people we know. To survive is fortuitous, but to actually acquire the disease and survive is nothing short of miraculous. The first signs were bulges at the groin called buboes. Can you imagine the bone chilling fear that would course through your body at the first appearance of such bulges?



George Viccars, a tailor, made a very innocuous decision to order a bolt of cloth from London. He used the cloth to make fashionable dresses for the ladies of Eyam little did he know the cloth was infested with plague carrying fleas. The plague kills Viccars first and spreads quickly from family to family taking the youngest and fittest in greatest numbers. William Mompellion, the minister of the shire, makes the heroic decision to quarantine the town and contain the contagion. Through the eyes of Anna Frith we are exposed to the devastating effects of fear and loss on the small community. Death brings opportunity to some and sends others into object poverty. Anna, though besot by her own demons, does the best she can to not only survive her personal losses, but also make the fateful decision to devout her life providing help and succor to those who need it most.

The midwives, medicine women, who command a deep knowledge of herbs and roots that would provide the most help during an outbreak of a deadly disease are the first to be treated with distrust. Their knowledge is looked on as magical well beyond the understanding of an under educated population. You would have thought these women had green skin and made grand statements like "I'll get you my pretty.", but they were just women interested in understanding the world around them and making the best use of what nature provided.



"And so, as generally happens, those who have most give least, and those with less somehow make shrift to share." The rich flee Eyam and the rest stay, intent on riding out the worst of the contagion. They had no conception of just how horrible things were going to get.

This is based on a true story. The book shows people at their very best and their very worst. It made me consider what I would do. Could I be as brave as Anna? Could I support the leadership of a Minister intent on keeping me and my family in harms way? Could I help those already infected? There are many things to admire in this tale. The ending though is odd. I notice that other reviewers mentioned the ending and I agree it was unexpected, but maybe we are all just underestimating the courage and determination of one woman.

Two other plague novels that I really liked are Company Of Liars by Karen Maitland and The Pesthouse by Jim Crace. I have no reviews for them; unfortunately, because I read them before finding the wonderful community of goodreads. Company of Liars is told in a similar vein to Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and Pesthouse is a postapocalyptic America regressed to Medieval conditions.

If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
I also have a Facebook blogger page at: https://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKeeten

[David Putnam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This one is a solid Wow. Love the voice most of all. It captures the time period just enough as to not overpower the prose and yet enough to totally immerse me in the Fictive Dream. The point of view character is in first person and mostly told in narrative and not in scene. Which doesn’t matter because of the great voice in the prose that I clung to like a sailor, months at sea on a life raft desperate for water. I couldn’t get enough of this book that ticks all the boxes for me a great historical that is definitely going up in the top five books of the year.
The author writes with such authority the question of credibility is moot. The words and sentence structure of the time period are wonderful. I don’t know how the author accomplished it with such command of story and character. An absolute wonderful book.
For those readers who crave more of McCammon’s Mathew Corbett books, Speaks of The Night Bird and Queen of Bedlam, this book is McCammon but with more intense prose.
David Putnam author of The Bruno Johnson series.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Year of Wonder offers a you-are-there account of the plague year of 1666 in the English countryside, seen through the eyes of Anna Frith, a young maid, widowed with two young boys.


Geraldine Brooks - image from Mondoweiss

The inspiration for the story is the actual village of Eyam, in Derbyshire. After it was clear that the plague had set up shop in their village, the residents elected to voluntarily quarantine themselves for the duration. Eyam is the only locale known to have taken on such a selfless burden. And so it is with the fictitious village here. As residents die in increasing numbers Rector Mompellion pleads with them to willingly confine themselves to the borders of their village, lest they carry the contagion abroad. Most agree, and remain.


In Eyam, services were held in the open air…and families stood apart for each other in order to avoid the spread of infection - image from BBC.com

Brooks shows the stages of the contagion, from the first plague death, a boarder in Anna’s home, to the clear spread of pestilence to increasing numbers of residents, to the hysteria of the ignorant, looking for someone to blame. The payload in Year of Wonders is the up close and personal look Brooks offers of what it was like to live through the Black Death, both in glimpses of the physical travails suffered by plague victims and in the impact of the steep population reduction on the functioning of society.

The late 17th Century was the era of The Restoration. Charles II was the king. The Cromwell era had come to an end, and Puritanism was losing its’ hold on the population. This tension appears in the Year of Wonders as characters move from a strictly drab wardrobe to one with some brightness, the town adjusts to the change from a Puritanical cleric to one with a less severe view of human nature. We also see the very harsh struggle of believers with their faith. How could a loving God allow such an abomination as the plague? Brooks captures some of the madness of the time as a pre-scientific view of causality leads some villagers to scapegoat women who were healers, seeing in their knowledge a power that was inexplicable and thus unacceptable. A clear case of “Ignorance is Power” that persists to this day.


From the Eyam museum - “Elizabeth Hancock had no choice but to drag each of her children to a field next to the family farm and bury them.”

The payload is the thing here, the close look at the time, the plague, The Restoration. But the way one delivers that material is via characters and story. The book reads fast. It is engaging and interesting. But Anna Frith seemed to me a character drawn with a very 21st century sensibility. She is a feminist heroine, overcoming the limited choices of 1666, using her superior intelligence, and working in a dose of entrepreneurialism to boot. While there may have been elements of scientific curiosity extant at the time, it is doubtful that those currents would have flowed as far as remote English mountain villages. Thus Anna and Elinor’s (the rector’s wife) sense that good nutrition, to be obtained through the wise application of natural herbs, was a way to combat illness seems unlikely. The attitude of Anys Gowdie (an herbalist and healer) towards sexuality also seems remarkably modern for 1666. I have found that in some books with a feminist theme (or even most mixed gender TV commercials showing married people, for that matter) there is a lot of oversimplification. Women good, men bad, or stupid. Yes, I know that in Year of Wonders there are evil females as well, and there were plenty of bad men to go around, but the only truly good (as far as we know), liberated man (George Viccar) gets whacked early on. No, Sam (Anna’s late husband) does not count, being rather a simpleton. And after portraying the rector so positively throughout (Yes, I did note the signal tantrum) it seems a cheat that she consigns him to the evil-men pile.

There were hints of bodice ripping in the earlier chapters that made me wonder if I had inadvertently picked up a romance. Thankfully that abated.


Image from the BBC - George Viccars was Eyam’s first victim of the plague - he died…on 7 September 1665”

Anna Frith is allowed to make some errors of judgment, but it seems that this is only to offset her general perfection. She is almost too-good, too-strong, and I confess that this got on my nerves a bit. She lands on her feet so consistently that she might have been a centipede. So, while I did enjoy the book, and learned a bit about the time (always welcome), I had issues.

If you want to learn some more about The Black Death, you might want to check out In the Wake of the Plague. Medieval historian Norman Cantor looks at an earlier (1348-1350) plague and examines the societal and historical impact. Good stuff.


=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, FB, Twitter, and GR pages

Items of interest
-----Definitely check out this article from the BBC about the village Eyam - Eyam plague: The village of the damned - by David McKenna
-----Wiki on The Restoration
-----History.com - The Black Death

[Adina · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5* rounded down because it was ok but I cannot say I liked it.

This review is going to be short because I finished this 4 months ago and I am too behind with my reviews to treat all books equal.

Why only 2*
- It started very well with the account of how the plague came to the village and an interesting introduction of the main characters. It then turned into a melodrama who was not really about the plague anymore.
- The author struggled so hard to stuff in this book all the themes possible from that period: fear of witches, women struggles, drug abuse, child abuse and even slavery. Every misery-inducing event is present.
- The characters soon became unbelievable
- The idiotic ending. It does not justify the name of the novel.

[Debbie W. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author Geraldine Brooks wrote this story after learning about how the small English village of Eyam dealt with the Great Plague of 1666. Historical records indicate how the local vicar's maid was extremely helpful during this scourge. This is her fictitious story.

Published in 2010, I was awed by Brooks' writing of what this village did during the Plague (see if you can notice any similarities to our present-day pandemic):
-the village isolated itself from other villages to stop the spread;
-villagers physically distanced (e.g. during church services);
-their search for various remedies and claims of cures;
-superstitions vs. religious beliefs;
-profiteering from the Plague; and,
-thanklessness towards those who tried to help.

I also appreciated:
-the flawed, but likeable characters and the overall plot;
-the audiobook's narrator who is the author herself! Some reviewers found her voice monotonous, but I actually found her oral storytelling to be soothing and easy to follow;
-that although sometimes told crudely, one must remember that the Plague isn't a candy-coated subject; and,
-the epilogue. Again, some reviewers found it odd, but I thought is was the perfect ending because of how it tied in so well with the overall story.

I loved this moving, well-researched story and would highly recommend it to historical fiction fans!

[Andy Marr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating story, beautifully written. Odd ending, mind you.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update: $1.99 kindle special today! It’s a WONDERFUL novel at a great price!!


After reading "Long Man", by Amy Greene, not long ago....I was craving to read about
another female character that 'might' remind me of Annie Clyde Dodson. I also wanted the story - like "Long Man" to be inspired by true events....
and last...I wanted the writing to be gorgeous - rich, beautiful prose.....character driven...realistic...
I wanted to get in touch with that 'feeling' which is different than the many modern contemporary novels I read.

"YEAR of WONDER" was the perfect choice ....it satisfied what I was longing for. Yikes
So much is so darn sad!!!
The character, Anna Frith, leading female, inspired me, and comforted me with her calm kindness. This was another book - I couldn't put down.... page turning engrossing!

The PROSE is exquisite. The rich 'quality' was all there that I was looking for. The writing blew me away.

A dark story...with writing that exceeds your expectation - thoughts will linger.

If you liked "Long Man", you'll love "Year of Wonder".....or vice versa).

[Rosh ~catching up slowly~ · Rating 1 out of 5]

In a Nutshell: The more the expectations, the greater the disappointment. Utterly dismayed at this ‘Hollywoodised’ version of the Eyam plague story.

Story:

1666. Anna Frith is a young widow who works as a housemaid to support herself and her two little boys. When the rector sends a boarder her way to supplement her income, she readily agrees. Little does she know that this boarder brings with him some cloth infected with ‘plague seeds’. As the disease begins spreading its virulence, the villagers turn to religion as well as superstition.
The story comes to us in the first person pov of Anna.

Where the book worked for me:
😊 The author’s vocabulary is outstanding. The lingo of 1600s Britain is visible on every page. Never have I used my Kindle dictionary so much, and it didn’t even have an answer every time!

😊 I liked most of the initial quarter of the novel when it proceeds logically and focusses only on how the virulent disease began.


Where the book could have worked better for me:
☠ The GR blurb declares this as “inspired by the true story of Eyam” (pronounced “Eem”) but the book turned out to be more “inspired” than “true”. Heck, it doesn’t even mention Eyam anywhere except in the author’s note.

☠ When a book promises me a story of the plague, what I want is the story of the plague. Instead, the plague just turns out to be the background of a weird plot. While the bare outline of the plague is included, the focus is elsewhere after the 25% mark. It feels as if the plot just galloped away from the author’s control after this point and she rode along with it rather than trying to rein it in.

☠ The author seems to have listed out every possible cringe-worthy thought/action of that era and included it in the narrative. Thus the plot has witch hunts, religious divisions, superstitions, self-flagellation, class discrimination, extreme corporal punishments, underdeveloped medical knowledge, midwifery issues, single parenthood, domestic abuse, parental abuse, patriarchal domination, and the kitchen sink. (Okay, not the kitchen sink.) The plague itself is a dark topic. Did the content require so much of sensationalising with all these add-on masalas?

☠ To distinguish between the factual and fictitious elements, the author has resorted to using real names for those characters whose behaviour was supposedly not fictionalised (Example: Rev. Stanley the old rector, George Viccars the first person to contract the plague) and fictional names for characters who behave differently. (Example: The real Rev. William Mompesson is turned into Rev. Michael Mompellion, his wife Catherine is ‘Elinor’. Anna Frith is fictitious as are the Gowdies.) This isn’t the problem. The problem is the drastic difference in facts and fiction. How do those who don’t know the facts understand what’s real and what was falsified? The author’s note clarifies a few of the details but there is plenty left unsaid. The real William Mompesson would have rolled over in his grave if he were to know what his counterpart did in this story.

☠ Had I not already read about the plague in another novel late last year, I would have been left with plenty of questions because there’s barely any concrete information provided. Even basic details such as when was the ‘Cordon Sanitaire’ imposed or how many months did the plague last in Eyam are glossed over. (It isn’t even called ‘Cordon Sanitaire’ in this book!) At the same time, unnecessary gory details are provided to enhance the shock factor. We can be told that the bubonic plague created large pus-filled boils. Was it necessary to write in detail how those boils burst and what happens next? Can’t some things be left to our imagination?

☠ I didn’t like the choice of first person narrator. Anna Frith the housemaid knowing so much and telling us what happened was farfetched. As a barely educated maid, she wouldn’t have possessed the depth of knowledge she shows. And of course, she seems to come out on top of the situation every time. So many of her scenes are unbelievable. Moreover, there is a discrepancy in the wording of her narration and her first person dialogues. Ideally, both should have been written in the same kind of English but her spoken lines seem more archaic than the narrative text.

☠ The title presents a very different picture of the book. It is taken from a John Dryden poem written about the year 1666, the same year in which the events of Year of Wonders take place. The idea is to look at the positives after a tragedy. But in a book that has nothing but catastrophes, where are we to search the wonders? There’s no thread of hope anywhere except in the epilogue.

☠ The ending sinks faster than a stone. It is one of the most absurd finales I have ever read, right up there with the ending of Murakami’s ‘Norwegian Wood’. Actually, no. It overtakes ‘Norwegian Wood’ and is the new title holder for ‘Stupidest Ending Ever!’ What happened to the notion of character development? A person who is shown as a model character suddenly and illogically turns rogue. How, why, what the heck?

☠ When you've read two books on the same topic, it's but natural to make a comparison even if you don't want to. Last October, I had read a debut indie novel named “Three: A Tale of Brave Women and the Eyam Plague” by Jennifer Jenkins. While that book had myriad writing flaws, it was still a marvellous and true-to-life depiction of what transpired in Eyam during those fourteen months. I still remember how shattered I felt after reading “Three”. Its chosen narrators were apt for the story, its factual content was spot on, and its narrative thread never lost focus. I was expecting a similar emotional impact with “Year of Wonders”, but nada! I felt NOTHING for any of the characters.


In short, this has been an utter and complete disappointment. It is almost like a ‘Hollywoodised’ version of the plague, replete with OTT scenes and bizarre plot progressions and an idiotic fit-me-somehow-into-a-HEA ending. Not for me. If it is for you, please go ahead. It is still rated high enough on GR for you to give it a valid consideration.



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[Meredith Enos · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lot of people have complained about this book being slow, but I found it beautifully paced for what it was about--after all, the title is "Year of Wonders," which kind of sets up an expectation and timeframe right away. The pace helped set up a world, a time when things moved more slowly, when people were more thoughtful, when people paid attention to the seasons and nature. This is a beautifully narrated, incredibly seamless (for the amount of research that must have been put into to it, it reads so smoothly) novel. I liked the evolution of the protagonist, the way she gained power and still moved within her role in society.

That being said, the ending just friggin' killed it for me. It was totally Hollywood-ized and a total cop out. At turns a romance, a horror, and an action-adventure--in 20 or so pages--but really bad. Bad, like "Who killed Bobby Ewing?" bad. Sigh. I was really pulling for 4 stars here, and then the ending is .5 or 1 star. So it averaged out to a heavily weighted 2 stars.

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anna Frith resides in a remote village where a bolt of cloth delivered from London brings with it the bubonic plague. Guided by a vision bestowed upon the town minister, Anna and her village elect to quarantine themselves, hoping to prevent the plague from spreading. Days of quarantine turn into weeks. As the months come and go, villagers grow restless. Death is prevalent in every household; suspicion and anger mount as villagers yearn for someone to blame for their plight. Anna soon faces far greater perils than the devastating plague.

Year of Wonders is brimming with the same elegant, beguiling prose one can anticipate from any book written by Geraldine Brooks.

At the edge of the field, the hedgerows were deep green in their glossy leaves and the blackberries beginning to plump and redden. Fat lambs, their fleeces gilded by sunlight, grazed in lush grasses.

Instead, I lingered in the quiet grove behind the church, where the old graves are. It is a lumpy place, where the ground has heaved and sighed into grassy mounds and the briar roses tumbled in a bright profusion of ruddied hips over graves whose markings are weathered and barely legible.

While the village is portrayed as a beautiful place any would be lucky to wander, the author depicts the horrors of the plague with equal skill, making use of ghastly descriptions that spare no detail:

The day of his death, the strange circles bloomed on him: vivid crimson welts rising in rings just beneath the topmost layer of his skin. As the hours passed, these turned violet then purple-black, hardening into crusts. It seemed as if the flesh inside of him was dying while he yet breathed, the putrefying meat pushing and bursting its way out of his failing body.

Eighteen-year-old Anna Frith remains a fascinating character from start to finish. She faces many hardships but remains a strong woman with a loving heart, befriending outcasts and dabbling in perilous medicinal trades. Despite the many dreadful events she bears witness to, Anna maintains a tender view of the world.

[He] died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly. I used to wonder if it was so because the memory of Heaven still lived within them, so that in leaving here they do not fear death as we do, who no longer know with certainty where it is our spirits go. This, I thought, must be the kindness that God does for them and for us, since He give so many infants such a little while to bide with us.

Occasionally the pacing in Year of Wonders stumbles and slows, but it always picks up again and eventually arrives at one of the most satisfying conclusions of any book yet read.

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks 2001 novel describes the plague years of 1666 and concludes with a very unusual and somewhat unbalanced ending.

While reading I thought of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and of course Camus’ The Plague (and I forgive her much about the ending for the mention of Oran which could NOT have been coincidence).

This is simply, elegantly written and yet the force and brutality of the plot, told in such straightforward prose is also reminiscent of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (another obvious and brilliant reference) – relentless and shocking.

[Julie G · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd like to entitle this review How I Wish I Liked Geraldine Brooks More and subtitle it (for dramatic effect) How I Narrowly Escaped the Plague.

True story: Last year, right before Labor Day here in the States, our dog became somewhat lethargic and had swelling around his neck. And, though it was hot and the end of August, I was, strangely enough, simultaneously experiencing a sore throat and swollen lymph nodes.

It was the Thursday before the Monday Labor Day holiday (naturally) when I took in our dog and had the vet extract some fluid from one of the swollen spots on his neck. When the vet came back in, he had a weird look on his face and he asked, “Any chance you've been exposed to fleas?”

Well, yes, one of our cats had recently broken free and entered a rabbit warren (which, of course, made me think of Watership Down), killed all of the rabbits, laid them out like a sociopath in the grass in the backyard, and then entered the house with the fleas on his body. I had spent several days combing him and vacuuming the house like Sylvia Plath.

I wondered, why did he ask?

The vet shifted his weight uncomfortably and said, “Well, as you may know, we have confirmed cases of the bubonic plague here, and, between what I'm seeing in the fluid I've extracted, and your experience with the rabbits and fleas. . . it's possible that your dog has contracted the plague.”

Honestly, he could have then knocked me down with a feather pen. I asked, “Is this because I love Shakespeare?” (For real. Maybe it was shock?)

He gave me a light squeeze on my arm (how brave of him to touch me!), and said, nervously, “Um, I'm sure it's nothing, but unfortunately we won't have the lab results back until Tuesday, because it's a holiday weekend.”

So, from THURSDAY TO TUESDAY I wondered if our dog or I or any of the members of our household had plague. THE PLAGUE. Sheesh. It was awful.

Anyway, I'm happy (thrilled in fact) to report that we did NOT have the plague, and we survived, but you can now know my true devotion to books when I share with you that, as soon as we were given the good news that we did not have the plague, the very next thing I thought was. . . those poor people in Year of Wonders weren't so lucky.

I went home, grabbed a copy of the book, took out my notes, and reminded myself that Year of Wonders was a debut novel for Ms. Brooks and it contains some fantastic language. And, obviously, some part of the story stayed with me. I can't think about the plague (though I hope I never contemplate having it again), without thinking of this book.

But, what happens to Ms. Brooks's novels? I've read three of them now, and though they always start with sharp and descriptive and almost poetic language, they all go downhill for me. Crash, in fact, with their bizarre and sloppy endings.

Now that I have faced the possibility of plague, I feel I have developed a kinship with some of her characters. But, still, I hesitate. I wonder. . . why don't I like her books more?

[Beata · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm still reading the novel and must admit it's really gripped me. The novel presents the atmosphere in a 17th century remote English village during the Plague, but not only, it describes a small rural community, the beginnings of mining, witch hunting and superstitions, all of which ultimately lead to dramatic events. Also, the language is exeptionally powerful, you do not read it as a historical novel written in modern times. I did enjoy reading the novel as it's always interesting to observe how people, unable to leave the place, behave towards each other when confronted with a problem.

[Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Update: Mar 29/13--I don't know why I did it, but the very fact that I did it (finished this book) was going to lead me to up it to three stars. But now that I've done it I'M TAKING THIS DOWN TO ONE STAR -- HOLY MOLY AND GOLLY GEE WILLIKERS BUT I AM P.O.'d AT THIS BOOK.

None of the last 50pp - new character development COMPLETELY in opposition and nonsensical to anything that went before, new sub-plots suggested and followed - were either necessary or sensible. ALL of it was entirely a contrivance to get Anna out of the country and end the damn thing. WOW. That is bad. That is like creative writing 101 what not to do. And the MELODRAMA! Like a 60s soap opera, it was! As the bodies piled up, all I could think of was this: Bring Out Yer Dead.

Everything about this is, as I said below: contrived, overwrought, OVERWRITTEN, clumsy, unconvincing.

I am done with YoW. DONE.

______

I’ve started and re-started this book twice, and am now putting it down a third and final time about half-way through. [ETA: for some ungodly reason, I picked it up again! I am still reading! The Plague: she has a hold on me! It's crazeeeeeee!!!]

I first picked it up coming off of 880 pages of the detail-rich, psychologically-nuanced density of Middlemarch. I thought perhaps it was not really a fair test – sort of like drinking an Italian pinot grigio after an Australian shiraz. And then I thought, ok – maybe I need something lighter than plague and pestilence right now.

It’s not you, Geraldine, it’s me. Or rather, it’s George Eliot – you can’t compete; don’t even try.

So I put it down and picked up Louise Erdrich (not literally, you silly thing). Consumed The Beet Queen, licked my fingers, dove back into Year of Wonders. Well, Erdrich can make humdrum domestic scenes leap off the page with eccentric characterizations, hysterically funny observations, and poetry in even the most mundane detail.

Sorry, Geraldine. It’s not you, it’s Louise Erdrich. Another totally unfair test. Angel food cake after a dark chocolate torte.

But c’mon. Can there be anything more inherently dramatic and gut-wrenching than the plague? With content like this, shouldn’t Geraldine have an easy time of pulling us into the story and keeping us there?

Well, no.

Contrived, overwrought, clumsy, unconvincing. It’s not that it was poorly researched – it was that the research showed through too transparently, but didn’t translate into compelling scenes or characters. List for me all the plants that a 17th C herbalist/healer would have in her garden – impressive, but irrelevant. Show me a scene where her fellow villagers try to drown her in a well to see if she’s a witch – great potential. But fell flat on the page because you didn’t make me care about her first.

One thing in particular that was annoying was the dialogue. Historical fiction writers: you can’t just have your characters use terms and refer to objects or events that mark them as ‘of a time and place’ – in this case, England 1662. I understand you're emerging from Puritanism and are therefore wearing colourful smocks instead of drab browns and greys. But I don't care.

You have to convey a way of thinking that is, in this case, 350 years out of date. Anna Firth spoke like a modest, 17th C uneducated country girl - but she didn't think like one. Her thinking was not just unusual for a woman of her time and place, it was positively anachronistic.

I don’t care if your dialogue is accurate down to the accent. If it sounds like it’s being play-acted by a local theatre troupe wearing homemade costumes, you’ve lost me at ‘good morrow.’

And so here’s where we come to the real comparison that sunk this book in my mind: Hilary Mantel. It’s all Hilary’s fault. Because every book of historical fiction I read is going to need to measure up to the standards she set in Wolf Hall and Bring Up The Bodies: the level of detail; the shaping of the character on the page from the inside out – never mind describing the clothes or using the words of a 17th C courtier, take me into his mind and thoughts so thoroughly that I inhabit that character with you. Lead me towards events with enough subtle build-up, enough interest in your characters, that I am both surprised by and invested in what happens to them when it happens. Even if it’s a foregone conclusion. Even if everyone dies, and I know everyone is going to die.

Actually: that’s another point, and here I’ll look to Edith Wharton who is a master of this (and for an even more apt comparison, Connie Willis did it well too in Doomsday Book). You can’t love your characters too much not to put them through the hell that they need to go through. It’s the plague. People die gruesome deaths – children die. Mothers grieve. We need you to take us through that. Also, some people have to be truly heartless – not soap opera-ey villainous. To stand as a contrast to others – who need to be selfless, humble and heroic, but not unbelievably so; they need to be humans who struggle and do the best they can, but are not perfect.

Geraldine couldn’t do it – it shows on the page. Maybe she gets to it later, but she lost me at the critical early point – she actually killed important people off too early and too quickly (this is what I mean by leading me to it – and by the need for greater detail, greater depth. This kind of historical fiction needs to be longer, more epic. Connie Willis knows. Hilary Mantel knows. Hell, even George Eliot knows!).

Great potential, unfulfilled.

[Mark Porton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am a bit ambivalent about this story. We are plummeted into what must have been one of the darkest periods of human history. Not just because of the plague, terrible enough as it was, but because of the suffocating amount of superstition and ignorance. Let me just clarify, ignorance in the sense of not knowing about a certain thing or unusual event is fine, but creating fairy tales to explain such phenomena drives me nuts – so specifically, let’s say, witchcraft (burn her!!!!) and various flavours of dogmatic religious beliefs and practices drove me bananas. Still does.

Anna Frith is the main character here and she is a widower living in Derbyshire in the 1600s. Her small town is hit by the bubonic plague. This terrible disease with a mortality rate around 40-60% or closer to 100% if left untreated. This disease provides for an excruciating death, as the bacteria Yersinia pestis explodes into the bloodstream causing fatal septicaemias (there are other forms too – such as pneumonias and more). One notable feature is the appearance of grotesque bulbous protrusions on one’s body, often erupting and causing all sorts of unsightly and painful deaths.



People are dropping like flies. The descriptions provided by the author are graphic and grim. I found this part of the story interesting, as it provided a taste of what life might have been like. There are various characters we can hate (like Anna’s dad) and characters we can love, like our narrator - Anna.

However, towards the end of the story a few things happened that rocked my bubonic world. I did not expect some of these occurrences, in fact, I thought they were a little unlikely, unusually so. It was all a bit unsettling.

I was also a little perturbed by the first-person narrative of Anna. She often used words like “shit,” which did not work for me, as (even stated in the book) people could be put in the stocks and have rotten carrots thrown at them for swearing. Her narrative was a bit too modern, it lacked authenticity.

This was a bit disappointing as this is a worthwhile topic. Particularly considering our recent experiences with our own pandemic. But it did make me think – if COVID-19 had the same mortality rate as the plague or say the Ebola virus, we all would have been having entirely different conversations – those of us who were left.

2 Stars

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks is a debut novel and an historical fiction account of the village of Eyam in Derbyshire, England during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1665. The outbreak of the plague was thought to be from a bolt of material that had been ordered by the village tailor from London. It was thought that the material had been contaminated with infected fleas which in turn led to the outbreak of the plague in the village claiming more than half of the villagers within a year. At the heart of this story is Anna Frith, a widow and housemaid to the rector Michael Mompellion and his wife, Elinor. Reverend Mompellion persuaded the village to agree to a self-quarantine to prevent the spread of the plague to surrounding communities meaning that no one was allowed to leave or to come into the village. Anna Frith, one who had suffered a lot of personal loss, still resisted the belief that the pestilence was a call for repentance and instead embraced the herbal remedies that she had learned of from Mem and Anys Gowdie, the village herbalists, with the help of Elinor Mompellion, and ministered to the village inhabitants. Anna Frith is at the center of the predominant theme of this book being that of God versus nature. It should be noted that in reading this as we are all in the midst of a Covid-19 virus pandemic in 2020, it was easier to see how fear caused many to turn on their friends, neighbors and sometimes family as they struggled for survival. It was a very devastating and moving book, but at the same time, it was uplifting as well.

"Dear friends, here we are, and here we must stay. Let the boundaries of this village become our whole world. Let none enter and none leave while this Plague lasts."

"By the second Sunday of June we had reached a sorry marker: as many of us were now in the ground as walked above it."

"There had been fear here, since the very beginning, but where it had been veiled, now it had become naked. Those of us who left feared each other and hidden contagion we each might carry."

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Year of Wonders tells the story of Anna, a servant to a pastor, and how she emotionally and physically survives the plague while the majority of her village falls ill around her.

I was enthralled. I listened to the audiobook on my daily commute and it was fantastic.

You get the very real drama of life in a small village mixed with the the despair that must have accompanied the plague. There's finger-pointing, people taking advantage of other's need and, above all, the need to rationalize why all of the deaths were occurring.

My favorite part of this book was when Anna stopped in the middle of her hectic life to reconsider how she viewed God. She uses common sense reasoning to pick apart why a deity would allow such tragedy to occur and then wonders why the young are taken rather than the old.

She comes to the conclusion that what's happening is a biological thing rather than a divine thing. Then, once she has that straight in her mind, she's better equipped to handle everybody else's irrational responses to the plague without being bogged down by her own.

Anna is a great heroine. She has her flaws- a flirtation with opium addiction to dull her grief and a crush on someone else's husband- but she tries to be a good person. Mainly, she's just overwhelmed by what's going on and wants to feel loved and safe.

She cares for the ill, helps an orphaned child hold on to her family's lead mine and tries to help her village keep body and soul together.

The ending of Year of Wonders was incredibly shocking to me, but in a good way. Geraldine Brooks stayed true to her characters but took the story in such an unexpected direction, that I had to turn it off for awhile to absorb what I had just heard.

Highly recommended for book clubs or people who love historical fiction. Year of Wonders is wonderous indeed.

[Sharon Orlopp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved the book Horse by Geraldine Brooks. Year of Wonders is my second Brooks book and I liked it okay but not as much as I liked Horse.

Year of Wonders is set in the 1600s when a plague strikes. The small town of Derbyshire self-quarantines to prevent further deaths. The main protagonist, Anna, and the rector's wife, Elinor, collect herbs and learn how to use various herbs to help with minor ailments. They also become midwives. Tragedy and death continue throughout the story.

Year of Wonders is a 2001 international bestselling historical fiction novel and it was a NY Times and Washington Post notable book. There are many high ratings from Goodreads reviewers and I encourage readers to read them.

For me, the amount of death and tragedy was challenging and depressing.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book about the bubonic plague so I am basically expected this by the end:



Spoilers abound below along with a not insignificant amount of profanity:
So, expecting this book to be bleak, I shunted all of the emotions I anticipated feeling into the area of my heart where I keep my New York Mets fandom. You know, these guys:





Sufficed to say their years of incompetence and disappointment have formed a nice level of scar tissue over that part of my metaphorical heart. So whatever this book was going to throw at me I knew it wouldn't sink its emotional claws into me.

That being said, fuck this book. It was a never ending parade of despair, death, exploitation, inhumanity, and suffering with a little dash of hope thrown in every so often to make the subsequent despair, death, exploitation, inhumanity, and suffering that much worse. I swear, the town this takes place in (based on an actual town, Eyam) must have killed the writer's grandmother considering the amount of suffering she heaps upon the inhabitants. If I wanted this level of depression I would just read a non-fiction book about the plague.

Look, I understand that this book was about a horrible situation. The town voluntarily (and, might I had, quite nobly) secluded itself from the outside world once it was clear they were infected with the Bubonic plague (not the Black Death vintage, but one of the later outbreaks called The Great Plague of London). And yes, under those conditions some pretty terrible stuff will (and did) happen.

My issue with this book, though, was how the author presented the situation. Like I said, it was a never ending parade of death and despair. I was often introduced to families with the preface that they had already lost X amount of children plus one or both of the parents. I can feel bad for them on an abstract level, but if I didn't know them before hand it is difficult for me to rouse much emotional connection with them. They are just another set of future (or existing) corpses that I shouldn't bother getting to know or care about.

There are a few characters we get to know quite well.

Anna, the narrator. A peasant women in the employ of the local rector and widow to a local miner with two children. Michael Mompellion, the local rector and moral backbone of the community who proposes the the self quarantine. Elinor Mompellion, the wife of Michael who is a (positive) force to be reckoned with. Extremely empathetic, very hands on when it comes to problems, and generally a wonderful woman.

We are also introduced to some other characters as well: Anna's father and step-mother, the Gowdies (a Aunt/Niece pair who have extensive herblore) and the Bradfords (local well to do family).

So, some of the terrible things that the author heaps upon the reader:
-The lynching of the Gowdies because people thought they were witches. There goes just about all of the herblore for the village, forcing Elinor and Anna to learn everything on their own.
-Drug abuse (poppies in this case)
-Child abuse
-A crude form of crucifixion of Anna's father after he tries to kill someone in order to claim the victim's goods as payment for digging a grave (the previous person who did that died of a heart attack from overwork, another cheery note).
-Anna's step mother, Aphra, going crazy from grief both from losing her own children (yes, lots and lots of children die) and having her husband die from the aforementioned crucifixion after Anna does not go to free him (she expected Aphra to do it but Aphra was at her home taking care of her children who all came down with the plague in shortly after the crucifixion). Aphra begins to masquerade as the ghost of one of the Gowdies, selling people fake supernatural remedies.
-Child sacrifice
-Families felled in such numbers that the village runs out of consecrated ground
-Despair that drives some folks to self-flagellation
-Attempted infanticide
-Unnecessary mention of the slave trade. Not because the practice didn't occur, but because of all the other terrible things that have happened why include yet another terrible aspect of humanity during this time on top of everything else as part of a throw away line?
-Elinor, whom we know at the beginning of the book is dead, comes down with the plague. So while you expect her to die she makes a recovery. Sounds good right? Nope, she gets killed when Aphra goes even crazier and stabs her to death in front of what is left of the village.
-The Rector, Michael, after being a pillar of strength for the community, is broken by the death of Elinor and loses his faith (can't really blame him for that). But after hooking up with Anna (biblically speaking) he reveals that he never had sex with Elinor as a punishment for her sin of killing her out-of-wedlock child in the womb (using a heated iron brand no less). He specifically said that he strove to make her love him more and more so that his withholding of sex would hurt her that much more. Talk about a stone hearted, crazy religious zealot son of a bitch. Of course, because Anna become such good friends with Elinor and we see how great of a person Elinor is, this comes off as even more depressing and is a complete 180 from his previous personality to the point where it felt very jarring.

So like I said, this book was fucking bleak. Everyone I was introduced to ended up dead, crazy, or deeply emotionally scarred (or were just terrible people to begin with). By the end we were left wwith this:



Yes, the ending was sort of happy (if you ignore the mountain of corpses you had to climb over to get there), but Michael's crazy genes got passed on to another generation and the happiness lasted all of three pages before the book ended.

There are ways to write bleak, depressing stories that don't involve constantly hitting the reader over the head with all the terrible things happening. After the third or fourth family is wiped out by the plague, the marginal emotional impact of each subsequent family death is extremely low. By the time I was halfway through the book every terrible thing the author dumped on poor Anna or the village just elicited a heavy sigh, not unlike the sighs I utter when the Mets once again find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Upon final analysis this book failed for me because I did not resonate emotionally with any of the characters and the never ending parade of death and destruction just sort of numbed me to the entire experience. Family of seven wiped out by the plague? How passe. Drowning a baby? Par for the course. Crazy lady with a giant knife that slays the most beloved character in the village? Not terribly surprising. Religious man turns out to be a heartless self-righteous jackass? Certainly surprising, but completely undercuts any good feelings I had towards him this entire book.

If you are interested in seeing a community collapse and die off from a plague and their own inhumanity, you might like this book. The writing and descriptions are quite sharp and well crafted, just expect a windmill full of corpses by the end.

[Zanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this because

I've known the story since I was very small & been to the place
The protagonist is a poor woman
The most heroic character is a liberated woman
The most courageous characters are all women
The author celebrates the lore and spirituality of cunning women
The author celebrates love, loyalty and friendship between women
The author celebrates communalist values and mutual care
The author takes witch-hunting to task as a masculist power-grab
The author takes Puritanism to task
The author takes sanctimonious men to task
The author takes abusive men to task, with nuance
The author takes the parasitic rich & powerful class to task, mercilessly
The author takes unjust law to task
The author takes the denigration of sex workers to task
The author shows us women taking on injustice and male indifference with above-and-beyond determination
The author shows us women taking sexual initiative
The author shows us fulfilling childless husbandless lives for women.
The author throws open the hardness and darkness of the truth-based story with a beautiful, fanciful redemptive ending full of love and light, simultaneously taking racist white Christian history to task.

[Melki · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Good yield does not come without suffering, it does not come without struggle, and toil, and, yes, loss. Each one of you has cried for the crop blighted by drought or pest. Cried, as you did what you knew you must, and ploughed each plant under, so that the soil could be renewed in the hope of the better season coming. Cry now, my friends, but hope, also! For a better season will follow this time of Plague, if only we trust in God to perform his wonders!"

Perhaps only the deeply religious or the deeply deluded (some might say both . . . ), could refer to a plague year as a year of wonders, yet for Anna Frith, 1666 becomes just that. While still grieving her own losses, she is forced to become a savior to her village, where dread and desperation as the deadly disease visits each household, has turned to fear and superstition among the townsfolk. Accusations and mistrust run rampant as the sufferers try to determine if the plague is God's test of faith, or evidence of the Devil's work on Earth.

Anna is not convinced it's either.

Isn't it great to have a rational, thinking heroine who reads!

When I have a tallow stub, I read until it gutters . . . For the hour in which I am able to lose myself in someone else's thoughts is the greatest relief I can find from the burden of my own memories.

This was Brooks' first book - I still consider it her best. The novel held me just as rapt as it did when I first read it over ten years ago.

[Dorie - Cats&Books :) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the captivating story of the bubonic plague in a small English town in 1665. This is a part of history that should be told!! Written as a novel of historical fiction with a wonderful heroine.

I love this sad yet essentially uplifting story about a town that sacrifices itself by cutting off all travel and communication between their village and the other towns to contain the progression of the plaque.

It is based on true stories and superb writing -- told in the language of the times.


***All time Favorite Books***

[Katy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to say that I liked this book. But, I was greatly disappointed in it. I came to the book knowing of the sacrifice of that village and knowing, too, that when people sacrifice in such a way they are abundantly blessed by God. Unfortunately, the latter was completely missing in this book. It is easy to be an onlooker to suffering and assume that you’ve seen the injustice and the loss and the pain and that there is nothing else to see. This is not only completely at odds with everything I believe to be true but also at odds with people I know who have suffered and the tales they tell of the comfort they have received. In the not too far distant history of my own people there is a sad tale of suffering and deaths of the daily “will this never end?” type. However, unlike the survivors of Eyam, we have their own words of the experience and as one survivor said, “The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay.” Surely there were miracles in that village as they sacrificed for the good of their people. Surely God walked with them. Surely there were wonders. Unfortunately there was nothing of this in the book. We are left only with what the author assumes would be left after such a year – a rector who no longer believes and a village that doesn’t either. You can write a lot of things from our atheistic, modern standpoint, but in the matter of a village who sacrificed for their fellow man in the name of a God in whom they all believed, you can not write and get it right. You can not write of such things and leave God out. It leaves out half of the story and the most important half at that. My guess is that those villagers were never the same, but not in the hopeless way the author assumes. My guess is that for those villagers, they never had to look to the skies and wonder anymore if God was there and if He were listening, because my guess is that for them, all doubt had been swept away. They now knew He was there because He had walked with them in their year of wonders. That was the story I wanted to hear.

[PattyMacDotComma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5★
“But now there is neither ice nor mud nor dust, for the road is grassed over, with just a cow-track down the centre where the slight use of a few passing feet has worn the weeds down. For hundreds of years, the people of this village pushed Nature back from its precincts. It has taken less than a year to begin to reclaim its place.”

NOTE: I read this in 2015 and added a bit to my review in 2020, during the global Covid 19 pandemic, the closest (I hope) that readers will come to experiencing the plague of 1665-1666. Cities have silent streets (not yet grassed over), people avoiding contact, carers, innovative ways to distribute food, and an increasing awareness of how much we took our daily interactions and small pleasures and conveniences for granted.

This is a realistic, grim account of England’s Great Plague of 1665-1666 as told by Anna, a very young village widow. Brooks’s writing is what makes this bearable and compelling to read.

The Black Death had been around for hundreds of years--during the Roman Empire and the late Middle Ages—but this is about the outbreak in Restoration England. Charles II and the court removed themselves to the countryside, and this village decided to quarantine itself.

The story opens in “Leaf-Fall, 1666”, after the worst of the Plague in their village, with Anna attending to the grief-stricken Reverend Mompellion. They are among the survivors who are struggling to contemplate a future after so many tragedies. It’s been a village of farmers and lead miners, and few are left to tend to anything.

But Anna is young, and in spite of everything (and believe me, there is a LOT of everything), she does notice new life. A walnut shell has cracked and sprouted right in the middle of the dirt road and is probably going to block the way--yet nobody’s pulled it out.

“Footprints testify that we are all walking round it. I wonder if it is indifference, or whether , like me, others are so brimful of endings that they cannot bear to wrench even a scrawny sapling from its tenuous grip on life.”

Then we’re plunged backward into “Spring, 1665”, before the worst, where Anna (wife and mother), is beginning to deal with the Black Death, and the villagers are deciding to close the gates following Reverend Mompellion’s advice. They worked out a system of exchanging goods so that they weren’t entirely without support, but nobody could visit family or friends.

Miserable time, gruesome descriptions, dreadful events, horrifying circumstances with no relief. Witches are accused and dealt with, corpses pile up and stink, filth is everywhere. It’s grisly, and men were often brutal to women and children even during the good times.

There’s a lot of praying – church is held outdoors in the warm weather, when the sickness spreads more—but the church loses a lot of believers, and not all to Death.

Anna learns how to brew potions and salves which help nourish sufferers and relieve some pain. For herself, she resorts briefly to a bit of poppy resin “stirring in a half cup of heather-scented honey to mask the bitterness” to enjoy a dream-filled night and “poppy-induced serenity” in the morning.

It’s tempting to turn your back on the story to choose something cheerier, but it IS compelling. Brooks has such a way with words and is so good at putting us there (which is hard when it’s so awful).

Here’s a nice bit (and there are many).

“We all live aslant here, on this steep flank of the great White Peak. We are always tilting forwards to toil uphill, or bracing backwards on our heels to slow a swift descent. Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to live in a place where the land did not angle so, and people could walk upright with their eyes on a straight horizon. Even the main street of our town has a camber to it, so that the people on the uphill side stand higher than those on the downhill.

Our village is a thin thread of dwellings, unspooling east and west of the church. The main road frays here and there into a few narrower paths that lead to the mill, to Bradford Hall, the larger farms, and the lonelier crofts.”

And, we have the advantage of knowing that eventually . . . eventually, England recovered.

I read and enjoyed The Secret Chord but wished then for a glossary, and the same applies here. Some of the words I’ve read in other places, but some phrases and customs are new to me and not always obvious. You can find some help online, but I’d appreciate it in the books themselves.

If, in 2020 (and later), you are feeling sorry for yourself in "lockdown", be glad you're living in a time where we have books, communication, and labour-saving devices (not to mention home delivery, if you're lucky). :)

[Montzalee Wittmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks is so realistic that I felt I was back in 1666 during the plague. The well developed characters and the multiple situations that come up all would be similar to what would happen but written so perfectly that it was almost like reading a diary! So incredible! Well done!

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Year of Wonders is a historical novel about a small English town 100 miles outside of London. It's the year 1666, and the town has been struck by plague, brought to them by a London tailor boarding with our narrator, Anna. The village is so remote that when the plague first appears the villagers don't recognize it for what it is. Once they learn the horrors of the disease, the villagers are asked to make a decision whether to flee in order to save themselves, or to stay put in order to keep the disease from spreading any further.

In the end, everyone in the village agrees to stay, aside from the only rich family in town - the only family with the means to run far from the reaches of the disease. As we follow the rest of the town through its year of isolation, we watch Anna, who begins as a lowly maid, transformed into a strong woman who the town begins to depend on for herbal remedies to just about every malady, in addition to becoming the only midwife in town (after an unfortunate incident that leaves the former midwife dead).

When I first saw this book I knew it was going to be an easy read, merely because of its length (only 336 pages!). What I didn't know was how much I'd enjoy reading it. This book packed in a ton of information, along with many vivid scenes. Time and again I found myself being shocked by how much I learned from this book and how many different places/people were described in so few pages. Brooks is an amazing writer for both her economy of words and her ability to tell a story well. Also, she does a wonderful job of using old English without it seeming cumbersome. I have read other historical books and been completely put off by them because it's so difficult for me to figure out what the characters are saying to each other.

I really enjoyed watching Anna grow as a person. One of my favorite parts of the book was when she went to the mine with Elinor (her partner in seeking herbal remedies to the plague) to save Merry from losing her family's mine. I was surprised Brooks made these women so independent in a novel about the 17th century, but in the interviews with her in the back of the book she talks about the necessity of women taking a leading role during that time and the fact that women were starting to gain more freedom during that century in England.

There were some cringe-worthy moments in this book - from the witch hangings to a couple of scenes where women are physically abused - but I think it added to the authenticity of the book. We live in such a sterile world today, it was difficult for me to imagine what it would be like to live in such a dirty place while trying to fight a fatal disease.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and I would definitely recommend it (and already have forced it upon a number of friends). The one thing that really disappointed me was the epilogue, although that was pretty much because it went against what I had imagined and what I was expecting to happen. Normally I'd be glad about this because I hate when books are too predictable (and I probably would have said it was predictable if it had ended the way I had expected it to, so I don't know why I'm complaining), but after all the death and destruction in this novel, I guess I kind of wanted a couple of people to end up "happily ever after."

[Heidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid blend of history and fiction (based on true events).

I read this novel over two days and although the village's despair took its toll on me (yes, I cried at some truly heartbreaking passages), it was a tale that gripped me until the end.

Despite the desperate times, the main character, Anna, is transformed from a child bride/widow into a strong woman-- a true survivor!

I did think the ending was fairly abrupt and I could definitely "see some of it coming" (and the epilogue didn't do the story any favors either). Despite the odd ending, I highly recommend this to all historical fiction devotees!

(Reviewed 11/29/10)

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geraldine Brooks was inspired to write her (2001) Year of Wonders after she saw a BBC documentary wherein she learned that in 1665, during the Great Plague, the Derbyshire village of Eyam decided to quarantine itself. The villagers agreed that no one would leave until the plague had ended, and outsiders agreed to bring food and supplies to the village gates. Many people died, but many more were also saved. We learn of various strategies they tried that helped save themselves, while facing extremist responses as well.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-d...

The first person narrator is Anna Frith, an inspiring young woman who lost her family and became a healer and midwife in the process. She is inspired to hopeful acts of solidarity and love in part by her rector, Montpelier, who leads the village to make this choice.

It is sad, of course, as our pandemic has been for countless thousands:

“My Tom died as babies do, gently and without complaint. Because they have been such a little time with us, they seem to hold to life but weakly. I used to wonder if it was so because the memory of Heaven still lived within them, so that in leaving here they do not fear death as we do, who no longer know with certainty where it is our spirits go. This, I thought, must be the kindness that God does for them and for us, since He gives so many infants such a little while to bide with us.”

But the inspiration for us to thrive in crisis comes from her, undefeated even as death surrounds her:

“She closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them and gazed at me. 'I wonder if you know how you have changed. It is the one good, perhaps, to come out of this terrible year. Oh, the spark was clear in you when you first came to me - but you covered your light as if you were afraid of what would happen if anybody saw it. You were like a flame blown by the wind until it is almost extinguished. All I had to do was put the glass around you. And now, how you shine!”

I liked a novel on the same period, Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell, more, but this is elegantly written historical fiction, just beautiful writing. It has a somewhat surprising ending that seems a little out of character with the dominant tone of the book, but maybe it seems consistent with eighteenth century novels with sudden turns of events and fortunes? At any rate, I still like how it ends. And I like this book quite a bit. Read it with Hamnet and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo about the loss of children. too.