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3.65 AVERAGE
3.65 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book will not appeal to everyone. It plays heavily on old Irish Catholic culture. The story is of a 9 year old girl who refuses to eat believing that God is the only nourishment she needs. Personally, I thought it was great. It was definitely very thought provoking and would give a book club much to talk about.
medium-paced
I liked the concept, and the prose/dialogue were nice, but WOW this book moved slowly. The beginning and the end were solid, but the 200 pages in between were a slog. Literally nothing happens until about 70% through.
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
mysterious
sad
Watched the film a year or so ago and loved it. Bought the book and loved it, too. Film is very similar to the book, actually, which is nice.
Emma Donoghue is of course the author of the widely acclaimed Room, a book I would not be able to read due to its subject matter. But I've read reviews, and her reputation led me to The Wonder. It wasn't my cuppa....
In this book, a British Florence-Nightingale-trained nurse with battlefield experience has been hired for a two-week task in Ireland: in partnership with a nun with nursing experience, to keep close eye on an 11-year-old girl who has apparently been miraculously fasting for four months, to see if they can confirm or disprove the claim. What is apparent is that the child is both fanatical about observing the fast and that she is starving herself. Why those around her can't see the imminent danger, why the child is willing to die for the sins of the dead, why those who do understand the danger are torn about how to react, the real reasons behind the fast are the plot points that propel the novel.
So, a suspense book of sorts, enjoyable on its own terms.
Except for my expectations and ultimate enjoyment, what doesn't work:
--Lib, the nurse, arrives in Ireland with such deep-seated prejudice against the Irish and against Catholicism that she is rendered less sympathetic to me than those who certainly deserve reader suspicion and censure. Her judgment replaces thoughtful character development of most other characters, who seem mere props for the plot.
--While the story is told in third person, it is close third person, and as clues pile up (from the first pages), Lib is remarkably blind. Is Lib's objective training helpful in assessment? Not really, not even as a nurse. Is she the prejudiced outsider condemning a world she doesn't understand? Yes, except that because of her outsider perspective, she's eventually able to understand why a child can be considered a saint for starving herself, by understanding how the normalization of events in previous years by a society numbed by a famine and still highly superstitious and religious can know monstrous things but not see them as monstrous, or even pertinent.
--This last point would be more interesting if it wasn't, sadly, such common territory for Irish writing. There was Frank McCourt's memoir, Angela's Ashes. There was the more recent telling of benighted Ireland, John Boyne's The Heart's Invisible Furies. (I don't warm to either of these books, as both feel too exploitively overwrought.) There was, on the other hand, the excellent Milkman, by Anna Burns. And The Wonder is too akin to McCourt and Boyne, too akin to child-in-jep.
--Expecting a book from an author so deeply admired to be exceptionally well-written, I am bummed that it is competent domestic thriller.
In this book, a British Florence-Nightingale-trained nurse with battlefield experience has been hired for a two-week task in Ireland: in partnership with a nun with nursing experience, to keep close eye on an 11-year-old girl who has apparently been miraculously fasting for four months, to see if they can confirm or disprove the claim. What is apparent is that the child is both fanatical about observing the fast and that she is starving herself. Why those around her can't see the imminent danger, why the child is willing to die for the sins of the dead, why those who do understand the danger are torn about how to react, the real reasons behind the fast are the plot points that propel the novel.
So, a suspense book of sorts, enjoyable on its own terms.
Except for my expectations and ultimate enjoyment, what doesn't work:
--Lib, the nurse, arrives in Ireland with such deep-seated prejudice against the Irish and against Catholicism that she is rendered less sympathetic to me than those who certainly deserve reader suspicion and censure. Her judgment replaces thoughtful character development of most other characters, who seem mere props for the plot.
--While the story is told in third person, it is close third person, and as clues pile up (from the first pages), Lib is remarkably blind. Is Lib's objective training helpful in assessment? Not really, not even as a nurse. Is she the prejudiced outsider condemning a world she doesn't understand? Yes, except that because of her outsider perspective, she's eventually able to understand why a child can be considered a saint for starving herself, by understanding how the normalization of events in previous years by a society numbed by a famine and still highly superstitious and religious can know monstrous things but not see them as monstrous, or even pertinent.
--This last point would be more interesting if it wasn't, sadly, such common territory for Irish writing. There was Frank McCourt's memoir, Angela's Ashes. There was the more recent telling of benighted Ireland, John Boyne's The Heart's Invisible Furies. (I don't warm to either of these books, as both feel too exploitively overwrought.) There was, on the other hand, the excellent Milkman, by Anna Burns. And The Wonder is too akin to McCourt and Boyne, too akin to child-in-jep.
--Expecting a book from an author so deeply admired to be exceptionally well-written, I am bummed that it is competent domestic thriller.
was an entertaining dog walking book to listen to but it wasn't overly compelling.
dark
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced