Lib found it tantalizing not to be able to glimpse the extraordinary wonder – wasn't that the phrase the farmers had used at the spirit grocery last night? Yes, this must have been what they were raving about: not some two-headed calf but Anna O'Donnell, the living marvel. Evidently hordes were let in every day to grovel at the child's feet; the vulgarity of it!As someone who tries mightily to avoid all spoilers before I pick up a book, I had no idea what The Wonder would be about, so as it began, I was as clueless as our protagonist – Mrs Elizabeth (Lib) Wright, recent widow, Nightingale-trained English nurse and avowed atheist, freshly returned from the Crimean War – as she is deposited in the boggy heart of 1850s Roman Catholic Ireland on an unrevealed two week nursing job. As her duties become clear to both Lib and the reader, I found the concept to be intriguing, but as I've found with other examples of author Emma Donoghue's historical fiction, while she does a wonderful job of capturing time and place, there's nothing about this novel that elevates it from mass market fiction to capital-l “Literature”. It's not a waste of time, there were some very nice moments, but this isn't really my cup of tea. Mild spoilers (of the kind that I avoid) to follow.
What Lib learns about the task before her: Pious eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell claims to have been fasting for four months – nothing passing her lips but water and “manna from heaven” – and as her story has begun to make national and then international news, a committee of “important men” from the village has hired two nurses to watch the girl around the clock in order to confirm or belie the assertion. As a rational and educated woman, Lib is determined to expose the little girl (and more likely her family) as a fraud before they've even met, and she is disappointed to learn that her nursing partner will be a local nun; someone sure to be blinkered by her own fanaticism and superstitions. Lib bursts upon the domestic scene, interrupting prayers and brusquely searching every seam and crack of Anna's room for hidden crumbs; yet despite her pose of detached professionalism, the nurse can't help but find the little girl to be charming, reverent, and sincere; if Anna is sneaking food, Lib can't prove it, and as the days go on, Lib is so beguiled by the girl's devotion and intelligence that she fails to notice Anna's suddenly failing health.
What a rabble, the Irish. Shiftless, thriftless, hopeless, hapless, always brooding over past wrongs. Their tracks going nowhere, their trees hung with putrid rags.In a way, Donoghue uses Nurse Lib as a strawman: having her, as a superior-minded Englishwoman, make snap judgments about the local Irish customs, beliefs, and history; about all of which she knows nothing at all. Along comes a handsome Irish newspaper reporter, William Byrne, and he is able to educate the lonely young widow (wink, wink) about not just the British role in the Potato Famine (which is just seven years in their past), but defend Catholic beliefs, and based on his own experience with famine, it is he who convinces the nurse that her charge is starving to death. But what is Lib to do? She has been hired merely to observe and report back to the committee at the end of the fortnight, not to interfere in Anna's medical care. (And as for that medical care, I appreciated both extremes: the local old country doctor who is willing to believe that Anna has discovered a way to live on air; and wouldn't that be a wonder, indeed, if no one ever starved again? And at the other end, I thought it was a wonderful scene when the English doctor from the Dublin Hospital told Lib that Anna was obviously dying, and in his opinion, should be forcefed by tube through either end; the fact that the nurse found this to be a horrid-sounding violation revealed much about her evolving state-of-mind.) As for the nursing sister, while Lib eventually realised that she was a fully competent nurse, her vows of obedience and ingrained deference to the local priest left Sister Michael with her own hands tied.
“Good nurses follow rules,” Lib growled, “but the best know when to break them.”On the jacket of The Wonder it states that the book “works beautifully on many levels – as a simple tale of two strangers who will transform each other's lives, a powerful psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil in its many masks”. I'd agree with that first point only: the best of this story is how Lib and Anna interact and develop their relationship. It is not a psychological thriller, and the word “evil” feels a bit overwrought in the circumstance (as does “love” for that matter). Note: I am totally onboard with the idea that the Catholic Church and its influence precipitated and exacerbated the events of this book, but neither the priest nor Anna's family acted with evil intent. And am I to infer that it was Lib's love that was pitted against these forces of evil? Ultimately her actions felt more self-serving than loving. As a work of historical fiction, this book succeeds (and as in the endnotes Donoghue states that her inspiration were the “so-called Fasting Girls” of historical record, she can be said to have achieved her goal). But there were no surprises in this book – everything happened as I assumed it would, except for the personal details of Lib's life that, when revealed near the end, only undermined the story for me – and it's ultimately little more than a “simple tale”.
The 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize Longlist:
Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Andrew Battershill : Pillow
David Bergen : Stranger
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Kathy Page : The Two of Us
Susan Perly : Death Valley
Kerry Lee Powell : Willem De Kooning's Paintbrush
Steven Price : By Gaslight
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People
*Won by Madeleine Thien for Do Not Say We Have Nothing. Not really a surprise, but this is how I ranked the shortlist, entirely according to my own enjoyment level with the reading experience:
Gary Barwin : Yiddish for Pirates
Catherine Leroux : The Party Wall
Madeleine Thien : Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Mona Awad : 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl
Emma Donoghue : The Wonder
Zoe Whittall : The Best Kind of People
