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."

Ein englisches Bergarbeiterdorf im Jahr 1666. Anna Frith ist erst 18 Jahre alt und doch schon Mutter zweier Kinder und Witwe eines Bergarbeiters. Um ihr Einkommen zu sichern, vermietet sie ein Zimmer an einen fahrenden Schneider. Was beide nicht wissen: Der Stoff, den der Schneider mitgebracht hat, ist verseucht mit Flöhen, die den schwarzen Tod mit sich bringen: die Pest.

Es ist schon ein wenig seltsam, welche Faszination Geschichten von Seuchen, insbesondere der Pest, auf uns ausüben. Insbesondere, wenn wir gerade selbst eine Pandemie erleben. Vielleicht ist es ein wenig tröstlich, dass alles noch viel schlimmer sein könnte.

So kommt mir bei der Lektüre einiges bekannt vor: Das Dorf begibt sich komplett in Quarantäne, um die Ausbreitung der Seuche zu verhindern. Bemerkenswert ist, dass die Dorfbewohner es aus eigenen Stücken tun und dass es sich um eine wahre Geschichte handelt. Eine solche Maßnahme heute: kaum denkbar. Was nicht heißen soll, dass die Dorfbewohner vorbildlich sind. Etwa werden die örtlichen Kräuterfrauen, wie das im 17. Jahrhundert keine Seltenheit war, der Hexerei verdächtigt. Die junge Protagonistin, die in Diensten des Pfarrers und seiner Frau steht, erzählt uns die Geschichte des Pestjahres aus der Ich-Perspektive. Trotz ihrer geringen Bildung stellt sie – zusammen mit dem Pfarrerehepaar – die Stimme der Vernunft da. Geraldine Brooks lässt sie ihrer Zeit voraus sein, Gedanken der Aufklärung denken:

„Perhaps the Plague was neither of God nor the Devil, but simply a thing in Nature, as the stone on which we stub a toe.“ … „If we balanced the time we spent contemplating God, and why He afflicted us, with more thought as to how the Plague spread and poisoned our blood, then we might come nearer to saving our lives.“ (Seite 215)

Ein Gedanke, der angesichts der zahlreichen unsäglichen Verschwörungstheorien immer noch völlig aktuell ist. Auch feministische Themen kommen zur Sprache, etwa die Folgen von Ehebruch und ungewollte Schwangerschaften sowie männliche Scheinheiligkeit.

So wird der Roman aus dem Jahr 2001 zu einem topaktuellen, faszinierenden Lesestoff in sehr ansprechender Sprache. Lediglich am Ende trägt Brooks für meinen Geschmack ein wenig zu dick auf, das fand ich nicht so sehr glaubwürdig.

***SPOILERS HIDDEN***

Year of Wonders is a solid effort from Geraldine Brooks. The focus is on Anna, a young mother managing a time of plague with strength. The atmosphere is understandably somber and, because the characters are actively working to avoid getting sick, oppressive. Brooks's writing is beautiful as she tells a story that despite being sad isn't depressing.

Brooks fleshed out a small cast of characters, thereby keeping the plot tight and easy to follow. A small unpredictable twist toward the end is jaw-dropping in an unsettling way. Year of Wonders's only weakness concerns the death of Anna's sons, as Brooks barely touched upon Anna's grief. Not only does this character barely think of her sons after their deaths but she goes back to work almost immediately. A parent in the best of circumstances who's lost children one right after the other--and only two years after having lost a spouse in a horrific accident--would likely be severely depressed. Her life situation is terrible, yet she copes with these deaths on a superhuman level. She has no kin to lean on, as her abusive father and cruel stepmother hardly count, and she constantly has to worry about the plague. Perhaps Brooks was trying to show Anna's resilience, but she instead made her seem less human, and therefore less relatable.

In the final pages, Brooks provided insight into how she conceived of the idea for Year of Wonders. This is historical information that's valuable in adding weight and context to round out her story. This is Year of Wonders's strength--that it shows, up close and in detail, what it could have been like for an everyday person living during a plague. Bringing plague times to life is challenging, but Brooks did it. Year of Wonders deserves more attention.

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.

4.5 stars

Beautiful. A portrait of how tragedy can bring out the worst, but also the best in humanity.

But that epilogue. THAT EPILOGUE. Mind you it’s…a little odd and I was a bit confused (it felt like the epilogue of a completely different book tbh) but those final two sentences had me like ❤️

A historical novel about an intelligent, intuitive, resourceful woman written by a brilliantly intelligent, intuitive, resourceful woman.

If you value such stories, read, and you will be constantly surprised, occasionally delighted, and ultimately changed.

If you'll excuse me, I now have to go demote a bunch of books that I'd thought deserved five stars, because they pale so in comparison to this one.

God warns us not to love any earthly thing above Himself, and yet He sets in a mother's heart such a fierce passion for her babes that I do not comprehend how He can test us so.

I did not know what to expect of this title, as some of my GR friends loved it, and others loathed it. I'm sort of in the middle with my 3.5 stars. To be fair I think if I read this at a calmer time in my life, where the reading of it would have been less interrupted I would have enjoyed it more. The writing itself was beautiful, and I really liked her characters - none of them were drawn in black and white, and they were all fully human. It was interesting to see how individuals respond differently to major trauma in their lives. The theological issues raised were thought-provoking.
The Story: . In 1666, plague swept through London, driving the King and his court to Oxford in an attempt to escape contagion. The north of England remained untouched until, in a small community of leadminers and hill farmers, a bolt of cloth arrived from the capital. The tailor who cut the cloth had no way of knowing that the damp fabric carried with it bubonic infection. So begins the Year of Wonders, in which a Pennine village of 350 souls confronts a scourge beyond remedy or understanding. Desperate, the villagers turn to sorcery, herb lore, and murderous witch-hunting. Then, led by a young and charismatic preacher, they elect to isolate themselves in a fatal quarantine.

Excellent, well crafted story of a young woman, Anna, caught up in the struggles of a small 17th century English village beset by the Plague. Her courage and humanity are reinforced by her own lust for life and the mission of the village rector and his wife, who lead the community into a self-quarantine for a year. Morality, spirituality, mental health, and classism are all tested by the challenges faced. Ultimately, the tale is a reflection on the love of Anna for the couple, Michael and Elinor, who leads her onward in her path to make meaning and wonder of the disastrous year.

4.5 stars!

When this started with apple season, I thought, “Oh, I’ve already read this!” but really, it was reminding me of the beginning of The Witch's Daughter. They start out quite similarly and if you've read that one and then you read this one, don't be confused - keep reading, it's a different story. I promise.

Typically, I don’t enjoy the present being introduced and then flinging back to the past until they meet up but since the two are only a year apart in this case, I didn’t mind. In fact, it worked well to start in the current moment and then backtrack so as to catch everything up and move forward, giving the big surprise moments more shock value.

A story about a village dying from the plague shouldn't be this interesting but Brooks creates such a rich tale with well-rounded, believable characters and a vivid backdrop that it's hard not to get caught up in Anna Frith's year of tragedy and tribulation. As I listened, I thought, "I remember reading about a village that self-quarantined during the plague!" and sure enough, at the end, Brooks says she was inspired to write this when she came across the plague village of Eyam while taking a break from her stressful Middle East reporting job. Some of the things that happened in this book were based on real people or circumstances, though loosely, of course, and I thought that was pretty spiffy.

In addition, I learned things! I love learning things from novels! For instance, “to nick” - to steal and probably said with a Cockney accent when you think about it in your mind - may have started as a miner’s term. I can't find anything online to back that up but I'm also not going to put in a lot of effort to do so. Pretty much, in this story, if someone had a mine and they weren't producing the amount of ore they were supposed to produce in order to keep their mine, another miner could come along and make nicks in the framework above the main mineshaft and when it had been nicked enough over a certain span of time (3 times in 90 days, in this case), the other miner could claim the mine as their own, they'd nicked it. True or not, it's a cool lexigraphical tale.

Other reviews have mentioned the unrealistic ending. I don't know if I agree that it was unrealistic but it did seem a little tidy and too-perfect, a precious fairy-tale ending.. While that didn't particularly mar my enjoyment, overall, it did keep me from walking away with that five-star feeling.

(4.5) In 1665, with the Derbyshire village of Eyam in the grip of the Plague, the drastic decision was made to quarantine it. A benevolent landowner arranged for regular deliveries of food and other supplies to just outside the parish boundaries. The villagers made an oath that no one would leave until the pestilence was eradicated. One year later, two-thirds of its residents were dead. Brooks imagines that the “plague seeds” came to the village in a bolt of cloth that was delivered from London to the tailor George Viccars, who lodged with widow Anna Frith. Viccars is the first victim and the disease quickly spreads outward from Anna’s home.

Anna barely has time to grieve her own losses before she’s called into service: along with the minister’s wife, Elinor Mompellion, she steps in as a midwife, herbal healer and even a miner. The village succumbs to several sobering trajectories. Suspicion of women’s traditional wisdom leads some to take vigilante action against presumed witches. Unscrupulous characters like Anna’s father, who sets up as a gravedigger, try to make a profit out of others’ suffering. Frustration with the minister’s apparent ineffectuality attracts others to forms of religious extremism.

Perhaps what I was most missing from the other epidemic novels I read recently (including Hamnet, which bears such striking thematic similarities) was intimate first-person narration, which is just what you get here from Anna. The voice and the historical recreation are flawless, and again there were so many passages that felt apt:

Stay here, in the place that you know, and in the place where you are known. … Stay here, and here we will be for one another.

the current times did seem to ask us all for every kind of sacrifice

(once they start meeting in a meadow instead of the church building) We placed ourselves so that some three yards separated each family group, believing this to be sufficient distance to avoid the passing of infection.

Yet it is a good day, for the simple fact that no one died upon it. We are brought to a sorry state, that we measure what is good by such a shortened yardstick.

I’ve docked a half-star only because of a far-fetched ending that reminded me of that to The Wonder by Emma Donoghue. Apart from that, this is just what I want from my historical fiction.

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

Set in 17th century England, the novel revolves around the life in a small village which is wracked by the Plague. Widow Anna Firth, the main character, attempts to help families in the village deal with the illness and tragedy. An interesting read, but it dragged in a number of places.

I picked up YEAR OF WONDERS off my shelf after a stint of disappointing fiction. I have to admit that I was dubious that a book about the plague would satisfy my desire for a satisfying read -- but I'm revoltingly pleased to say I was wrong.

Yes, this is a book about the plague -- namely, a 17th century village that becomes infected with plague and chooses to cut themselves off from the rest of the world rather than spread the disease -- but it's not gruesome or desperately sad. The purposeful, earnest voice of Anna Frith, a maid to the rector and his delicate wife Elinor, leads us through a year full of death, madness, and loss, navigating the tragedies until we discover how the season could've also been called the Year of Wonders.

What do I love about this book? I love that Geraldine Brooks plays with language and gives lovely wordplay that delights the writer in me, and I love that she is unerring and subtle in her deft characterization.

Because of the subject matter, this wasn't an easy book to read, but it wasn't unpleasant either. I could imagine myself reading it again and it's earned a place on my keeper shelf. Highly recommended.


***wondering why all my reviews are five stars? Because I'm only reviewing my favorite books -- not every book I read. Consider a novel's presence on my Goodreads bookshelf as a hearty endorsement. I can't believe I just said "hearty." It sounds like a stew.***