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 n  I'M PISSED, PISSED, PISSEDn 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.

Audiobook
4 Stars for the story which is beautifully written.
2 Stars for the reader, who is also the author.

This would have been better read by an English person who has experience reading audiobooks, as the author has an Australian accent and a voice that is, it pains me to say, monotonous and flat. Half the time she sounded bored and disinterested; like a tired, teen aged Jennifer Jason Leigh doing a bad British accent. It's a testament to the author's talent as a writer that I was able to persevere to the end.

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).

Since much news relates to the Covid-19 virus these days, it's a good time to learn from the past. Geraldine Brooks, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, gives a fascinating fictionalized account of how a village in England handled an outbreak of bubonic plague. For an older novel based on eyewitness accounts, see Daniel Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year."

“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?

n  n

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.

n  n

"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.

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Read about it and "its blows fall and fall again upon raw sorrow." Its words will carry you through "a patchwork of grays," for it is not just a sense of melancholy that drives the mood of this novel; rather, it is an abhorrent obscurity. The kind of murkiness that once upon a time, engulfed the real-life villagers of Eyam, Derbyshire in the year 1665. A closely knit community of miners and shepherds and weavers, they were.

Read and you will learn about their puritan ways and the plague that claimed many lives in their village. About the radical minister who was their leader and the surprising turn his life takes at the end ("His body is strong but I fear that the strength of his will far exceeds it. It can drive him to do what any normal man cannot do, for better and for worse"). About Anna Frith, the heroine and servant of the rector and his wife--the wife who becomes Anna's best friend.

Read and you will love Anna as a narrator. You will have sympathy for her losses, her abandonment, her aloneness. You will be with her there, deep in the depths of her despair.

Do not read if you cannot stomach imagistic illness and death:

I heard the snap: a dry sound like a chicken's wishbone breaking. The little skull popped free of the spine and fell to the grass, where it rolled back and forth, the empty eye-holes staring.

Beware, if the horrors of self-torture that a dying man submits to, with the hopes that he will be saved from the ravishing disease, disturb you:

A scourge of plaited leather, into the ends of which had been driven short nails...and strikes himself. One of the spikes was bent crooked, like a fishhook, so that where it connected with the skin it caught and tore away a tiny piece of flesh."

Read and you will find fact intermingled with fiction; good battling evil; choice as a thematic undertone. You will be disgusted and delighted. Angry and sad. In the end though, there is some hope because after all, there is always hope.

Set in 1666, "Year of Wonders" follows Anna Frith, a widow of two, as her life drastically changes with the plague sweeping through her village. Ordered into quarantine, faith falters, mysticism rises, and malevolence festers. Frith focuses on one goal: survival. However, despite being based on true events, Geraldine Brooks' novel lacks depth. Themes like faith, death, and despair are descriptively portrayed without accompanying analytical discussions via the characters. Moreover, Frith's character development is wanting despite enduring traumatising events throughout the narrative. A better book is "The Plague" by Albert Camus.

Geraldine Brooks' book about the outbreak of the plague in England in the mid-seventeenth century is fascinating, instructive and optimistic, despite the gloominess of the topic. The story of a maid from a priest's house named Anna Frith, a very young woman who managed to get married by her twenties, become a mother twice and become a widow (the poor at all times live faster, age and die before the rich).

This area is abundant in lead and the usual occupation for local men is ore mining. Sam Frith had his own tunnel, and he died in it. And no, Anna and her children did not inherit the mine. Everything is arranged quite rigidly there, the resources are in communal ownership: you are the owner only when you provide a certain level of production, if not, the right of exploitation passes to the one who can. Anna would not be able to develop her husband's lead vein.

The place of a servant in the vicarage was a salvation for her and her children, his young, beautiful wife Eleanor was a friend and mentor. And the appearance at the gates of a London tailor, who decided to move to their area and asked to stay, promised considerable financial help. Not to mention the possibility of giving the boys, when they grow up, to him for training. What mother would not want a quiet, calm and clean job for her children, when the alternative is hard labor of a miner?

Макамбрически-духоподъемное


Как от проказницы Зимы, Запремся также от Чумы.
Пушкин "Маленькие трагедии"
Книга Джералдин Брукс о вспышке чумы в Англии середины семнадцатого века увлекательна, поучительна и оптимистична, несмотря на мрачность темы. История служанки из дома священника по имени Анна Фрит, совсем молодой женщины, успевшей к своим двадцати с небольшим выйти замуж, дважды стать матерью и овдоветь (бедные во все времена живут быстрее, старятся и умирают прежде богатых).

Эта местность обильна свинцом и привычное занятие для здешних мужчин добыча руды. У Сэма Фрита была своя штольня, в ней он и погиб. И нет, Анна с детьми не унаследовала шахту. Там все устроено достаточно жестко, ресурсы в общинном владении: ты хозяин лишь тогда, когда обеспечиваешь определенный уровень выработки, если нет — право эксплуатации переходит к тому, кто сумеет. Анна не смогла бы разрабатывать мужнину свинцовую жилу.

Место служанки в доме священника стало спасением для нее с детьми, его молодая, прекрасная жена Элинор — подругой и наставницей. А появление у ворот лондонского портного, который решил перебраться на жительство в их местность и попросился на постой, обещало немалое финансовое подспорье. Не говоря о возможности отдать мальчиков, когда подрастут, к нему в обучение. Какая мать не пожелает для своих детей тихой, спокойной и чистой работы, когда альтернативой каторжный труд шахтера?

Было и еще одно, любезный обходительный Джордж начал ухаживать за Анной, что обещало и вовсе замечательный вариант развития событий. Обещало, да не исполнило. Вместе со столичными тканями из Лондона прибыла чума. Спасаясь от вспышки этой заразы, постоялец Анны покинул город. Лишь за тем, чтобы стать первой жертвой на новом месте. Первой, но далеко не последней.

У жителей средневековой английской деревни не было возможности героев «Декамерона» пересидеть вспышку, укрывшись в отдаленном замке. Но первый порыв большинства был бежать, посадив на тележку детей поверх скарба и припасов. Куда вот только? Где их примут? Кто не отшатнется в ужасе, поняв, откуда прибыли беженцы?

Решение затвориться от мира пока вспышка не утихнет, предложенное священником и одобренное паствой, отчасти продиктовано было этими соображениями, частью подкреплено обещанием графа - владельца окрестных земель, доставлять во время карантина необходимые продукты. Но главное. Все они согласились совершить подвиг человеколюбия во славу Христову. Так начался Год чудес, который на самом деле продлится полтора года, с весны 1665 до осени 1666.

Множество испытаний выпадет на их долю, многие соседи не переживут его, немало подлости и низости явлено будет миру, но не меньше примеров самопожертвования и сострадания. И с этого года начнется долгий путь целительницы Анны к своему призванию

The book gets its title from John Dryden's poem "Annus Mirabilis, The Year of Wonders, 1666" in the epigraph. It was the year when the black death ravaged England, and the Great Fire destroyed parts of London. Geraldine Brooks brings us to the small village of Eyam, Derbyshire where bolts of cloth from London, infested with fleas, were delivered to the tailor. He was the first villager who succumbed to the plague with many more following.

The story is narrated by Anna Frith, a shepherdess who also spent a few hours daily as a servant in the rectory. The rector of the church, Michael Mompellion, convinces the villagers to quarantine themselves within the village so the plague will not spread to nearby towns. A wealthy Earl leaves supplies and food on a large stone at the boundary line. The rector's wife Elinor works with Anna nursing the sick, and preparing herbal tonics to strengthen people. The villagers turn to superstitions, magic charms, fasting and flagellation, and devil worshiping in the hope that something might stop the spread of the plague. Digging graves is unending work. How can people keep their faith and their sanity when they are suffering such great losses?

Anna is an interesting character--a strong woman with many talents who comes from a troubled family background. There are a few twists and surprises in Anna's life at the end of the story. This historical novel was well researched and kept my interest to the end.

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."

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.

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: