book reviews year of wonders geraldine brooks

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Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks - review

A wonder indeed. This book combines loves, loss, truth and lies into a beguilingly story. Geraldine Brooks captures the imagination with each new discovery, creating an irresistible page turner.

Set in the year of 1666 the country is fraught with plague. When the disease reaches the rural Derbyshire village of Eyam a decision needs to be made for better or for worse. The villagers elect to isolate themselves from the rest of the world in a state of quarantine. Their lives in the hands of God, resentments begin to arise that will bring into question- is the plague really the village's biggest fear? This story is centered around Anna Frirth, a young maid with a burden to far surpass her years. The villagers struggle for survival will test Anna beyond her limits and she will learn what it means to lose everything.

This dazzling debut is based on a remarkable true story, yet it takes Brooks imagination to recreate and unearth the overwhelming suffering faced by the villagers. A sure recommendation, yet a slow start and some mature themes may make this book unsuitable for younger readers. Nevertheless, Brooks should be congratulated for her fascinating characters and intricate plot. After all, aren't the best stories often true?

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First Chapter

'Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague'

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By Geraldine Brooks

• Aug. 26, 2001

Iused to love this season. The wood stacked by the door, the tang of its sap still speaking of forest. The hay made, all golden in the low afternoon light. The rumble of the apples tumbling into the cellar bins. Smells and sights and sounds that said this year it would be all right: there'd be food and warmth for the babies by the time the snows came. I used to love to walk in the apple orchard at this time of the year, to feel the soft give underfoot when I trod on a fallen fruit. Thick, sweet scents of rotting apple and wet wood. This year, the hay stooks are few and the woodpile scant, and neither matters much to me.

They brought the apples yesterday, a cartload for the rectory cellar. Late pickings, of course: I saw brown spots on more than a few. I had words with the carter over it, but he told me we were lucky to get as good as we got, and I suppose it's true enough. There are so few people to do the picking. So few people to do anything. And those of us who are left walk around as if we're half asleep. We are all so tired.

I took an apple that was crisp and good and sliced it, thin as paper, and carried it into that dim room where he sits, still and silent. His hand is on the Bible, but he never opens it. Not anymore. I asked him if he'd like me to read it to him. He turned his head to look at me, and I started. It was the first time he'd looked at me in days. I'd forgotten what his eyes could do-what they could make us do-when he stared down from the pulpit and held us, one by one, in his gaze. His eyes are the same, but his face has altered so, drawn and haggard, each line etched deep. When he came here, just three years since, the whole village made a jest of his youthful looks and laughed at the idea of being preached at by such a pup. If they saw him now, they would not laugh, even if they could remember how to do so.

"You cannot read, Anna."

"To be sure, I can, Rector. Mrs. Mompellion taught me."

He winced and turned away as I mentioned her, and instantly I regretted it. He does not trouble to bind his hair these days, and from where I stood the long, dark fall of it hid his face, so that I could not read his expression. But his voice, when he spoke again, was composed enough. "Did she so? Did she so?" he muttered. "Well, then, perhaps one day I'll hear you and see what kind of a job she made of it. But not today, thank you, Anna. Not today. That will be all."

A servant has no right to stay, once she's dismissed. But I did stay, plumping the pillow, placing a shawl. He won't let me lay a fire. He won't let me give him even that little bit of comfort. Finally, when I'd run out of things to pretend to do, I left him.

In the kitchen, I chose a couple of the spotted apples I'd culled from the buckets and walked out to the stables. The courtyard hadn't been swept in a sennight. It smelled of rotting straw and horse piss. I had to hitch up my skirt to keep it off the muck. Before I was halfway across, I could hear the thud of his horse's rump as he turned and strutted in his confinement, gouging clefts into the floor of the stall. There's no one strong or skilled enough now to handle him.

The stable boy, whose job it was to keep the courtyard raked, was asleep on the floor of the tack room. He jumped when he saw me, making a great show of searching for the snath that had slipped from his hand when he'd dozed off. The sight of the scythe blade still upon his workbench vexed me, for I'd asked him to mend it long since, and the timothy now was naught but blown seed head and no longer worth the cutting. I was set to scold him about this, and about the filth outside, but his poor face, so pinched and exhausted, made me swallow the words.

Dust motes sparkled in the sudden shaft of sunlight as I opened the stable door. The horse stopped his pawing, holding one hoof aloft and blinking in the unfamiliar glare. Then he reared up on his muscled haunches and punched the air, saying, as plainly as he could, "If you aren't him, get out of here." Although I don't know when a brush was last laid on him, his coat still gleamed like bronze where the light touched it. When Mr. Mompellion had arrived here on this horse, the common talk had been that such a fine stallion was no fit steed for a priest. And people liked not to hear the rector calling him Anteros, after one of the old Puritans told them it was the name of a pagan idol. When I made so bold as to ask Mr. Mompellion about it, he had only laughed and said that even Puritans should recall that pagans, too, are children of God and their stories part of His creation.

I stood with my back pressed against the stall, talking gently to the great horse. "Ah, I'm so sorry you're cramped up in here all day. I brought you a small something." Slowly, I reached into the pocket of my pinafore and held out an apple. He turned his massive head a little, showing me the white of one liquid eye. I kept prattling, softly, as I used to with the children when they were scared or hurt. "You like apples. I know you do. Go on, then, and have it." He pawed the ground again, but with less conviction. Slowly, his nostrils flaring as he studied the scent of the apple, and of me, he stretched his broad neck toward me. His mouth was soft as a glove, and warm, as it brushed my hand, taking the apple in a single bite. As I reached into my pocket for the second one, he tossed his head and the apple juice sprayed. He was up now, angrily boxing the air, and I knew I'd lost the moment. I dropped the other apple on the floor of the stall and slid out quickly, resting my back against the closed door, wiping a string of horse spittle from my face. The stable boy slid his eyes at me and went silently on with his mending.

Well, I thought, it's easier to bring a small comfort to that poor beast than it is to his master. When I came back into the house, I could hear the rector out of his chair, pacing. The rectory floors are old and thin, and I could follow his steps by the creak of the boards. Up and back he walked, up and back, up and back. If only I could get him downstairs, to do his pacing in the garden. But once, when I suggested it, he looked as if I'd proposed something as ambitious as a trek up the White Peak. When I went to fetch his plate, the apple slices were all there, untouched, turning brown. Tomorrow, I'll start to work with the cider press. He'll take a drink without noticing sometimes, even when I can't get him to eat anything. And it's no use letting a cellar full of fruit go bad. If there's one thing I can't stand anymore, it's the scent of a rotting apple.

At day's end, when I leave the rectory for home, I prefer to walk through the orchard on the hill rather than go by the road and risk meeting people. After all we've been through together, it's just not possible to pass with a polite, "Good night t'ye." And yet I haven't the strength for more. Sometimes, not often, the orchard can bring back better times to me. These memories of happiness are fleeting things, reflections in a stream, glimpsed all broken for a second and then swept away in the current of grief that is our life now. I can't say that I ever feel what it felt like then, when I was happy. But sometimes something will touch the place where that feeling was, a touch as slight and swift as the brush of a moth's wing in the dark.

In the orchard of a summer night, if I close my eyes, I can hear the small voices of children: whispers and laughter, running feet and rustling leaves. Come this time of year, it's Sam that I think of-strong Sam Frith grabbing me around the waist and lifting me into the low, curved branch of a gnarly, old tree. I was just fifteen. "Marry me," he said. And why wouldn't I? My father's croft had ever been a joyless place. My father loved a pot better than he loved his children, though he kept on getting them, year passing year. To my stepmother, Aphra, I was always a pair of hands before I was a person, someone to toil after her babies. Yet it was she who spoke up for me, and it was her words that swayed my father to give his assent. In his eyes I was but a child still, too young to be handfasted. "Open your eyes, husband, and look at her," said Aphra. "You're the only man in the village who doesn't. Better she be wedded early to Frith than bedded untimely by some youth with a prick more upright than his morals."

Sam Frith was a miner with his own good lead seam to work. He had a fine small cottage and no children from a first wife who'd died. It did not take him long to give me children. Two sons in three years. Three good years. I should say, for there are many now too young to remember it, that it was not a time when we were raised up thinking to be happy. The Puritans, who are few amongst us now, and sorely pressed, had the running of this village then. It was their sermons we grew up listening to in a church bare of adornment, their notions of what was heathenish that hushed the Sabbath and quieted the church bells, that took the ale from the tavern and the lace from the dresses, the ribands from the Maypole and the laughter out of the public lanes. So the happiness I got from my sons, and from the life that Sam provided, burst on me as sudden as the first spring thaw. When it all turned to hardship and bleakness again, I was not surprised. I went calmly to the door that terrible night with the torches smoking and the voices yelling and the men with their faces all black so that they looked headless in the dark. The orchard can bring back that night, too, if I let my mind linger there. I stood in the doorway with the baby in my arms, watching the torches bobbing and weaving crazy lines of light through the trees. "Walk slow," I whispered. "Walk slow, because it won't be true until I hear the words." And they did walk slow, trudging up that little hill as if it were a mountain. But slow as they came, in the end they arrived, jostling and shuffling. They pushed the biggest one, Sam's friend, out in front. There was a mush of rotten apple on his boot. Funny thing to notice, but I suppose I was looking down so that I wouldn't have to look into his face.

They were four days digging out Sam's body. They took it straight to the sexton's instead of bringing it home to me. They tried to keep me from it, but I wouldn't be kept. I would do that last thing for him. She knew. "Tell them to let her go to him," Elinor Mompellion said to the rector in that gentle voice of hers. Once she spoke, it was over. She so rarely asked anything of him. And once Michael Mompellion nodded, they parted, those big men, moving aside and letting me through.

To be sure, there wasn't much there that was him. But what there was, I tended. That was two years ago. Since then, I've tended so many bodies, people I loved and people I barely knew. But Sam's was the first. I bathed him with the soap he liked, because he said it smelled of the children. Poor slow Sam. He never quite realized that it was the children who smelled of the soap. I washed them in it every night before he came home. I made it with heather blooms, a much gentler soap than the one I made for him. His soap was almost all grit and lye. It had to be, to scrape that paste of sweat and soil from his skin. He would bury his poor tired face in the babies' hair and breathe the fresh scent of them. It was the closest he got to the airy hillsides. Down in the mine at daybreak, out again after sundown. A life in the dark. And a death there, too.

And now it is Elinor Mompellion's Michael who sits all day in the dark, with the shutters closed. And I try to serve him, although sometimes I feel that I'm tending just another in that long procession of dead. But I do it. I do it for her. I tell myself I do it for her. Why else would I do it, after all?

Excerpted from Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks. Copyright © 2001 by Geraldine Brooks. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Book Review

Book Review: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Author: Geraldine Brooks

Publisher: Penguin Books

Genre: Historical Fiction

First Publication: 2001

Language:  English

Major Characters: Anna Frith, Michael Mompellion, Elinor Mompellion

Setting Place: Eyam, Derbyshire, England, 1666

Theme: Community and Convention, Female Sexuality and Friendship, Faith, Suffering, and God’s Will, Science and Superstition, Justice and Judgment

Narrator:  First person from Anna’s Point of view

Book Summary: 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.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks 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?

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.

“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.”

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks 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.

Then we’re plunged backward into “Spring, 1665”, with Anna (wife and mother), beginning to deal with the Black Death, and the villagers 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.

“Despair is a cavern beneath our feet and we teeter on its very brink.”

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 is a great thing to be young and to live without pain. And yet it is a blessing few of us count until we lose it.”

I think Brooks’ genius comes from her ability to isolate. She chooses a sweeping historical event and then uses it as a backdrop, telling the story through marginal and seemingly insignificant characters. For instance, in March , we experience the Civil War through the eyes of the father from Little Women and in Year of Wonders she shows us how it might have been to experience life in the 17th Century and the horrors of the Black Death through a singular and courageous servant woman in a remote village in Derbyshire, England.

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks 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.

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Reviews of Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio

Year of Wonders

A Novel of The Plague

by Geraldine Brooks

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• Historical Fiction
• UK (Britain) & Ireland
• 17th Century or Earlier
• Strong Women

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Book Summary

This gripping historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the "Plague Village," in the rugged mountain spine of England. In 1666, the bubonic plague is brought to this isolated settlement and the people choose to seal themselves off to prevent the spread of infection.

This gripping historical novel is based on the true story of Eyam, the "Plague Village," in the rugged mountain spine of England. In 1666, a tainted bolt of cloth from London carries bubonic infection to this isolated settlement of shepherds and lead miners. A visionary young preacher convinces the villagers to seal themselves off in a deadly quarantine to prevent the spread of disease. The story is told through the eyes of eighteen-year-old Anna Frith, the vicar's maid, as she confronts the loss of her family, the disintegration of her community, and the lure of a dangerous and illicit love. As the death toll rises and people turn from prayers and herbal cures to sorcery and murderous witch-hunting, Anna emerges as an unlikely and courageous heroine in the village's desperate fight to save itself. Exploring love and learning, fear and fanaticism, and the struggle of science and religion to interpret the world at the cusp of the modern era, Year of Wonders is at once a story of unconventional love and a richly detailed evocation of a riveting moment in history. Like Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha and A. S. Byatt's Posession, Year of Wonders blends learning and romance into an unforgettable read.

Chapter One Apple-picking Time

I used to love this season. The wood stacked by the door, the tang of its sap still speaking of forest. The hay made, all golden in the low afternoon light. The rumble of the apples tumbling into the cellar bins. Smells and sights and sounds that said this year it would be all right: there'd be food and warmth for the babies by the time the snows came. I used to love to walk in the apple orchard at this time of the year, to feel the soft give underfoot when I trod on a fallen fruit. Thick, sweet scents of rotting apple and wet wood. This year, the hay stooks are few and the woodpile scant, and neither matters much to me. They brought the apples yesterday, a cartload for the rectory cellar. Late pickings, of course: I saw brown spots on more than a few. I had words with the carter over it, but he told me we were lucky to get as good as we got, and I suppose it's true enough. There are so few people to do the picking. So few people to ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• The Bradford family bears the brunt of Mompellion's rage when they leave town to save themselves. However, weren't they only doing what every other noble family did in those days: run because they had the means to run? Setting aside the events near the end of the novel (which make it clear that one would be hard-pressed to find a redeeming quality in any of them), can you really blame ...
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Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, year of wonders.

The subtitle of this book is A Novel of the Plague, which set me to wondering why epidemics are so grimly fascinating. There are plenty of contemporary specters to haunt us, of course: AIDS, Ebola, the threat of biological warfare (intensified by the anthrax scare and the prospect of facing a smallpox outbreak with little or no vaccine). Perhaps one way of dealing, psychologically, with these more present dangers is to become absorbed in the scourges of the past.

I think we're fascinated, too, by the contrast between 17th Century thinking and our own. Instead of the characteristically modern effort to find a rational explanation for disease or natural catastrophe, in those days the irrational --- the belief that such tragedies were divinely ordained to punish sinful humanity, or cooked up by the devil --- held sway. It is the tension between this theological view of the world, and particularly of the plague, and the nascent stirrings of the science of medicine, or at least of a rudimentary plant-based method of healing, that dominates YEAR OF WONDERS.

At the heart of the book is an account of how a community deals with crisis (another subject close to our modern hearts, especially in New York City). The year is 1665-66; the place is England, recently emerged from its Civil War and reestablished, to the accompaniment of a fair amount of post-Puritan debauchery, as a monarchy. The Black Death has ravaged London and now, in the person of a journeyman tailor, finds its way to an obscure mining village in the north. Geraldine Brooks, a journalist-turned-novelist, based her book on a real town called Eyam, which, led by its vicar, resolved to quarantine itself (no one in; no one out) until the plague had done its worst --- an act of extraordinary altruism and vision.

The tale unfolds through the eyes of an 18-year-old woman named Anna Frith. An escape route from her abusive father had appeared several years before in the form of marriage to a goodhearted but uncouth miner (his lovemaking technique and intellect left something to be desired) who gave her two sons then was killed in a cave-in. Now she works as a housemaid in the local rectory; she's also taken in a boarder: the tailor who becomes the town's first plague victim. Anna comes under the lucky influence of the vicar, Mr. Mompellion, and his wife Elinor, who teaches her to read and treats her as an equal and friend. Also included in this group of enlightened villagers is the local wise-woman and midwife, Mem Gowdie, and her niece, Anys.

Those are the good guys. The characters here are fairly black and white: Anna's father is so bad that eventually the whole town turns against him; the others are so good it makes your teeth ache (although the Mompellions do turn out to have some secrets that take the sugar out of their saintliness). As death passes inexorably from house to house, sparing almost no one, the villagers respond variously: panic, rage, greed, meek acceptance, murderous superstition. How Anna deals with the plague and its victims, and triumphs with her own kind of courage, is a moving story that Brooks tells beautifully, embedding it in the homely details of everyday life: the food and clothes, the landscape and passing seasons.

I do have a couple of caveats. Brooks's dialogue, perhaps out of a journalist's desire to be historically accurate, sometimes dips into the laughably archaic (does "You ignorant slattern" remind anybody else of Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtin on the original "Saturday Night Live?"). Ironically, given this effort to avoid anachronism, YEAR OF WONDERS also suffers from what I would call a modern agenda. Anna's religious doubts and inquiring proto-scientific mind --- "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" --- verge on the too-good-to-be-true. Mem and Anys are clearly homeopaths, far more skilled than the local doctors (who mostly apply leeches and hope for the best); among their potions Anna even finds a "poppy tincture" that briefly tempts her to flirt with opium addiction. And Anys, ahead of her time, obviously believes in free love. Yes, historical fiction tends to single out the misfits and pioneers in a particular place and time, not its typical citizens; yet in this case Brooks goes too far in making 17th Century women into modern ones.

Still, Anna is a splendid, redoubtable heroine. In literature, the servant is frequently the invisible observer who proves to have greater wisdom, imagination, and just plain goodness than her "betters." Jane Eyre, for example (of whom there is more than an echo in YEAR OF WONDERS), scrutinizes her employer with a kind, sharp, yearning eye, and ultimately heals and transfigures him. Anna comes out of this tradition; unlike Jane, however, her destiny does not lie in the conventional state of marriage (even though the Reverend Mompellion is a bit of a Mr. Rochester figure), but somewhere far more exotic. Let the precise destination be a surprise to readers who have yet to discover this book. It's quite delicious.

Reviewed by Kathy Weissman on January 24, 2011

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

• Publication Date: April 30, 2002
• Genres: Fiction , Historical Fiction
• Paperback: 308 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
• ISBN-10: 0142001430
• ISBN-13: 9780142001431

Geraldine Brooks

Year of Wonders

“YEAR OF WONDERS carries absolute conviction as an evocation of place and mood. It has a vivid imaginative truth, and is beautifully written.” – HILARY MANTEL

“One of the first classics of the twenty-first century.”–Frye Gaillard, The Books that Mattered

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. Written with stunning emotional intelligence and introducing “an inspiring heroine” ( The Wall Street Journal ), Brooks blends love and learning, loss and renewal into a spellbinding and unforgettable read.

“The novel glitters . . . A deep imaginative engagement with how people are changed by catastrophe.”  — The New Yorker

“ Year of Wonders  is a vividly imagined and strangely consoling tale of hope in a time of despair.”  — O, The Oprah Magazine

“Brooks proves a gifted storyteller as she subtly reveals how ignorance, hatred and mistrust can be as deadly as any virus. . . .  Year of Wonders  is itself a wonder.”  — People

“A glimpse into the strangeness of history that simultaneously enables us to see a reflection of ourselves.”  — The New York Times Book Review

“Elegant and engaging.”  —Arthur Golden

“Year of Wonders has it all: strong characters, a tremendous sense of time and place, a clearly defined heroine and a dastardly villain.”  — The Denver Post

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Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Introduction

An unforgettable tale of a brave young woman during the plague in 17th century England from the author The Secret Chord  and of March , winner of the Pulitzer Prize.  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. Written with stunning emotional intelligence and introducing "an inspiring heroine" ( The Wall Street Journal ), Brooks blends love and learning, loss and renewal into a spellbinding and unforgettable read.

Editorial Review

Discussion questions.

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Recommended to book clubs by 43 of 45 members.

Member Reviews

Geraldine Brooks is a great story teller and Year of Wonders is a great story about the plague in 1666, told from the point of view of Anna Frith. As a child Anna escaped an impoverished and abusive home... (read more)

I've read her other fiction, but not this first novel until now. Brooks knows how to tell a good story, from a bit of historical fact. I would recommend her to any friend who enjoys reading historical... (read more)

Very informative, with a mysterious angel and surprise ending.

The ending was too quick & unrealistic. Very well written.

The subtitle of 'A novel of the plague' really says it all. This book details how Anna Frith and her fellow townspeople survive a plague year in their small village. After deciding that they will quarantine... (read more)

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Year of Wonders (Brooks)

The Year of Wonders:   A Novel of the Plague Geraldine Brooks, 2002 Knopf Doubleday 308 pp. ISBN-13 : 9780142001431 Summary  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.

Written with stunning emotional intelligence and introducing "an inspiring heroine" ( Wall Street Journal ), Brooks blends love and learning, loss and renewal into a spellbinding and unforgettable read. ( From the publisher .)

Author Bio • Birth—September 14, 1955 • Raised—Ashfield, New South Wales, Australia • Education—B.A., Sydney University; M.A. Columbia University (USA) • Awards—Pulitzer Prize • Currently—lives in Virginia, USA Geraldine Brooks s an Australian American journalist and author whose 2005 novel, March , won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. While retaining her Australian passport, she became an United States citizen in 2002. Early life A native of Sydney, Geraldine Brooks grew up in its inner-west suburb of Ashfield, where she attended Bethlehem College, a secondary school for girls, and the University of Sydney. Following graduation, she became a rookie reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald and, after winning a Greg Shackleton Memorial Scholarship, moved to New York City in the United States, completing a Master's at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1983. The following year, she married American journalist Tony Horwitz in the Southern France village of Tourrettes-sur-Loup and converted to his religion, Judaism. Career As a foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal , she covered crises in Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East, with the stories from the Persian Gulf which she and her husband reported in 1990, receiving the Overseas Press Club's Hal Boyle Award for "Best Newspaper or Wire Service Reporting from Abroad." In 2006, she was awarded a fellowship at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Brooks's first book, Nine Parts of Desire (1994), based on her experiences among Muslim women in the Middle East, was an international bestseller, translated into 17 languages. Foreign Correspondence: A Pen Pal's Journey from Down Under to All Over (1997), which won the Nita Kibble Literary Award for women's writing, was a memoir and travel adventure about a childhood enriched by penpals from around the world, and her adult quest to find them. Her first novel, Year of Wonders , published in 2001, became an international bestseller. Set in 1666, the story depicts a young woman's battle to save fellow villagers as well as her own soul when the bubonic plague suddenly strikes her small Derbyshire village of Eyam. Her next novel, March (2005), was inspired by her fondness for Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, which her mother had given her. To connect that memorable reading experience to her new status in 2002 as an American citizen, she researched the Civil War historical setting of Little Women and decided to create a chronicle of wartime service for the "absent father" of the March girls. Some aspects of this chronicle were informed by the life and philosophical writings of the Alcott family patriarch, Amos Bronson Alcott, whom she profiled under the title "Orpheus at the Plow", in the 10 January 2005 issue of The New Yorker , a month before March was published. The parallel novel was generally well received by the critics. It was selected in December 2005 selection by the Washington Post as one of the five best fiction works published that year. In April 2006, it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In her next novel, People of the Book (2008), Brooks explored a fictionalized history of the Sarajevo Haggadah. This novel was inspired by her reporting (for The New Yorker ) of human interest stories emerging in the aftermath of the 1991–95 breakup of Yugoslavia. The novel won both the Australian Book of the Year Award and the Australian Literary Fiction Award in 2008. Her 2011 novel Caleb's Crossing is inspired by the life of Caleb Cheeshahteaumauk, a Wampanoag convert to Christianity who was the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College, an achievement of the seventeenth century. Her next work, The Secret Chord (2015) is a historical novel based on the life of the biblical King David in the period of the Second Iron Age. Awards 2006 - Pulitzer Prize for March 2008 - Australian Publishers Association's Fiction Book of the Year for People of the Book 2009 - Peggy V. Helmerich Distinguished Author Award 2010 - Dayton Literary Peace Prize Lifetime Achievement Award ( From Wikipedia. Retrieved 10/14/2015 .)

Book Reviews In 1666 the bubonic plague appeared in a small mountain village in England, where it took hold and spread.... The author has captured the various human responses to grief, fear, hopelessness, and exhaustion. Characters are well drawn, showing both the good and evil sides of human nature — Joanna M. Burkhardt, Coll. of Continuing Education Lib., Univ. of Rhode Island, Providence Library Journal

Painstaking re-creation of 17th-century England, swallowed by over-the-top melodramatics: a wildly uneven first novel by an Australian-born journalist.... It's all more than a bit much: Thomas Hardy crossed with Erskine Caldwell, with more than a whiff of Jane Eyre... . In between the more hysterical moments, Brooks writes quite beautifully. But Year of Wonders was a mistake. Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 1. All of the characters in this novel have their failings and as a result they are all fully human. Are you surprised by the secrets Elinor and Michael Mompellion each reveal to Anna about their marriage? How do they change your feelings about each character? Do they make either seem weaker in a way?

2. The Bradford family bears the brunt of Mompellion's rage when they leave town to save themselves. However, weren't they only doing what every other noble family did in those days: run because they had the means to run? Setting aside the events near the end of the novel (which make it clear that one would be hard-pressed to find a redeeming quality in any of them), can you really blame the Bradfords for running?

3. How much of Mompellion's push for the quarantine had to do with the secrets he shared with Elinor? Did his own dark side and self-loathing push him to sacrifice the town or was he really acting out of everyone's best interests?

4, Keeping in mind that this story takes place a good twenty-five years before the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts, what is the role of the Gowdie women in the novel? What is it about these women that drives their neighbors to murderous rage? How does their nonconformity lead to their becoming scapegoats?

5. How would you explain Anna's mental and spiritual unraveling? What are the pivotal experiences leading up to her breakdown and her eventual rebirth?

6. Discuss the feminist undertones of the story. How does each female character—Anna, Elinor, the Gowdies, and even Anna's stepmother—exhibit strengths that the male characters do not?

7. In a story where the outcome is already known from the very beginning—most of the villagers will die—discuss the ways in which the author manages to create suspense.

8. The author creates an incredible sense of time and place with richly textured language and thoughtful details—of both the ordinary (everyday life in Eyam) and the extraordinary (the gruesome deaths of the villagers). Discuss some of the most vivid images and their importance to the story and to your own experience reading it.

9. Can we relate the story of this town's extraordinary sacrifice to our own time? Is it unrealistic to expect a village facing a similar threat to make the same decision nowadays? What lessons might we learn from the villagers of Eyam? ( Questions issued by publisher .) top of page (summary)

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Look Inside | Reading Guide

Reading Guide

Year of Wonders

By geraldine brooks, by geraldine brooks read by geraldine brooks, category: literary fiction | historical fiction, category: literary fiction | historical fiction | audiobooks.

Apr 30, 2002 | ISBN 9780142001431 | 5-1/16 x 7-3/4 --> | ISBN 9780142001431 --> Buy

Apr 30, 2002 | ISBN 9781101079195 | ISBN 9781101079195 --> Buy

Aug 05, 2010 | 606 Minutes | ISBN 9781101223161 --> Buy

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Apr 30, 2002 | ISBN 9780142001431

Apr 30, 2002 | ISBN 9781101079195

Aug 05, 2010 | ISBN 9781101223161

606 Minutes

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About Year of Wonders

“Plague stories remind us that we cannot manage without community . . .  Year of Wonders  is a testament to that very notion.” –  The Washington Post An unforgettable tale, set  in 17th century England,  of a village that quarantines itself to arrest the spread of the plague, from the author The Secret Chord  and of March , winner of the Pulitzer Prize  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. Written with stunning emotional intelligence and introducing “an inspiring heroine” ( The Wall Street Journal ), Brooks blends love and learning, loss and renewal into a spellbinding and unforgettable read.

Listen to a sample from Year of Wonders

Also by geraldine brooks.

About Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel March and the international bestsellers Caleb’s Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders. She has also written the acclaimed nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Born and… More about Geraldine Brooks

Product Details

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Praise for Year of Wonders : “The novel glitters . . . A deep imaginative engagement with how people are changed by catastrophe.”  — The New Yorker “Plague stories remind us that we cannot manage without community . . .  Year of Wonders  is a testament to that very notion . . . [The villagers] assume collective responsibility for combating the plague, rather than seeing it as an act of God before which they are powerless.” — The Washington Post “ Year of Wonders  is a vividly imagined and strangely consoling tale of hope in a time of despair.”  — O, The Oprah Magazine “Brooks proves a gifted storyteller as she subtly reveals how ignorance, hatred and mistrust can be as deadly as any virus. . . .  Year of Wonders  is itself a wonder.”  — People “A glimpse into the strangeness of history that simultaneously enables us to see a reflection of ourselves.”  — The New York Times Book Review “Elegant and engaging.”  — Arthur Golden “Year of Wonders has it all: strong characters, a trememdous sense of time and place, a clearly defined heroine and a dastardly villain.”  — The Denver Post

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YEAR OF WONDERS

by Geraldine Brooks ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 6, 2001

In between the more hysterical moments, Brooks writes quite beautifully. But Year of Wonders was a mistake.

Painstaking re-creation of 17th-century England, swallowed by over-the-top melodramatics: a wildly uneven first novel by an Australian-born journalist.

The Year of the title is 1665: the date of the devastating bubonic epidemic chronicled in Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year . Brooks’s tale, framed by reveries set a year and a half after the plague burns itself out (in “Leaf-Fall, 1666”), is narrated by Anna Frith, an earnest and highly intelligent young widow who buries her own multiple bereavements (first her gentle husband, later their two small sons) in work, aiding her (unnamed) village rector’s wife in treating the sick with medicinal herbs and traditional cures. Brooks is at her best in lyrical, precise descriptions of country landscapes and village customs, and makes something very appealing and (initially) quite credible out of Anna’s wary hunger for learning and innate charitable kindness. But the novel goes awry when the panic of contagion isolates her village from neighboring hamlets, a forthright young woman and her distracted aunt are accused of witchcraft and hunted down, and Anna’s drunken, violent father, who profits as a gravedigger for hire, resorts to providing corpses that will require his services. The excesses continue, as Anna’s stepmother, crazed with grief, seeks vengeance against rector Michael Mompellion and his saintly wife (and Anna’s mentor and soulmate) Elinor, and rise to a feverish pitch when Anna, having found a new innocent victim to nurture and raise, offends the powerful Bradford family and must flee to safety—ending up (in a borderline-risible Epilogue) in North Africa in the sanctuary of a kindly “Bey’s” harem. It’s all more than a bit much: Thomas Hardy crossed with Erskine Caldwell, with more than a whiff of Jane Eyre in Anna’s conflicted devotion to the brooding, Mr. Rochester–like Mompellion.

Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2001

ISBN: 0-670-91021-X

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2001

HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ

by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018

The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...

An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.

Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowi erer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas . She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018

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WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD

by Susan Crandall ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2013

Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.

Crandall ( Sleep No More , 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.

Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.

Pub Date: July 2, 2013

ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3

Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013

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Year of Wonders

Geraldine brooks, everything you need for every book you read..

Year of Wonders opens in the autumn of 1666. The protagonist, Anna Frith , watches the half-hearted harvesting process as farmers bring bruised apples to the rectory. Anna is the housekeeper to the vicar Michael Mompellion . She reflects that while autumn used to bring successful harvests and security for the winter, now it only reminds her how much the village has lost the rhythm of its ordinary life. While she doesn’t mention the plague by name, she hints at the nature of the disaster that has decimated the population, threatened her own sanity, and catalyzed a breakdown in Mompellion, towards whom she is fiercely loyal and protective. Elizabeth Bradford arrives at the rectory and haughtily demands that Anna and Mompellion come to the aid of her mother, who is suffering from a “tumor.” They are incensed by her behavior, given that her family fled the plague with no regard for the fate of the town, and they refuse to help. Mompellion suggests ironically that Elizabeth pray for divine assistance but says that she will find God a “poor listener.” Then he deliberately drops a Bible on the floor, shocking Anna with his blasphemous behavior.

The narrative goes back in time a year and a half, to the spring of 1665. With finances tight after the recent death of her husband in a mining accident, Anna takes in the apprentice tailor, George Viccars , as a boarder. George turns out to be kind and interesting, entertaining Anna with tales of faraway London and playing with her sons, Jamie and Tom . Eventually, he proposes marriage to Anna, and she considers accepting, but before she can make a decision, he falls ill with a mysterious and powerful fever that kills him in just a few days. Suspecting he has contracted the plague from bolts of cloth shipped from London, George exhorts Anna to burn the cloth and all his possession. But the villagers refuse to part with the clothes they have commissioned from George, ensuring that the plague quickly spreads throughout the town. Meanwhile, while serving a dinner at Bradford Hall, Anna hears a visitor from London callously describing a deadly outbreak of the plague in London.

After a few weeks of calm, the children of Anna’s neighbors, the Hadfields , catch the plague and die, quickly followed by Jamie and Tom. Devastated by their loss, Anna stumbles through her daily tasks, oblivious to the fact that the plague is spreading throughout the town. One night, chasing after a lost sheep, she comes across a mob of villagers assaulting Mem Gowdie , whom they are convinced is a witch responsible for the plague. Anna tries to defend Mem, but can’t prevent the mob from “dunking” her in the lake, a superstitious practice used to determine whether a woman was a witch. Anys , Mem’s niece, arrives and saves her from drowning, but the hysterical mob turns on her and hangs her. Mompellion arrives and excoriates the mob for their wrongdoing, but the damage is done: Mem and Anys, the only citizens with any medical knowledge, are dead.

As more people catch the disease, Mompellion worries that it will spread to other villages and become a regional or even national epidemic. In a moving and charismatic sermon, he convinces the villagers to voluntarily quarantine themselves until the plague has run its course, telling them that the catastrophe is a test from God. The only people who don’t agree are the Bradfords, who use their resources and position to flee Eyam.

As the vicar’s wife, it is Elinor Mompellion’s job to tend to sick parishioners, and as the plague spreads and this task grows more draining, she makes Anna her assistant. With little experience in childbirth , Anna delivers Mary Daniel’s baby, after which she becomes the town midwife and nurse. However, almost everyone who catches the plague dies, and Anna and Elinor can do little besides try to ease their pain.

Overtaxed by panic and grief, the villagers become irrational. Anna discovers that some people are buying charms from someone claiming to be Anys’s ghost. Meanwhile, Anna herself takes dangerous doses of poppy oil (an opiate) to numb the pain of losing her sons. She returns with Elinor to Anys and Mem’s garden with the hope of rediscovering some of their herb knowledge in order to treat the plague more effectively. As their friendship deepens, Elinor confesses to Anna that, as a teenager, she had a premarital affair that resulted in an illegitimate pregnancy, which she ended with a self-induced abortion. As a result, she is now unable to have children. Only her husband knows the full story of her transgressions, and she finds it very gracious of him to have married her despite what others would surely see as a sordid history.

Meanwhile, the town sexton dies, over-exhausted from digging too many graves. Anna convinces her father, Josiah (or Joss), to become the new grave-digger. However, he charges his desperate neighbors exorbitant fees to bury the dead, and sometimes takes advantage of the chaos to steal household goods. Eventually, he attempts to bury the plague-stricken (but relatively healthy) Christopher Unwin alive in order to rob his house. The miner’s association (Eyam’s only formal government organization) tries him for theft and sentences him to be impaled by the hands to Unwin’s mine. This is a harsh but customary punishment, and it’s expected that after a few hours of pain someone from the criminal’s family will come to remove the knife. However, Josiah’s wife Aphra is too busy nursing her sick children to fetch him or send for help. Josiah dies a horrible death of exposure to the elements. Aphra blames Anna for her husband’s death and makes Anna accompany her to reclaim his disfigured body.

Anna notes that more than half of Eyam’s population has died, and community life has all but fractured. Many tasks and trades are unattended, and people avoid meeting in public because of contagion. More and more villagers are buying fake charms from the mysterious “ghost,” and John and Urith Gordon begin flagellating themselves in order to allay God’s wrath. Mompellion acts quickly to stop the Gordons from spreading what he sees as fringe extremism to the rest of the villagers, even as he himself fiercely castigates a young woman named Jane Martin for assuaging her grief by drinking and “fornicating,” calling her a whore and a “sinner” against God.

Mompellion decides that the town needs to burn most of their material goods, in order to make a sacrifice to God and to remove sources of contagion from their midst. While everyone is assembled for the bonfire, Brand Rigney and Robert Snee arrive with Aphra, whom they have discovered selling the fake charms. Everyone is enraged at her for taking advantage of their panic, and agree to try her formally the next day. However Brand and Robert throw her in a sewer pit overnight and she goes completely insane from the ordeal, after which it seems pointless to hold a trial. Aphra’s one remaining child, Faith , dies of the plague and Aphra, having lost her mind, refuses to surrender the body for burial.

New cases of plague cease to appear, and at his wife’s urging Mompellion holds a Thanksgiving service one Sunday. While everyone is assembled in a field, praying for deliverance, a completely deranged Aphra appears wielding a knife and carrying her daughter’s decaying corpse. When Mompellion and Elinor try to comfort her, she cuts Elinor’s throat, killing her.

The narrative skips forward to autumn, where the prologue left off. As a result of his wife’s death, Mompellion has lost his faith in God and, seemingly, his will to live. Anna tries to distract herself from her own grief by taking care of him. Eventually, both of them lonely and seeking comfort, they have sex. However, afterwards he confesses that, in order to make Elinor atone for the “sins” of premarital sex and abortion, he refused to have sex with her throughout their marriage. Anna thinks that this behavior is insane and deeply unkind to Elinor, prolonging her undue feelings guilt and regret.

Running out of the rectory, Anna runs into Elizabeth Bradford, who confesses that her mother (Anne Bradford) doesn’t have a tumor but is actually about to give birth to an illegitimate child and is in danger of dying. Anna goes to Bradford Hall and successfully delivers the child , saving its life along with Anne Bradford’s. Elizabeth tries to kill the baby to hide the family shame of a child conceived out of wedlock, but Anna stops her and agrees to leave town with the baby and conceal its origins. Before she leaves Eyam she meets Mompellion, who pleads unsuccessfully for forgiveness but gives her his horse to aid her getaway.

In the epilogue, Anna has settled in the Muslim city of Oran, Algeria. She locates a famous doctor, Ahmed Bey , and convinces him to take her on as an apprentice and (in name only, so that she can live with him) his wife. Since the Arab world is more scientifically and medically advanced than English society, Anna becomes a trained midwife and gains a medical education, as well as personal autonomy and a sense of purpose to replace her lost faith in God. She names Anne Bradford’s baby Aisha , the Arabic word for “life,” and raises her alongside her own biological daughter, a child conceived with Mompellion whom she names Elinor, in memory of her friend.

Book Group Discussion of "Year of Wonders"

All members of the SAC Community are invited to attend a book group discussion of "Year of Wonders" by Geraldine Brooks. We will be meeting in the Library Classroom (upper level of Geisel) at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, March 21, 2024 . 

Description

"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" ( GoodReads.com ).

Copies of the book are available for you to borrow at the Circulation Desk.

For more information, visit our Book Group webpage .