When Lib understands that the secrets she has carried to Ireland parallel the secrets harbored by just about everybody in the small village, the strength-and the faith-that she has to summon to protect both herself and her patient will change her life, and the lives of all the villagers, forever. The book had me rooting for miracles but not of the religious sort. Can the girl, who reportedly hasn't required food for months, perform miracles? When Lib arrives in the rural backwater, she finds a village in awe of a young girl -the wonder-who turns out to be Lib's patient. I had the feeling there was more to Lib's eagerness to travel away from London than just a paycheck-and I was right. The commission is vague but well paid and Lib does not hesitate before taking on the new job. Lib Wright is a Florence Nightingale-trained nurse arrived back from the blood-soaked fields of the Crimea when she is hired to oversee a private patient. The kind of faith that allows you to take that ultimate leap into the future with no guarantee of where you might land. At the heart of the novel The Wonder is the question of faith-religious faith, faith in community, but most importantly, faith in self.

I mean home in a figurative sense, as a place where safety and peace are offered, and where faith and reliance are rewarded. And once again, Donoghue has created two heroines, a child and an adult, who must overcome terrible barriers-this time set by rules of society and of religion-to find their way home. And it's Donoghue's skill in building The Wonder up into an increasingly tense thriller - is Anna a fake or a saint and will she live or die? - until a heart-thumping, palm-sweating dramatic denouement.Set in the midlands of Ireland in the late 1800s, Emma Donoghue's new novel is worlds away from her bestseller Room but just as perfect in capturing events that escalate, slowly and surely, to a heart-thumping crisis.

Donoghue's masterful way with words and imagery has the reader sharing Lib's scepticism and disdain for Anna and her family's naive religious fervour. a tale of claustrophobic suspense and the intense relationship between a woman and a child. * Kirkus, Starred Review *įans of Emma Donoghue's first novel Room will not be disappointed with The Wonder. Her contemporary thriller Ro om made the author an international bestseller, but this gripping tale offers a welcome reminder that her historical fiction is equally fine. Emma Donoghue's writing is superb alchemy, changing innocence into horror and horror into tenderness - Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wifeĭonoghue mines material that on the face of it appears intractably bleak and surfaces with a powerful, compulsively readable work of fiction * Irish Times *

The wonder book by emma donoghue