I came to this book by an NPR article discussing pandemic lit. It's a fictionalized tale of the real English town that, struck by plague in 1665, chose to sacrifice themselves by quarantining the town in hopes of preventing the spread of disease to their neighbors. At least, that's the framework f...
***Note: this review assumes that you've read the book.*** One-sentence summary: this novel was a beautiful work of historical fiction until the last twenty pages, which were so unbelievable and out of context that the book was ruined for me. The writing. I absolutely loved the research and the ...
I have never thought about The Plague in these terms. This book really personalizes it. My thoughts on the subject are forever changed. Anna lives through so much pain. Many people would have just given up at some point. She looses her husband, kids, parents—all her family. . . actually 99% of ...
Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks' first novel, focuses on a year in the life of an English village, Eyam (EE-m), in Derbyshire - the plague year 1665-1666 - seen through the eyes of housemaid Anna Frith. The title, Year of Wonders, is taken from the poem Annus Mirabilis, by John Dryden - which Dry...
I borrowed this book as filler, with no expectations that it would be anything more. It ended up being one of the best books that I have read this year. The first person point of view makes Year of Wonders a poignant account of suffering and how that suffering can bring out the best and the worst in...
For almost all its length, this is a first-rate work of historical fiction about the plague year of 1666 in a remote village in England which decided to quarantine itself to halt the spread of the epidemic. The prose is luminous, with just enough of a tint of the language of the period to evoke a di...
"Cry now, my friends, but hope, also! For a better season will follow this time of Plague, if only we trust in God to perform His wonders!" And cry they did. Before the village of Eyam could get to the better season they had to watch their loved ones die painful and horrific deaths, endure the pani...
3.5 stars. Pretty straightforward historical fiction about the plague hitting a small town in England. I think the ending tried to do too much and the epilogue was kinda weird. Besides that, the writing was pretty good and I really like the themes she touched on, hope and despair, God and loss of fa...
Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague - Geraldine Brooks I've heard many good things about this book and was eager to get my hands on it. The beginning was a bit slow and I was afraid that I had picked up yet another dud, but once the plague made an appearance, I was go engrossed in Year of Wond...
I loved this book until the very end. I was familiar with the story of Eyam from reading Jill Paton Walsh's A Parcel of Patterns. It's an inspirational story of self-sacrifice and Brooks (whose other books I have adored) treats it respectfully. So the ending, where Brooks changes the whole story fro...
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