![]() ![]() Lib is travelling from England to Ireland to share, with a local Irish nun, the responsibility of watching over Anna ceaselessly for two weeks. ![]() Told in crisp, cinematic prose, the story opens on Lib Wright, a nurse who served with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War. The Wonder is, above all, a complex and spellbinding tale of good versus evil in which we do not know, until the end, who is really on which side. Suspicions abound, however, as the result of possibly devious actions by others: her parents, a priest, a nun, and a physician. Why is she doing this? How has she survived? Will she die? Cheerful, pious, and clever, the child is apparently fasting voluntarily, influenced by religious zeal and her elder brother’s recent death. We are told that an 11-year-old girl, Anna O’Donnell, who has confined herself to a cramped bedroom in her impoverished parents’ home in 1850s rural Ireland, has not eaten for four months. Donoghue’s literary prowess creeps like a dark, menacing fog across the pages. ![]() Most characters cannot be trusted even God is suspect. The storyline of The Wonder is far more tangled and nuanced. But in Room, we know who the villain is: a sexual predator who has kidnapped a young woman, fathered a son with her, and keeps the two of them imprisoned for years in one tiny cell. On the surface, The Wonder displays numerous similarities with Room, the Irish-Canadian Donoghue’s most famous novel. Inside is a child, and once again, the child’s life is in danger. Emma Donoghue’s latest novel thrusts us back into a small, claustrophobic room. ![]()
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