Year of Wonders

Well, if there are two things I love, it's stories about wise women, and learning about disgusting diseases. I wish I was kidding about the last one, but I'm not. Which is why this was so great! I got a good dose of gory plague details (bursting boils and rotting flesh...what fun!) injected into a story that was worth reading on its own, about a woman in 1666 who thinks for herself.

What I find great about stories like this is not that we have a modern woman in a time-machine, but a woman who is a product of her times without being a slave to the societal constraints--something tells me there might have been many more women than we know about who were able to push boundaries.

Also, it's a quick read.

Last fall one of my challenge groups chose Epidemics as the topic for March. Could this be more coincidental? Do I want to read a book about the 1666 plague during Covid-19 Pandemic? Yes, I do! Geraldine Brooks is one of my favorite authors and I have had this on my list way too long. I was so looking forward to bringing it to the top of my TBR and am so glad I didn’t shy away from it this month. In her engaging prose, Brooks has woven a believable story to help us understand human nature during a health crisis. Yes, the common themes with today’s news got a little tough sometimes, but mostly I was amazed at the mitigation techniques used in this historical fiction that were similar to those we are using today. The characters felt show more real and their saga through the epidemic contained a wide array of human reactions and moral questions. So very glad I read this. Recommend now if you are in a frame of mind for the topic. If not, definitely pick it ups when we are through to the other side of our own pandemic. show less

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, by Geraldine Brooks

There's a lot to like about Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. Based on a true story, this historical novel weaves a fabulous and heartwarming tale about how one small town in Derbyshire dealt with the plague. At its best, this novel is an evocative, well-written historical fiction that skillfully conjures up the day-to-day hardships of living in a small village overrun by plague and watching two-thirds of your friends, family, and acquaintances die horrible deaths. At its worst, there are some tiny, nit-picky things.

Year of Wonders begins with a bang, letting the reader know that a catastrophe has befallen the inhabitants of a small mountain village in show more England. Seen through the eyes of Anna Frith, a young widow who serves the village's minister's house, we witness the horror and death sweeping through the area during the year of the plague. Anna Frith is a strong woman and something of a role model; the plague brings out resources in her that she didn't know she had. They find themselves battling not only this dreaded disease, but also superstition, greed, and even murder. And despite their own tragedies, they discover that their efforts make them stronger and that they have more courage than they thought possible. I really liked the focus on the diurnal struggles of a village increasingly depleted of its human resources. What do you do when the women who always prepared herbal remedies are dead? When young children are left parentless?

Brooks writes this story with an elegant, yet powerful touch. The details of village life and the real effects of the plague are tangible and stunning. This is literally a film played out on the page, with scene after scene so richly written that the line between fact and fiction becomes blurred. As the seasons pass, Brooks expresses the fear, anger and eventually, numbed grief turning to hope (some of it warped) of the village and Anna. The plague itself is written almost as a character; it lives and breathes and there are many times when I found myself holding my breath, wondering what was going to happen, next.

Anna is splendidly written, a mix of feminism and the Puritan values of the time. From the beginning, you know she's destined for more than working the fields or washing dishes. While it would have been easy to turn Anna into some kind of saint, Brooks does a wonderful job of showing Anna's flaws without making them larger than the story itself.

There is also a surprisingly misogynistic passage from a previously likable character in these final pages which really turned me off and seemed entirely inconsistent with everything we've learned about this character up until this point. the character of Michael Mompellion is compelling and strongly written, but at the end of the story, I was shocked by some of the revelations about him. I kept wondering if they were completely believable, or if it was just me.

The one area (and it's a small one) where I felt this story seemed implausible was the final chapter. Maybe I was missing something, but given the year and the role women played in society, I found where Anna ended up to be a little bit too pat. (I cannot say anything else without giving out spoilers). Maybe it could and did happen, but compared to the tone of the book before it, it was odd. I *did* think that she ended up with the life she deserved, but the way it was written needed a little more suspension of belief.

This was an amazing book, one I will definitely read again and recommend to my family and friends. When I finished it, the one thing that surprised me the most was that the book was only just over 300 pages - this reads like a huge, epic story. I was literally spell-bound, and finding myself reading until 4 am the first night, because I literally could not put this book down. this is not just a story about disease and death, but also a moving tale about survival, passion, compassion and unlikely heroes.

Brooks' writing is truly elegant, and Anna's thoughts and words are written in the lyrical but simple cadence of the 1660's. (Complete with many archaic words that are no longer used...most of which I had to look up...! Which by the way, I love.). There is also much historical research including not only the plague itself, but also of the living conditions in a small English village during the 17th Century. With this much detail, research, and talent going for her, I will definitely be reading more of this talented author.

5 huge stars.

Quotes:

"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."

"I knew how easy it is for widow to be turned witch in the common mind, and the first cause generally is that she meddles somehow in medicinals."

"I told myself I was crying for the waste of it; that those fingers that had acquired so much skill would never fashion another lovely thing. In truth, I think I was crying for a different kind of waste; wondering why I had waited until so near this death to feel the touch of those hands."

"There are some who deem this mountainside bleak country, and I can see how it might seem so: the land all chewed up by the miners, their stowes like scaffolds upon the moors, and their bings like weedy molehills interrupting the pale mauve tide of the heather."

"He instructed me how futile it is to wallow in regret for that which cannot be changed and how atonement might be made for even the gravest sins."

"By gathering and sorting my own feelings so, I was finally able to fashion a scale on which I could weigh my father’s nature and find a balance between my disgust for him and an understanding of him; my guilt in the matter of his death against the debt he owed me for the manner of my life. At the finish of it, I felt free of him, and I was able to think calmly once more."

Archaic words used: scrims, choused, bowpots of jessamine and gilly flowers, bavins, boose, rake-shamed, fanfarroon, periwig, flux, cataplasms, hirsel, nowt, clough, gaol, blains, carbuncles, lapwing, vainglory, masty, scrin, pipkin, whisket, serried, stooks, Shrovetide, cluzened, malter, mun, trews, halberd, kine, caudle, clemmed, mullein, betony, fother, jabot, gravid, rowans, sward, cucking, placket, manikin, vervain, boatswains, sennight, tare, harrowed, cockerel, turves, vicuals, blebs, pillory, surplice, handfasting, phaeton, stook, carrack, cuddy, gimbaled, adamantine, and euphoniously...! show less

Young Anna Frith narrates events in her small English village in the years of 1665-1666 when they are visited by plague.

Black Death was a major scourge when there were huge advances happening in science and Reformation in religion, yet few really understood exactly how it was transmitted or what caused it. Basing her story on the true English village of Eyam, Geraldine Brooks explores how people react in crisis situations, the extremes of self-sacrifice or in turning on another. Was the plague really sent by God as a call to repentance? What role does faith have when the world is falling apart - and what if this isn't sent by God after all? This was gripping, intense reading, and my only real complaint was that Anna seemed just a bit to show more modern to be believable and the end, while it made sense for the character in one way, stretched credulity in my mind. show less

Anna Frith is a young widow with two young children to raise, in a little village in Derbyshire, England, as the year of 1665 draws to an end. She is quiet, unassuming, and not inclined to make waves. She takes in a lodger sent to her by the local rector, to help make ends meet now that her husband's income from the mine is gone.

The lodger is a tailor, and he receives a deliver of cloth from London. Quite innocently, with that cloth, he has brought bubonic plague into the village. Over the next year, she faces previously unimaginable challenges, as her neighbors and friends die, and she needs to become a healer and leader among those not yet sick.

This novel is based on the events in the village of Eyam in 1666, where the local ministers show more responded to the arrival of plague by closing the village--no one in or out until the plague there has run its course--in exchange for supplies delivered to their boundary stone regularly by the neighboring villages. It was an extraordinary action, undertaken few other places in Europe, and in this novel Brooks imagines the experiences of the village through the eyes of the rector's maid. It's a wonderful evocation of courage and fear, community and division, and the weakness and strength mingled in varying degrees in every individual. Anna has to step forward and become the village midwife and herb woman, after the previous one is killed for being a witch. She's no perfect model of virtue; fear, jealousy, and resentment motivate some of her actions. But so do courage, generosity, and the belief that more people will die if the village gives way to division and fear.

In the midst of this annus horribilis, she finds joy, friendship, and confidence, as well, a year of wonders.

It's an incredibly engrossing and rewarding story, and I'm not doing it justice. Highly recommended.

I bought this audiobook. show less

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 show more evocation of a singular moment in history. show less

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 the people she's ever known. People are dying, going mad, committing insane acts. Anna stays pretty solid throughout. She's still open to friendship and love. She still tries to help, even as the world is destroyed around her. This is almost an apocalyptic tale. For me, the last part of the book was the best. Her life after sounded very interesting. I wouldn't have minded having more details there and a little less of all the bad stuff, but I show more think that was the point of the book. She made it through ALL of that. show less