The Wonder

I cannot say that I liked this novel or that I enjoyed reading it. What I can say without hesitation is that I'll never forget this book, which is set in a boggy Irish-midlands village a few years after the end of the Great Hunger. Lib is a self-confident nurse, trained on the Crimean battlefront under Florence Nightingale, recruited by the town elders to keep watch over an 11-year-old girl named Anna, who, it is claimed, has not eaten in four months. Lib, an English Protestant, has no patience for the Catholic mumbo-jumbo that is used to explain Anna's ability to remain relatively healthy despite her long fast. I think the author, having grown up in Ireland and knowing its history, could have had just a tad more understanding of and sympathy for the Irish community. When people are deprived of all rational avenues of hope, they will invariably turn to the mystical and irrational for sustenance--to holy wells festooned with cloths put there by petitioners and to magical prayers recited in mystical numbers. Yet, I, like Ms. Donoghue, cannot fathom the depths of hopelessness that would be more persuasive than mother love. So, in the end, I am with the author in her ability to make Lib's character evolve in the course of two short weeks from headstrong professional to one willing to use even the mysticism of which she disapproves in order to save Anna's life.