Customer Reviews

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(58)
3 star:		(33)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This was a very difficult book to read. It wasn't the use of some archaic language that made it so hard, but the heartbreaking storyline. This book is based on the true story of the villagers of Eyam, who chose to quarantine themselves from the surrounding villages in order to stop the plague that had invaded their lives from spreading. We see the entire story through the eyes of Anna Firth. We meet Anna after her husband has died in a mining accident, and she is raising two young children alone. Anna takes in a boarder to help with her expenses, laying the groundwork for tragedy, because her boarder is a tailor. One day a bolt of cloth comes from London, bearing the seeds of plague.

The year is 1666, and Anna will begin the most extraordinary year of her life, as she becomes a healer and a heroine. She will face the loss of almost everything she loves, and almost loses her own sanity during the year of the plague.

Despite the many horrors of the plague depicted in the book, there are also tiny moments of joy buried beneath the pain, and this is a book you will not soon forget.

As with most of the other reviews, my main complaint is the last chapter of the book, the Epilogue. It seemed a very jarring and rather disappointing ending to a wonderful book. However don't let that stop you from reading this book, because if you do, you will miss a beautifully written story, with a truly inspirational heroine.

Anna Frith is a servant; she is poor, illiterate and she is the daughter of an abusive drunkard. Getting rid of another mouth to feed is his goal. Anna is married young and is widowed shortly thereafter. Her only respite from her terrible loneliness, especially after the death of her two babes, is the hours she spends in the home of Reverend Mompellion. He is a pensive, studious man, married to a gentle, nature loving wife, Elinor. Anna knows her place as a servant and at first finds it uncomfortable to respond to the friendly overtures made by her employer's wife, who also teaches Anna to read.

Elinor is an enthusiastic gardener and has a growing interest in the herbs being cultivated by an ostracized family of women who are suspected of being witches, despite the fact that many of their herbal preparations have proven beneficial to the local villagers. From the beginning of this engaging novel the reader experiences a growing tension and increasing realization that something will happen to this tiny village and its mostly poor inhabitants. And that "something" is the Bubonic plague that in reality struck an actual English village upon which this story is based.

Anna is so key a character that it is within her household that the person carrying the plague, a vagabond-type tailor, actually sets in motion the larger plot. How will persons of varying socioeconomic levels and belief systems deal with a plague? Will it force some to rely on their destructive superstitions? Will it be a catapult to positive change? What will its devastating force do to the small minded, the idealistic, the religious minded?

These questions are all dealt with in this beautifully written novel. Reverend Mompellion is a good, idealistic man. Because he's educated, he and his wife are invited to the homes of some of the area wealthy. It is at these gatherings that he first learns that those "who have" will flee the area for London, expecting to escape suffering and death. Because the plague struck during 1655 and 1666, there was no understanding that the Bubonic Plague was carried by fleas from infected rats. Undoubtedly, escaping the poor, dirty peasants would bring a higher social strata some insurance from being affiliated with and, therefore, infected by the underclass!

Death escapes no family. Some are decimated within days. Yet various neighbors assist one another, nurse one another, one another's children...and ultimately bury them. Others are convinced the witches are the cause of the plague; a murder takes place. All the while Reverend Mompellion keeps his head and is a strong, persistent leader who convinces his parishoners of two things: God is testing them; and they should voluntarily quarantine themselves so as not to spread the plague any further.

Reverend Mompellion strikes a deal with a leader of a neighboring community to bring food and supplies to a certain point beyond which none of the villagers will stray. The community continually shrinks as its inhabitants die in increasing numbers. Church services are eventually stopped indoors, hoping lack of close proximity will quell the plague. Services are held for decimated numbers outside. Yet, Reverend Mompellion prevails in his unflagging belief in God....until tragedy strikes his own household and his own faith is crushed.

The novel's ending is very much a surprise. As I earlier indicated, some grow in knowledge, spirit, understanding and generosity. Others do not! Belief systems are shaken but the results are not necessarily negative! Well written; well told; engrossing!

I looked forward to reading this book, as I enjoy (good) historical fiction and had previously read Geraldine Brooks' Nine Parts of Desire (which I do recommend.) I was disappointed in Year of Wonders, and I'd like to discuss why. This review contains important plot points, so if you haven't read the book, don't continue reading.

This book is set in 1665; its heroine is Anna Frith, an 18 year old widow with two young sons. It is soon revealed that her husband was a miner killed in a mining accident. Anna is a servant in the household of the local Anglican priest and his wife, Elinor.

As the book opens, it is clear that a) the "year of wonders" is almost over and b) Elinor is dead. Careful readers will learn in this chapter that Anna and Elinor were the bestest of friends and that Anna, despite the fact that she's a peasant in a remote English village, not only reads, but understands Latin. At this point, alarm bells started going off in my head. I'm always deeply suspicious of books that try too hard to make their historical heroines, well, heroic. Make the heroine smart, sure. Even let her have learned how to read on her own, fine - though it's unlikely that a young 17th century mother would have the time to learn and the ready access to books. But please don't make her an overevolved Rhodes scholar with modern sensibilities. Please. My pleas were not answered.

Anyway, as the book progresses, it's clear that Brooks is imposing 21st century values on her characters. In addition, some very unwelcome Oprah-ization slinks in, mainly in the discussion of Anna's family, where it is revealed that Anna has an abusive father (with zero redeeming qualities) who is married to a woman, Aphra, who turns out to be bitchy, unloving, and also into witchcraft (?).

On the other hand, Elinor is just as perfect as can be. She doesn't believe in social divisions. She literally looks like an angel, all wispy and with silvery hair and whatnot. She teaches Anna how to read and write and read great scholarly volumes. Apparently, Anna has plenty of time to indulge in all these scholarly pursuits. Anna, as I'll discuss later, also turns out to be pretty perfect herself. I actually laughed during Elinor's faux deathbed scene when Elinor basically congratulates both herself and Anna on becoming ever so wonderful.

(The priest, Mompellion, is your average tortured artiste type. He is supposed to have chemistry with Anna. Scandalous!)

Anyway, even though this is a novel of the plague, there isn't really THAT much about how horrible the plague is. Mompellion visits plague families. There's an interlude in which Anna and Elinor pluckily mine a vein so that a little Quaker orphan girl can keep the claim to the vein (Elinor and Anna are easily able to get beyond those silly 17th century prejudices about Quakers.) Anna's half-sister, Faith, is mentioned in passing about 300 pages into the book. Then she dies. Anys, a saucy herbalist chick, is hanged by panicked villagers. Boy, is Mompellion mad about that! (By the way, Anna is totally cool with Anys sleeping around, because she's moderne like that.) There are other random mentions of the village being deserted and various coping mechanism employed by the distraught villagers, but Brooks never really sells the reader on how horrible the Year of Wonders is. Rather, the Year of Wonders is more like a prep course to make Anna even more exceptional.

Anna not only becomes an ace scholar, but she also becomes a terrific midwife in less than a year. After a very brief indulgence, she has the moral rectitude to primly burn Anys' poppy stash when she finds it, becuase opium is BAD. Her horrible father and horrible stepmother die horribly. Oh, she also learns to tame Mompellion's stallion, because she is just that good.

Mompellion is written as an amalgamation of nobility and unexpected nuttiness. His abstinence from Elinor really doesn't make much sense, but it does mean that Anna can sleep with him without much guilt after Elinor dies.

Anyway, Anna takes off at the end of the book. At this point, it seemed to me like the author sat around and thought "Hmm. I want my main character to continue her scholarly pursuits in medicine. Where can she do that? I know! Morocco!" Yes, Anna abruptly ends up as the wife to a well-regarded Arab doctor at the end of the book, where she studies in Arabic and raises her children (her new kids - her sons having died in the plague.) Wow, did that come out of nowhere.

Brooks has clearly done a lot of research and the book is quite readable. But I found Anna and her friends to be too modern and too perfect, much like the protagonist of Pope Joan (another disappointing historical novel) or, dare I say it? Jean Auel's Ayla, the most perfect woman ever to exist in all prehistory.) If you want to read some decent fiction set in this period, I can recommend Slammerkin. The only diseases in that novel are venereal, though.

Sometimes you'll read a book and it will stay with you for a long time. Other times, you read'll a book and it will give you one passage, or one scene, that keeps coming back into your mind. This book has done both for me. It will not only stick with me, but has left me with a great memory of a woman and her sons, on a day when she discovers what the miracle of her life is. It was moving beyond words.

Now, for the bad...the ending did not disappoint me to the degree it did some of the other reviewers. I think maybe because someone gave it away in their review and so I was anticipating it all along (shame on you!!!!). However, it was a disjointed ending that didn't fit with the flow of the rest of the story.

No matter. I enjoyed the read and have left it feeling satisfied. Isn't that what we readers desire most?

-- On the surface, few tales could be more appealing than this one, which was loosely based on an English town which quarantined itself rather than take a chance on spreading the plague to nearby villages. The heroine, Anna Frith, is an appealing and dauntless character (although the story is told completely from her point of view, with little understanding of the conflicting motives of any other characters). The author generally writes well and the story moves with the intensity that you would expect from the plot's appeal.
-- Nevertheless, the ending of the story seems so badly botched and becomes so unbelievable that the tale's credibility simply falls apart. For one thing, a villainous upper-class family handsomely pays Anna to run off with one of their newly-born illegitimate children, which is about the least-likely scenario possible. The town's previously-heroic minister is found to carry a rather unbelievable secret which has little to do with the story. Finally, life in an Islamic harem (to which the heroine escapes) is portrayed as the answer to nearly every woman's dreams, when the reality was probably quite different.
-- In short, if you read this one, skip the ending. You'll save time and you'll have a much better read.

I was really looking forward to reading this book. I enjoy well-researched historical fiction with compelling, realistic characters. Year of Wonders certainly appears to be well-researched, though I'm no expert on the plague. However, I didn't find the book an enjoyable read after the first several chapters, though I kept going in hopes that it would improve. By the time I got toward the end, I found myself rolling my eyes periodically, but I was determined to stick it out for the book club discussion. At that point, the book became even more heavy-handed (i.e.: predictable and maudlin), and the epilogue was simply unbelievable. Take away the rich historical detail and you're left with a story as gaunt as the townsfolk of Brooks' tale.

In a nutshell, my dissatisfaction with this book comes down to three points: the anachronistic imposition of modern-day values and thinking on a historical character (the author gives Anna a few faults, but she's pretty much a superwoman to the point of being unbelievable), bashing all Christians as hypocrites or dupes (and yes, I am a Christian, and yes, I know Christians have done some pretty horrible things, but painting all Christians as narrow-minded is a bit one-dimensional, don't you think?), and a completely unbelievable ending.

Oh, and pretty much all the men in this story are dullards or hypocrites or child-beating thieves. So I guess that's four points, after all.

Sorry to be so negative - I know it's no easy task to write a novel, and the historical research is thorough - but I found this book most disappointing.

The mood of the novel is sad and depressing but the author does a wonderful job of creating a character that you connect with. She is human, has her own faults which she is aware of, but has an amazing amount of internal strength to accept and move on from what life has dealt her. However, this book changed halfway through and the ending was completely ridiculous. It lost that historical atmosphere to the book where you felt like you really could be reading about someone's life during 1666. By the end, I felt angry like I wasted my time since the author shortchanged her own work with a stupid ending that fits nowhere into the rest of her book. Its as though she got tired of writing her own book and just wrote anything to finish it. Don't waste your time...I hate to say that because I really did like the book until midway.

This book has an excellent premise. A town that quarantines itself when the plague is discovered, in order to prevent spreading the deadly infection. Everything about this novel pulled me in, from the topic to the writing and location but I found it a bit . . . dramatic, and this refers directly to the ending! I loved being immersed in the well-described day to day hardships of living in a town at that time, and the writing is historically rich. That being said, that glow of a wonderful read quickly disappeared at perhaps the most disappointing moment, the ridiculous ending. It completely came out of left field and seemed freakishly rushed and strange. I didn't get the point, I would have loved to hear more about the village I had just invested 300+ pages in. I wish I never read it, it almost turned me off the whole book! Oh well, at least it doesn't leave you hanging.

Awesome story although I thought the main female character just a bit too plucky for 1665 - I could imagine all the domestic chores, caring for animals and birthing babies etc. but I found women mining slate without much experience a little on the eyebrow raising side. Nevertheless the book resonated with me and it gets my recommendation.

I won't give a synopsis of the book as that has already been done. I loved this book. The writing was lyrical and I even cried in a few spots. The problem was the ending. My reaction was "What?". How did we go from this beautiful book to this? I would still recommend the book and am glad I read it.