Book Review: THE WONDER by Emma Donoghue

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Neither the Creator nor Nature should be blamed for what human hands have wrought."

I am reeling with shock from this unforgettable book (which apparently is going to be made into a movie starring Florence Pugh!).

I had an exhausting work day and I thought I'd sleep at 8 pm when I accidentally opened the book and read most of it that same night, powering through to defeat the lead in my eyes. It was THAT absorbing!

It starts with a mystery. An Anglican English nurse, fresh from the war front with Florence Nightingale herself, is hired to nurse an eleven year old Irish child. But when she comes, she finds out that she is not so much hired to take care of the child, as to stand guard and bear witness that the child isn't eating.

For this is no ordinary child. The girl hasn't eaten in FOUR MONTHS and TAKES NOTHING BUT WATER. And everyone around her is proclaiming her to be the next Irish saint, nourished by heavenly and not earthly bread.

I've always believed that the most terrible of horrors are the real ones that owe nothing to the supernatural. This story, based on true accounts of so-called "Fasting Girls," reveals the horror of blind religious fanaticism and hypocrisy, of what happens when "living for the next life" is taken to the extreme, to the point of neglecting good sense. This is the horror that we've seen day-to-day, when persons of authority are never questioned, when matters of belief are given priority over matters of common decency.

The lines that bear repeating are the words taught to our protagonist by her teacher, Florence Nightingale, which the nurse repeats to herself in order to do what needs to be done:

"Better to drown in the surf than stand idly on the shore."
"Can you throw your whole self into the breach?"
“Do your duty while the world whirls."

This will haunt me for years to come.

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