Review | The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

The Wonder

by Emma Donoghue

My Rating: 

An eleven-year-old girl stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story.

Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, The Wonder—inspired by numerous European and North American cases of “fasting girls” between the sixteenth century and the twentieth—is a psychological thriller about a child’s murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes. Pitting all the seductions of fundamentalism against sense and love, it is a searing examination of what nourishes us, body and soul.

I've been meaning to read some Emma Donoghue for a while now. She's most famous for Room, which she also adapted into a screenplay and was subsequently nominated for an Oscar for, but she's also an author of numerous historical fiction titles, and I'm sure you all know by now how much I enjoy my historical fiction. Thankfully, I enjoyed this too.

The Wonder takes place in 19th century Ireland, where English nurse Elizabeth 'Libby' Wright has been sent to watch over a young girl who is living on no food and has been doing so for longer than should be possible. Is eleven year old Anna O'Donnell really living off manna from Heaven or are she and her family tricking the public into making their home a site of pilgrimage that people will pay to visit?

The first thing I must say about this book is that I think it's been a victim of dishonest marketing. Frequently I've seen The Wonder described as a 'psychological thriller' and it isn't - it isn't even a thriller. Dark Places is a thriller, The Wonder is straight-up historical fiction and that's fine if you haven't picked it up expecting an atmospheric, fast-paced mystery. If you're a fan of quieter stories, more along the lines of Burial Rites than Gone Girl, then I think you'd enjoy this novel. The Wonder is a very slow book - though it certainly picks up at the end with a finale which, though I liked, I wasn't entirely sure suited the tone of the rest of the book - and it did become fairly repetitive after a while as Libby's days bled from one into the other, so don't pick this up if you're expecting something action-packed.

As is so often the case in historical fiction, our heroine is strong, intelligent and appears to be hiding a secret from her past that has distanced her from the rest of her family. In all honesty I got a little bored of Libby's secret towards the end of the novel, especially as I had a sneaking suspicion (ultimately proven to be correct) that she hadn't actually done anything terribly wrong, though of course I'm looking at her from the perspective of a woman in the 21st century. Even so I don't think her secret really warranted so much secrecy, at least not between Libby and the reader, but despite all that I still found Libby an engaging heroine. In fact one thing I liked about Libby a lot was that she wasn't a shouting, screaming suffragette - don't get me wrong, I love me some shouting, screaming suffragettes - but it was nice to see a heroine who was a little quieter, more serious than fiery.

It's revealed very early on in the novel that Libby worked under the tutelage of Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War and I was wary that The Lady with the Lamp would overshadow the story, but any allusions to her were used sparingly and I liked the way she was portrayed; she wasn't deified, at least not by Libby, and that made all the difference.

Our secondary heroine is Anna herself, who's a charming little girl. It can be difficult to write children, and especially difficult to write nice children without writing a saccharine book, so it's a testament to Donoghue's writing that Anna is a very likable little girl. I loved the recurring theme of food that surrounded her, from Ireland's Potato Famine to fasting in the Christian faith and the idea of surviving on 'manna from heaven'. My only problems with Anna are less with Anna herself and more with the people around her, and these were problems that persuaded me not to give The Wonder a higher rating than three stars.

Firstly, there's a romance in this book that I wasn't expecting. The romance itself I actually don't have a problem with; Libby's love interest is a journalist who's covering the story of Anna's miraculous survival despite her lack of food and it was really refreshing to read about a journalist who doesn't fall into the 'evil journalist' trope. My issue was more that I wasn't sure if the romance was necessary to the plot. It certainly didn't ruin the book for me, I actually liked the two characters together a lot, but it made the book feel like it was more about Libby than Libby and Anna; as the story wore on Anna began to feel like more of a sidekick in Libby's story than the star of her own, if that makes any sense at all.

Anna also has a secret of her own - after all Libby's there to see if she really can survive on no food or if her starvation is linked to something more sinister - and I'm still not sure if I'm satisfied with the way it was handled. I won't give anything away, but her secret is revealed fairly late in the novel and while Libby tries to do something about it, and rightfully so, it seems to be brushed under the carpet very quickly for something so serious. If you've read The Wonder hopefully you'll understand what I mean.

That being said, I did enjoy the relationship that develops between Libby and Anna; they're a very sweet duo and their friendship develops very naturally. Libby doesn't make herself easy to get along with but Anna gets under her skin, and under the skin of the reader, in a way that doesn't make her feel like a watered-down (and less annoying) version of Pollyanna. Through Libby Donoghue explores the darker side of the church, willing to exploit a starving child to attract pilgrims in a country that's already no stranger to starvation, but Ireland itself isn't portrayed as a 'bad' place, which I appreciated.

If you enjoy your historical fiction and you like slow, quiet stories I'd recommend checking this one out. Regardless of the few problems I had with the story I do think it's written very well, and I'd be interested in checking out more of Donoghue's fiction in future.

This Week in Books | 11/01/2017

This week I'm joining in with Lipsy @ Lipsyy Lost & Found to talk about the books I've been reading recently!

Now: I'm just over half-way through Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's short story collection, The Thing Around Your Neck, and I'm enjoying it so far. It's so refreshing to read about a place I know very little about and to read about it from the point of view of someone who actually knows what it's like. It's whetting my appetite for Adichie's novels.

Then: I was very kindly sent a review copy of McTavish Manor by the author, who I met at uni, and read this chilling novella over the weekend. Look out for my review later this month!

Next: I was planning to read one of my Netgalley reads next, and I would like to read one of them this month if I can, but then Natalie @ A Sea Change recommended N. K. Jemisin to me. I looked her up and ended up scouring through so many five star reviews of The Fifth Season that I couldn't not pick it up, so it's now waiting patiently for me on my kindle. I've actually read the prologue already and loved the way it's written and I'm so bloody intrigued, but I had to put it down so I can finish The Thing Around Your Neck first.

What are you reading?

Top Ten Tuesday | Shoulda Woulda Coulda... But Really Shoulda

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

It's no secret that 2016 was an absolutely rubbish reading year for me; I read half the amount of what I read in 2015 and, what's worse, there wasn't much I read that genuinely wowed me. As I'm sure you can imagine there were plenty of 2016 releases I ended up not getting to during 2016 and I'm hoping I can cross them off my TBR sooner rather than later!

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers: Considering The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (reviewed here) is one of my favourite books of all time, I don't know why I haven't read this yet. I think I loved TLWtaSAP so much I've been nervous that A Closed and Common Orbit won't be as good, but I won't know until I try and, frankly, I'm excited to read a story about two ladies in space.

The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss: This is one of those novels I've heard nothing but good things about so I'm hoping to get to it soon, as with every other book on this list!

The Muse by Jessie Burton: I enjoyed The Miniaturist (reviewed here) way more than I was expecting to and I think, like A Closed and Common Orbit, I haven't picked up The Muse yet for fear that it won't live up to my expectations. I do love stories about art, though, so I'd like to get to this one at some point in the coming months - especially as I've owned a copy since its release!

A Tyranny of Petticoats ed. by Jessica Spotswood: I love historical fiction centred around women, which is why it makes no since that I haven't read this anthology yet. My only excuse is that the only other anthology I read in 2016, Summer Days and Summer Nights, I ended up DNF-ing. March is Women's History Month, though, so I think I'll aim to read it around then!

Goldenhand by Garth Nix: I was so excited to discover Nix was bringing out another novel about Lirael, but it's been so long since I read The Old Kingdom series that I'm considering re-reading Sabriel, Lirael and Abhorsen before I tackle this one so I can refresh my memory.

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry: This book has pretty much everything in it that I love about historical fiction, it was voted Waterstones Book of the Year in 2016, and I've even read about a quarter of it, but I just wasn't feeling it this year and I've heard such good things that I decided to put it down so I could come back to it when I could give it the attention it deserves. Hopefully that will be sometime soon.

The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley: 2016 wasn't a great year for non-fiction, especially when compared with 2015, so a lot of the non-fiction releases I was looking forward to I just didn't get to. This is another one I'm aiming to get to soon!

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly: This is another one I'm probably going to get to for Women's History Month if I can't read it before then. I'm really looking forward to the film!

What is Not Yours is Not Yours by Helen Oyeyemi: I've actually read the first story in this collection and really enjoyed it, but I ended up putting it down for some reason I can't remember. Hopefully I'll return to it soon.

As I Descended by Robin Talley: I have an eARC of this that I still haven't read because I'm not so secretly a terrible person. But this is also an LGBT+ retelling of Macbeth, so I will definitely be reading it at some point soon. I wonder how many times I've said the word 'soon'...

Which books made your list this week?

Review | Burned by Ellen Hopkins

Burned

by Ellen Hopkins

My Rating:

It all started with a dream. Just a typical fantasy, but for a girl raised in a religious—and abusive—family, a simple dream could be the first step toward eternal damnation. Now Pattyn Von Stratten has questions. Questions about God, and sex, and mostly love. Will she ever find it? Pattyn experiences the first stirrings of passion, but when her father catches her in a compromising position, events spiral out of control.

Pattyn is sent to live with an aunt in the wilds of rural Nevada to find salvation and redemption. What she finds instead is love and acceptance, and for the first time she feels worthy of both—until she realizes that her old demons will not let her go. Those demons lead Pattyn down a path to hell—not to the place she learned about in sacrament meetings, but to an existence every bit as horrifying.

I'm always interested in books that include religion and religious characters, and as someone who regularly went to church as a child and who still identified as Christian a few years ago, I'm often drawn towards books which feature Christianity in some way, or feature characters who identify as Christian. It's one of the reasons I'm often drawn to books set in nunneries and monasteries, such as C. J. Sansom's Dissolution and Robin LaFevers' Grave Mercy, and to books which feature characters who perform ecclesiastical work.

Ellen Hopkins is a writer I've been meaning to check out for a while now, and I'm ashamed to say I owned Burned for a several years before I finally picked it up. Hopkins is known for writing novels in verse, and is probably best known for Crank which, I believe, was inspired by Hopkins' daughter's own drug abuse. Burned, on the other hand, is a novel in verse about a young girl brought up in a strict, Christian community who is sent away when she has a sexual awakening that embarrasses her family when she begins asking questions and acting out.

So, what did I think? Unfortunately I wasn't a fan.

Burned fell into the trap of presenting me with a stereotypical religious villain, as books like this so often do. Entire books have been written about the negative impacts of religion - although personally I prefer to focus on the comfort it offers people, and I do believe religion has more of a positive impact than a negative one - and while I appreciate there are people who use religion, all religions, the wrong way and the problems with such people should be addressed in our stories, I was a little disappointed that everyone in Pattyn's community seemed to be 'bad' in some way. Her father was misogynistic, violent, abusive and a drunkard, and as Burned wore on he began to feel so villainous that he was bordering on the unbelievable - I half expected him to start twiddling his moustache, and because he appeared that way to me I felt like he was an insulting and stereotypical representation of what some people have actually suffered through.

I also wasn't so keen on the relationship Pattyn develops with a boy she meets when she's sent to live with her aunt, whose name I can't actually remember; not only did it feel like a case of instalove, but I felt like there was also a lot of confusion regarding the relationship between sex and love. Now I know that often when you're a teenager, sex is associated with love (though this isn't the case with everyone), and I understand that Pattyn being shown 'what love is' was supposed to compare the way this boy treats her with the way her father treats her mother, but something about it just didn't sit quite right with me. I recognise that Burned is essentially the story of a sexual awakening, and the trouble Pattyn gets into that leads her to being sent away doesn't have anything to do with her idea of love at all, but she also didn't seem to mature, despite the traumatic things she goes through, to recognise that her relationship with He Who Cannot Be Named would be just as valid if it wasn't a sexual one.

Am I making any sense?

Basically I wasn't a fan of Burned and I doubt I'll check out more of Hopkins' work in future, sadly she's not for me, but I'm glad I tried it and I'd recommend it if you're new to verse novels and want to try one for yourself!

Review | White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi

White is for Witching

by Helen Oyeyemi

My Rating:

In a vast, mysterious house on the cliffs near Dover, the Silver family is reeling from the hole punched into its heart. Lily is gone and her twins, Miranda and Eliot, and her husband, the gentle Luc, mourn her absence with unspoken intensity. All is not well with the house, either, which creaks and grumbles and malignly confuses visitors in its mazy rooms, forcing winter apples in the garden when the branches should be bare. Generations of women inhabit its walls. And Miranda, with her new appetite for chalk and her keen sense for spirits, is more attuned to them than she is to her brother and father. She is leaving them slowly -

Slipping away from them -

And when one dark night she vanishes entirely, the survivors are left to tell her story.

"Miri I conjure you"

Sadly my first encounter with Helen Oyeyemi wasn't a great one. I was hoping to get out of the horrid slump I was in all last year with some spooky reading in October and I chose White is for Witching as my first pick, and unfortunately it ended up dragging me further into the slump and subsequently not reading any of the other spooky books I was hoping to pick up around Halloween.

Oyeyemi is a wonderful writer, she writes beautifully and while I didn't love my first foray into her work it hasn't put me off checking out more of her work in future. There were some parts of White is for Witching that I really enjoyed - there are some gorgeous descriptions, there's some LGBT+ romance which pleasantly surprised me, and the way the relationship between Miri and Eliot is written is just lovely. I think my favourite thing about the book was the house, which is also one of the main characters; I loved its relationship with the women of the family and how these women have brought the house to life through the ages and turned it into a rather sinister presence. It's fairly reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House in places, I just didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoy Jackson's books.

Because The Haunting of Hill House is so weird it helps that we have one narrator and that we know who that narrator is (whether she's sane or not is another matter entirely), but the narratives switched without warning throughout White is for Witching and unfortunately I'm not the kind of person who can appreciate a clever narrative switch. I like to know who is telling me a story otherwise I get frustrated and I can't get into it as much as I'd like because I have no idea who's speaking to me.

I quite like slow stories, but this felt less slow and more like nothing was happening at all. I spent the entire time waiting for something - anything - to pick up the pace, and in all honesty I don't think that was the book's fault, but the blurb's. In fact I blame the blurb for my problem with this book as a whole; the blurb makes it sound as though Miri goes missing and that her brother and her best friend team up to search for her, and given the slump I was in when I picked this up that was exactly the kind of story I was looking for and it wasn't that story at all.

Ultimately I think I may have read this at the wrong time, but it wasn't what I was looking for and I'm sorry to say I wasn't the biggest fan of my first encounter with Oyeyemi's work. I do love the way she writes, however, and I'm really looking forward to reading What is Not Yours is Not Yours; I think I may prefer Oyeyemi's writing in a short story format.

I'm also in a minority here, so if you've had White is for Witching on your radar I'd still recommend picking it up - it could be you enjoy it a lot more than I did!

This Week in Books | 04/01/2017

This week I'm joining in with Lipsy @ Lipsyy Lost & Found to talk about the books I've been reading recently!

Now: I'm in the middle of Deborah Moggach's Tulip Fever in anticipation of the forthcoming film adaptation starring Alicia Vikander and Holliday Grainger. Unfortunately I'm not loving the book - I'll be reviewing it once I finish it so you can find out all my thoughts and feelings on it then - but I'd like to finish it before I see the film, which still looks great!

Then: My final read of 2016 saw me finally read some Nnedi Okorafor when I picked up her award-winning novella, Binti. I'll be reviewing this title soon and I'm looking forward to the sequel, Home, which is being released at the end of this month.

Next: I've been lucky enough to receive an eARC of Mark Lawrence's Red Sister from NetGalley, so I'm planning to pick it up soon - I've been in the mood for some new high fantasy lately and I'm always going to be drawn towards stories of killer nuns.

What are you reading?

Top Ten Tuesday | Ifs and Debuts

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature created at The Broke and the Bookish. Each week you compile a list of ten books which coincide with that week's theme. You can find everything you need to know about joining in here!

This week's theme is 'Top Ten 2017 Debuts I'm Excited For', but to be honest I'm pretty rubbish at keeping on top of forthcoming debut novels. So instead of sharing ten 2017 debuts with you, I'm going to share ten debut novels I own that I haven't read yet but really want to!

The Butcher's Hook by Janet Ellis: I wasn't sure if I was interested in reading this when it was first released, but I've heard such great reviews describing this as a rather disturbing, Gothic tale I couldn't resist getting my hands on a copy and I'm hoping to read it soon.

The Fair Fight by Anna Freeman: This has praise from Sarah Waters, one of my favourite authors, so I'm looking forward to reading it and consuming more new voices in the realm of historical fiction.

The Lady's Slipper by Deborah Swift: I met Deborah Swift a couple of years ago while I was doing my MA and she was so lovely. She did the same MA as me at the same university and The Lady's Slipper is the product of that MA set in the Lancashire area that I adore. I need to get to this one sooner rather than later!

The Hourglass Factory by Lucy Ribchester: I don't know why I haven't read this yet because this is essentially historical crime meets the Suffragette movement and that's a book I need in my life.

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman: I'm ashamed I haven't read this yet as it was a Christmas gift from my lovely friend Natalie @ A Sea Change last year. I'm planning to get to this one soon!

Under a Painted Sky by Stacey Lee: I love my historical fiction that focuses on women and poc, so I need to get to this debut soon - I'm considering have a historical fiction and non-fiction binge throughout Women's History Month in March.

The Gift of Rain by Tan Twan Eng: Tan Twan Eng's books have such beautiful covers and I love the sound of his novels, especially as I've read so little by Asian authors or set in Asia.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I can't wait to get stuck into Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's fiction and I'd like to start with her debut, which has this stunning cover.

The Girl in the Red Coat by Kate Hamer: This was on the 2016 Wales Book of the Year shortlist in the English-language Fiction category and I've heard good things about it. I don't tend to read many thrillers but I always enjoy them when I do, so I'm looking forward to this one.

The Art of Being Normal by Lisa Williamson: The amount I've read by or about the trans community is shocking. Sadly Williamson isn't a trans writer, and I'd like to read books about trans people written by trans people, but I also refuse to believe that people can only write about people exactly like them so I'm not going to dismiss Williamson's debut, which has certainly got a lot of people talking about the trans community and what cisgender people can do to be good allies.

Which books made your list this week?