This raises a question: If Lib is so contemptuous of the Irish people, why did she agree to take the job in the first place? 'he'd be quite well paid for her trouble, and the novelty of the thing held some interest,' Donoghue explains.

babbling as they squeezed their beads,' and 'shiftless, thriftless, hopeless, hapless, always brooding over past wrongs.' The same goes with Lib's hatred of the Irish Catholics she has inexplicably agreed to work with: They're 'like babies. 'Evidently hordes were let in every day to grovel at the child's feet the vulgarity of it!' she sneers. The reader knows that Lib is skeptical because Donoghue hammers the point home with a heroic lack of subtlety. When the girl starts to become markedly ill, Lib develops misgivings about her new assignment, worrying that her presence is keeping Anna from eating, and possibly leading to the girl's untimely demise. Lib is instantly skeptical, assuming Anna is an attention-seeking fraud: 'What was it about this spoiled miss that she'd managed to enrol all the grown-ups around her in this charade?' But she never witnesses the girl eat, and finds no stash of hidden food in Anna's small room. To that end, they recruit Lib, who trained under Florence Nightingale, as well as a local Catholic nun to keep vigil over the girl, making sure she's not sneaking food when nobody's watching.Īuthor Interviews In Donoghue's 'Room,' A Child's World Of His Own The town's prominent residents decide to form an ad-hoc panel to test the veracity of Anna's claims - they mostly suspect she's a saint, but want to make sure they're not being conned. The townspeople are mostly in awe of the child, who draws pilgrims from across the country, hoping to get a glimpse of the miracle girl. The center of the novel is Anna, a sweet and devout 11-year-old girl who has evidently been living on nothing but water and 'manna from heaven' for months. The Wonder, the latest novel from Room author Emma Donoghue, is a suspense novel that lacks much in the way of suspense, a psychological thriller that's more laughable than scary.Īnd that's a shame, because the idea behind it isn't a bad one. That is it.Īfter that, things get slightly more interesting, because there is no way they cannot. Lib watches the girl and thinks unkind things about the Irish. Here is what happens in the first 100 pages of The Wonder: Lib, an English nurse in the mid-19th century, is sent to a small town in Ireland, a country whose people she instantly hates, to keep watch over a young girl who claims she has lived without food for four months. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title The Wonder Author Emma Donoghue

The wonder book by emma donoghue