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mh_books 's review for:
The Wonder
by Emma Donoghue
Well I missed out on some sleep last night as I couldn’t put it down so I guess I must have liked it :)
The story is about a young girl from the Midlands of Ireland who has not eaten in four months and yet looks to be relatively healthy. The religious are claiming she is a miracle and the sceptics that she and her family are cheats and liars. To decide the point, an English Florence Nightingale trained nurse together with an Irish Catholic Nun are tasked with observing whether she is eating or not over the course of two weeks.
Lib, the atheist English Nurse finds herself in the heart of old fashioned Catholic Ireland only seven years after the famine killed half of the Irish population. Personally, I found her rather amusing in her lack of knowledge and ignorance of the culture. Of course the saucer of milk left in the kitchen was for the fairies , who else not a starving child! Of course you must bless somebodies work or they may injure themselves at it. Yes, washing a rag in a sacred well, rubbing it on a sore spot on your body and tying it on a tree until it rots, is a well known cure - Don’t believe me I live in Dublin in the 21st Century and there is such a well and tree not 200 yards from where I live! Sadly though yes, there was a time when religious mania ruled Ireland and the majority of the populace believed in it so absolutely and literally that they could not see the harm that was being done in its name right in front of their faces.
This is a story the pits an Educated English Sceptical Scientist against Superstitious Catholic Ireland. Yet somehow in the midst of this Lib and her charge Anna find a common ground and begin to bound. But then it all goes terribly terribly wrong.
The pace is very slow moving at the beginning and speeds up near the end. The resolution or twist will be obvious if you try to guess it (there are only a few possibilities after all). So I would recommend just relaxing and let story flow.
If you read this and found the old fashioned catholic superstitious element intriguing I would recommend [bc:The Loney|25458371|The Loney|Andrew Michael Hurley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430426895s/25458371.jpg|42849250].
Overall a good read.
The story is about a young girl from the Midlands of Ireland who has not eaten in four months and yet looks to be relatively healthy. The religious are claiming she is a miracle and the sceptics that she and her family are cheats and liars. To decide the point, an English Florence Nightingale trained nurse together with an Irish Catholic Nun are tasked with observing whether she is eating or not over the course of two weeks.
Lib, the atheist English Nurse finds herself in the heart of old fashioned Catholic Ireland only seven years after the famine killed half of the Irish population. Personally, I found her rather amusing in her lack of knowledge and ignorance of the culture. Of course the saucer of milk left in the kitchen was for the fairies , who else not a starving child! Of course you must bless somebodies work or they may injure themselves at it. Yes, washing a rag in a sacred well, rubbing it on a sore spot on your body and tying it on a tree until it rots, is a well known cure - Don’t believe me I live in Dublin in the 21st Century and there is such a well and tree not 200 yards from where I live! Sadly though yes, there was a time when religious mania ruled Ireland and the majority of the populace believed in it so absolutely and literally that they could not see the harm that was being done in its name right in front of their faces.
This is a story the pits an Educated English Sceptical Scientist against Superstitious Catholic Ireland. Yet somehow in the midst of this Lib and her charge Anna find a common ground and begin to bound. But then it all goes terribly terribly wrong.
The pace is very slow moving at the beginning and speeds up near the end. The resolution or twist will be obvious if you try to guess it (there are only a few possibilities after all). So I would recommend just relaxing and let story flow.
If you read this and found the old fashioned catholic superstitious element intriguing I would recommend [bc:The Loney|25458371|The Loney|Andrew Michael Hurley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1430426895s/25458371.jpg|42849250].
Overall a good read.