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A Hoax, or Blessed?

“I’m going to crack you like a nut, missy,” nurse Lib Wright thinks as she examines the self-starving child she has come to monitor in Emma Donoghue’s intriguing new novel, “The Wonder.” Anna O’Donnell, the 11-year-old Irish girl in question, has not had a bite to eat in four months, reportedly subsisting on “manna from heaven” and teaspoons of water. Lib Wright, an English nurse who was on the frontlines in Crimea under the tutelage of Florence Nightingale, has been summoned to this small village in the center of Ireland to observe the girl for two weeks and determine if she has been sneaking food or is truly a living miracle, a child of God.

Lib, a non-believer and pragmatist, knows it is impossible to survive for months without solid food. Anna is the pious young girl who prays all day and believes that in her fasting God will have mercy on her brother Pat, who died before he could go to confession. 

What starts off as a battle of wills between nurse and child slowly transforms into something far more interesting as they parry and confront one another, allowing truths to slowly reveal themselves and mysteries to be solved.

​In short, painterly strokes,​ ​Donoghue depicts a small bogland village in 1850s Ireland, full of distrustful people who are devoutly Catholic yet still leave bowls of milk out for the fairies that live in the woods. They distrust the English nurse and are divided over the fate of the starving girl: Is her fasting a hoax or is she blessed by God?

As outsiders visit the small farmhouse where Anna lives, trying to view the miracle child and be blessed themselves, and newspapers all over Ireland are full of the story, Lib tries to reason with the girl and beseeches her to eat. But Anna refuses, listening only to God. Her belly grows distended and her hair falls out and her breath grows sour as her insides start shutting down, yet she doesn’t waver from her faith or her commitment. And Lib, as the two weeks come to a close with the young girl slowly diminishing before her eyes, grows more attached to the child, and an intimacy develops that is both believable and heartbreaking.

In a dialogue-heavy novel that is surely paced and never uninteresting, Donoghue, author of the bestselling novel, “The Room,” weaves stories of familial horrors and parental dysfunction. Sometimes the weave doesn’t hold​​. ​Some subplots revolving around Lib flare bri​ghtly, the​n fade out without leaving much impact at all. And​, it might be said, a number of the lesser figures in the books have characteristics we​ may have encountered many times ​in many other novels. ​But these are small quibbles. ​It is the Anna who we come back to, ​she​ who is Donoghue’s most wonderful creation. It is her bravery and her innocence that we follow and whose fate we cling to, and whose frail soul we want to save​.​

 

Emma Donoghue will discuss her novel, “The Wonder,” at The White Hart inn on Monday, Oct. 3, at 6 p.m. The White Hart Speaker Series is presented in collaboration between The White Hart inn, Oblong Books & Music and the Scoville Memorial Library. To reserve a seat, go to www.scovillelibrary.org.

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