Publisher: Viking Press
First Publication: 2001
Book Review: Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
You know that deliciously unsettling feeling you get when a book manages to transport you to a vividly-realized, yet utterly harrowing period in history? The kind where you almost wish you could un-remember certain visceral details because they’ve taking up such immovable residence in your psyche?
Well, prepare to have Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders take up permanent space in your brain housing group for Historical Traumas. Because this emotional powerhouse of a novel doesn’t just recount the terrifying ordeal of a 17th-century English village being ravaged by the bubonic plague—it makes you feel like you’re living through that excruciating yearlong nightmare yourself.
Right from those ominous opening lines where our unforgettable heroine Anna Frith watches a roadside rendezvous take a horrifically fatal turn, you know you’re in for one of those sparse, unflinching literary recounts of human tragedy. Brooks doesn’t mess around in establishing the fatalistic yet strangely dignified tone that’ll permeate this whole haunting endeavor.
While it might require strapping in for some truly bleak thematic territory, the immense payoff is getting to see the world of 1666 Eyam spring to visceral life through Brooks’ carefully-researched historical detailing and densely-wrought atmospheric staging. This is the kind of transportive literary experience where you can practically smell the dank, lifeless air of plagued-ravaged homes and feel the grit of the village’s rutted dirt roads beneath your feet.
That exquisite authenticity is due in no small part to Brooks’ unshakably self-possessed narrator Anna Frith—one of the most grounded, relatably human voices I’ve had the pleasure of following in recent literary memory. Torn from her lifelong position as a servant for the affluent Mountjoy family to bear witness to Eyam’s hellish sacrificial quarantine, Anna might start off as a fairly milquetoast Puritan everywoman.
But over those devastating months of plague catastrophe, she gradually transforms into a fiercely compassionate, almost martyr-like force of empathy and survival instincts. Her voice is so compellingly naturalistic and unvarnished, laced with biting flashes of folk wisdom and a wry sense of gallows humor that kept me tethered even in the book’s darkest stretches.
Like when she dryly observes the hilariously absurd “home remedies” being peddled for preventing plague exposure—including parading around town with a haunched cat stuffed in one’s armpits, I kid you not. Or her merciless skewering of the more sanctimoniously hypocritical religious factions who treat the plague as an act of divine reckoning to persecute nonconformists. Those tiny pops of bone-dry levity feel like such an authentic counterweight to the heavy horrors she’s witnessing.
Speaking of those horrors, Brooks most certainly doesn’t hold ANY punches in depicting the pure bodily scourge that was bubonic plague. Many a time I found myself squirming while reading alarmingly vivid descriptions of oozing boils, putrefying flesh, or the sheer bad luck of being the sole survivor in a household full of reeking, bloated corpses.
Of course, that lingering grotesquerie is the whole point, really. By bombarding you with the most unvarnished, stomach-turning particulars of 1666’s plague realities, Brooks viscerally reminds us that these were people leading humble yet fully-lived lives…before nature’s cruel caprice condemned them to an agonizing end no human should ever endure.
The true devastation of these deaths isn’t numbing historical statistics or dates in textbooks, but their soul-rending particulars—a detail that plays a pivotal part in one of Year of Wonders’ most wrenching storyline arcs. Experiencing that lingering trauma through Anna’s perspective packs such a cathartic wallop, especially as she channels that anguish into a radicalized sense of compassion.
That gradual transformation of Anna from a meek domestic servant into a doggedly selfless force to be reckoned with is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Much like the indomitable Keisha from Brooks’ equally searing Indian saga The Book of Longings, you can feel her psyche and moral core being irrevocably shaped by the extreme hardships she weathers.
Whether it’s risking exposure to provide solace to her plague-stricken neighbors or bravely confronting the smug elitism of the wood-dwellers who’ve quarantined themselves in the countryside to thrive, she displays an increasingly dauntless resolve that’ll have you rooting for her survival. Thanks to Brooks’ deft characterization, Anna blossoms from a passive reactor into a full-fledged force for human dignity.
But while Brooks could have easily rested on making Year of Wonders a straightforward historical slog-through of trauma purification, she grounds the narrative in real emotional stakes and pathos by weaving in undercurrents of love and betrayal. There’s the star-crossed courtship between Anna and a dashing young pastor that packs real romantic yearning between the surrounding devastation.
There’s also the stark depiction of broken marriages and petty infidelities that fester in the hothouse atmosphere of plague-riddled Eyam—including one particularly gut-punching breach of Anna’s loyalty that’ll undoubtedly shatter a few readers’ souls right alongside hers. Even in an apocalyptic landscape of bodily ravages, human folly and weakness can still flower with a vengeance.
But as harsh and utterly-leveled as reality becomes in book’s most despairing stretches, Year of Wonders never loses sight of the transcendent power of human resilience and perseverance—life’s natural antidote to death’s cruelties. Brooks leaves you with such a profound, bittersweet sense of how these villagers rose to the occasion of profound calamity rather than descending into scapegoating or selfish survivalism.
Under Anna’s stalwart leadership, they forged a localized civilization of neighborly care and shared sacrifice that almost feels miraculous amid the squalid dying all around them. When the book’s closing memorial refrain hits, you’re left with such a haunting, affirming sense of gratitude for individuals who answered history’s darkest callings with dignity and enduring grace.
So be warned, Year of Wonders is most certainly NOT your typical escapist historical yarn. This is an unflinchingly immersive descent into a prolonged circle of hell that humanity was ill-prepared to weather, told through the candid viewpoint of one of literature’s most extraordinary everywoman narrators.
But those who brave the plagues, betrayals, and existential gauntlets within these pages will emerge at the other end of Eyam’s fateful quarantine. They’ll carry with them a sense of quiet affirmation about the trembling persistence of hope in humanity’s darkest hours—plus some perspective on how their own mundane grievances pale in comparison to what our ancestors weathered and overcame.
Just make sure to have some very stiff tea and a few ginger snaps on hand to help fortify your spirit while traversing these realms of historical anguish. Trust me, after reading this book, you’ll view the mere concept of comfort food in an entirely new light! But the catharsis will be more than worth the harrowing journey.