The New York Times Book Review - Stephen King
…engrossing…there is a touch of The Crucible, but I was more reminded of William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. As in that book, each visit to the afflicted child is more terrifying. The difference, both ironic and awful, is that while Regan MacNeil is possessed by a demon, Anna O'Donnell is possessed by the suffocating dogma of the church in which she was raised. In both cases, the reader is introduced to a bright and loving child who is, essentially, being tortured to death. Anna's plight and Lib's efforts to save her (initially reluctant, ultimately frantic) make this book…impossible to put down…The Wonder is…an old-school page turner (I use the phrase without shame). Donoghue's grave consideration of the damage religion can do when it crosses the line into superstition lifts the narrative rather than weighing it down. In that way—as with her sturdy narrative prose, gilded about with the occasional grace-note—it also reminded me of The Razor's Edge, only turned inside out. Maugham's book is about the power of spirituality to heal. Donoghue has written, with crackling intensity, about its power to destroy.
The New York Times - Sarah Lyall
…fascinating…The book is set in the mid-19th century, but its themes—faith and logic, credulity and understanding, the confused ways people act in the name of duty and belief and love—are modern ones. While the wonder of the title refers to many things, at its core it's an examination of the mysteries of reason, responsibility and the heart…Like Ms. Donoghue's best-selling Room, the novel ultimately concerns itself with courage, love and the lengths someone will go to protect a child. Holding Anna tight, Lib knows that "she'd give her the skin off her body if she had to, the bones out of her legs." The feeling is heartbreaking and transcendent and almost religious in itself.
Publishers Weekly - Audio
★ 01/30/2017
In the mid-19th century, English nurse Lib Wright is sent to a tiny Irish village for an unusual task. An 11-year-old girl, Anna, is being hailed as a miracle and potential saint because, it is claimed, she has eaten nothing in four months yet survives in good health. Lib’s job is to watch the girl like a hawk for two weeks and either confirm that she doesn’t eat or expose her as a fraud. But over the course of her watch, she uncovers a dark secret and faces an urgent moral dilemma. Voice actor Lock’s narration is masterful: she creates a wide variety of memorable voices with authentic accents (from Lib’s English accent to many different types of Irish voices—lower-class rural people, men, women, the elderly, and innocent little Anna). During scenes of conversations and arguments, listeners may think they are hearing a full cast of actors, so distinct are the voices and so committed is Lock’s performance. At every moment, Lock is fully engaged, giving every word meaning and emotion and suspense. It’s a thrilling, award-worthy performance of this dark and suspenseful mystery with a rich historical background. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Sept.)
Publishers Weekly
★ 07/04/2016
Donoghue demonstrates her versatility by dabbling in a wide range of literary styles in this latest novel. Set mostly in a small, spare room inside a shabby cabin in rural 1850s Ireland, the closely imagined, intricately drawn story possesses many of the same alluring qualities as her bestseller, Room. Lib, a widow and former nurse, is summoned from London to the peat-smelling village of Athlone for a fortnight to assess whether 11-year-old “living marvel” Anna O’Donnell has truly been able to survive without food for four months. It could be some sort of hoax perpetrated by the girl’s family or the village parish, and Lib confidently assumes that it’ll be an open-and-shut case. But as each day passes and Anna’s health suddenly begins to deteriorate, not only does Lib grow more attached to the earnest girl, but she also becomes convinced that Anna’s reasons for fasting—a recently deceased brother, devotion to God, her parents’ influence—run far deeper than Lib imagined. Inspired by the true cases of nearly 50 “Fasting Girls”—who lived throughout the British Isles, western Europe, and North America between the 16th and 20th centuries and became renowned for living without food for long periods of time—Donoghue’s engrossing novel is loaded with descriptions of period customs and 19th-century Catholic devotional objects and prayers. Even with its tidy ending, the novel asks daring questions about just how far some might go to prove their faith. (Sept.)
From the Publisher
"An excellent new novel that is as much a mystery as it is an analysis of the extent to which some people are governed by their faith."—Houston Chronicle
"A haunting page-turner, filled with Donoghue's enchanting phrasemaking—The Seattle Times
"This a completely engrossing read-you will barely be able to tear yourself away from it".—Next Avenue
Marie Claire Steph Opitz
What at first seems a simple matter becomes far more-stick with it, the payoff is there.
Time Magazine Sarah Begley
Lib is a heroine the modern woman can admire.
Jezebel Stassa Edwards
All spectacle and gothic horror and inevitably hard to put down.
Real Simple Liz Loerke
Donoghue's superb thriller will keep readers hanging on to every word, pondering how far one will go to prove her faith.
Houston Chronicle
An excellent new novel that is as much a mystery as it is an analysis of the extent to which some people are governed by their faith.
The Millions
Donoghue is known for her bestselling novel, Room.... [But] she is also well versed in historical fiction. THE WONDER brings together the best of all, combining a gracefully tense, young voice with a richly detailed historical setting.
Literary Hub Valerie Koehler
Riveting.... Highly recommended.
Booklist (starred review) Sarah Johnson
Outstanding.... Exploring the nature of faith and trust with heartrending intensity, Donoghue's superb novel will leave few unaffected.
PopSugar Brenda Janowitz
A haunting novel about good vs. evil.
Seattle Times Mary Ann Gwinn
Readers of historical fiction will gravitate to this tale.
Steph Cha
Has that vivid, ripped-from-the-headlines feel that comes from an author's utter fascination with a real-world subject.... THE WONDER is deliciously gothic.... Dark and vivid, with complicated characters, this is a novel that lodges itself deep.
Financial Times
Donoghue's measured prose is at its best when depicting damaged and failing flesh with extraordinarily vivid economy
Vogue Megan O'Grady
A riveting allegory about the trickle-down effect of trauma.
New York Times Book Review Stephen King
A fine, fact-based historical novel, an old-school page turner...Donoghue has written, with crackling intensity, about [spirituality's] power to destroy.
InStyle.com Claire Stern
Gripping.
Boston Globe Katherine A. Powers
A fine work, adept and compelling in voice, plot, and moral complexity.... Donoghue deals out the cards with real skill.
Cosmopolitan Julie Buntin
Donoghue proves herself endlessly inventive.... This is the kind of book that will keep you up at night and make you smarter.
Los Angeles Review of Books Meghan O'Gieblyn
Fodder for endless book club debates.
Wall Street Journal David Kipen
Rich hauls of historical research, deeply excavated but lightly borne.... [An] ingenious telling.
New York Times Sarah Lyall
Fascinating.... Like The Turn of the Screw, the novel opens irresistibly, when a young woman with a troubled past gets an enigmatic posting in a remote place.... Heartbreaking and transcendent and almost religious in itself.
Roxana Robinson
Like [Room], THE WONDERexplores a dark, insular, and rigidly controlled environment.... Donoghue's clever use of an outsider as narrator lets her explain anomalies to us-what a creepie is (a log stool) and why people tie rags to a tree (to hold their pain)-as she encounters them herself. But there is more to this mystery than superstitions and local dialect. Lib must decipher the private truths of Anna and her family, who have closed ranks in grief over the loss of a son. She must puzzle out the community itself and its contradictory beliefs in religion, science, and tradition. And Lib has her own sorrowful secrets, her own need for personal redemption. Donoghue deftly pairs the two stories, and as Lib uncovers the truth about Anna, she gradually owns the truth about herself.
Chicago Tribune Amy Gentry
A locked-room mystery, set in atmospheric 19th-century Ireland and as spare, in its own way, as Room.... A fable as lean and discomfiting as Anna's dwindling body.... Donoghue keeps us riveted to Lib's perspective throughout.... Thanks to the complexity of Donoghue's ideas, there's plenty on which to ruminate.
New Yorker Alexandra Schwartz
Donoghue, a writer of great vitality and generosity-one gets the sense that she would gladly have her characters over for dinner, as long as they'd agree to eat-has been drawn repeatedly to the genre of historical fiction not so much to inhabit or reinterpret the past as to try to fit together its overlooked, missing pieces.... Fiction is small solace for history's grief, but it's one way to set the record straight.
The Wall Street Journal Sam Sacks
As in "Room," Ms. Donoghue proves a shrewd observer of the parental urge to distort reality to protect children-and themselves
Fresh Air Maureen Corrigan
"THE WONDER by Emma Donoghue is just that: 'a wonder' of a story about religious delusion and self-denial [that] teem[s] with drama and great moral questions.... Donoghue manages to engage larger mysteries of faith, doubt and evil without sacrificing the lyricism of her language or the suspense of her storyline.
Francesca Lia Block
A masterful, gorgeous, and wickedly well written book.
Chatelaine
Beautifully moody with the taut pace of a thriller, The Wonder grapples with the potency of love, both human and divine.
The New York Times Book Review
Sophisticated, provocative, and bracing.
Time
Donoghue is a master of plot, and her prose is especially exquisite in depicting ambiguity. …In The Wonder, Gospel-like in its concern with adversity and hope, miracles are possible–perhaps through God, perhaps through woman.
Vogue
A riveting allegory about the trickle-down effect of trauma.
The Guardian
Donoghue draws out the narrative suspense with her customary combination of historical verve and emotional delicacy . . . Like Room, this is a thrilling domestic psychodrama that draws its power from quotidian detail as well as gothic horror
Irish Independent
With Donoghue’s readable prose and lightness of touch, we find ourselves both pausing for thought and racing forward to see what will become of Anna.
USA Today
Deliciously gothic.... Dark and vivid, with complicated characters, this is a novel that lodges itself deep
Chicago Tribune
A fable as lean and discomfiting as Anna’s dwindling body. . . . Donoghue keeps us riveted
Booklist (starred review)
Outstanding.... Exploring the nature of faith and trust with heartrending intensity, Donoghue’s superb novel will leave few unaffected.
Seattle Times
Readers of historical fiction will gravitate to this tale.
New York Times
Heartbreaking and transcendent
Irish Times
Eerie. . . . The reader is seduced by the suspense; compelled to pay as close consideration as the nurse in order to understand precisely what’s going on . . . sets a superb pace.
Popsugar
A haunting novel about good vs. evil.
New York Times Book Review
Thrilling and at moments palm-sweatingly harrowing.
Wall Street Journal
The Wonder unfolds a cagey, suspenseful stand-off . . . Anna receives the author’s full sympathies and is a lively, endearing foil to her incredulous nurse.
Quill & Quire
Donoghue’s literary prowess creeps like a dark, menacing fog across the pages.
Literary Hub
Riveting. . . . Highly recommended.
Maclean's
Claustrophobic, controversial, brilliant . . . inventive, tense, and stringently intelligent.
Real Simple
Donoghue’s superb thriller will keep readers hanging on to every word, pondering how far one will go to prove her faith.
Michael Cunningham
Room is that rarest of entities, an entirely original work of art. I mean it as the highest possible praise when I tell you that I can’t compare it to any other book. Suffice to say that it’s potent, darkly beautiful, and revelatory.
Marie Claire
What at first seems a simple matter becomes far more-stick with it, the payoff is there.
Jezebel
All spectacle and gothic horror and inevitably hard to put down.
Boston Globe
A fine work, adept and compelling in voice, plot, and moral complexity. . . . Donoghue deals out the cards with real skill.
Toronto Star
Remarkable . . . heartrending. . . . Both gripping and poignant, it’s a tribute to human resourcefulness and resilience and extremity, and a stirring portrait of a mother’s devotion.
Vulture
Fresh and unusually lively historical fiction. [Donoghue’s] latest novel brings together both her preoccupation with child peril and her gift for history.
Los Angeles Review of Books
Fodder for endless book club debates.
Ottawa Citizen
If you loved Room, you will love The Wonder. And if there is any justice in Canlit, The Wonder will be on the shortlists of the major literary awards this fall. And after that, undoubtedly the Oscars.
Francesca Lia Block author of Weetzie Bat
Threading her stories together like a master weaver, Donoghue takes the reader deeper and deeper into the tapestry of Kissing The Witch. A masterful, gorgeous, and wickedly well written book.
San Francisco Chronicle
Donoghue excels at the microcosm, and her obsessive interest in rooting out the truth makes for a compulsive read. A war is being waged in Anna’s tiny bedroom, and its combatants stand for sides not narrowly confined to the Victorian era: science versus faith, progress versus tradition, rich versus poor.
Zoomer Magazine
It’s an intricately, beautifully wrought tale.
Newsday
Donoghue poses powerful questions about faith and belief
Chicago Tribune
A fable as lean and discomfiting as Anna’s dwindling body. . . . Donoghue keeps us riveted
Wall Street Journal
The Wonder unfolds a cagey, suspenseful stand-off . . . Anna receives the author’s full sympathies and is a lively, endearing foil to her incredulous nurse.
San Francisco Chronicle
Donoghue excels at the microcosm, and her obsessive interest in rooting out the truth makes for a compulsive read. A war is being waged in Anna’s tiny bedroom, and its combatants stand for sides not narrowly confined to the Victorian era: science versus faith, progress versus tradition, rich versus poor.
Time
Donoghue is a master of plot, and her prose is especially exquisite in depicting ambiguity. …In The Wonder, Gospel-like in its concern with adversity and hope, miracles are possible–perhaps through God, perhaps through woman.
USA Today
Deliciously gothic.... Dark and vivid, with complicated characters, this is a novel that lodges itself deep
Library Journal - Audio
11/15/2016
Donoghue (Room) weaves a magnificent and haunting tale of a young Irish Catholic girl fasting herself to death and the nurse who's determined to save her. Eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell is purported to have gone without eating for months. English nurse Lib Wright is sent over to Anna's small Irish village to see if the rumors are true and the girl is truly subsisting on nothing. Refusing to believe, Lib is determined to end the hoax within days, but she finds herself inexplicably drawn to the "living wonder." Putting her skepticism aside, Lib is determined to help the girl, regardless of whether she is a fraud. But there is something ominous about a young girl determined to waste away, and Lib soon becomes convinced that something is amiss. This thriller starts off with a slow burn but quickly picks up speed as the relationship between Lib and Anna deepens and it becomes apparent that not everything is as it seems. The story comes alive with an impeccable narration by Kate Lock, who expertly reads both English and Irish accents, allowing listeners to get lost in the story. Verdict An absolute must-listen. ["As startlingly rewarding as [Donoghue's] celebrated novel Room": LJ 9/1/16 starred review of the Little, Brown hc.]—Erin Cataldi, Johnson Cty. P.L., Franklin, IN
Library Journal
★ 09/01/2016
In August 1859, nurse Lib Wright accepts an unusual assignment: to observe a devout 11-year-old Catholic girl in Athlone, Ireland, who has not eaten in four months and yet remains mostly healthy. Having trained under Florence Nightingale, Lib is ideally equipped to verify whether Anna O'Donnell's fast is a hoax. She initially suspects the child's piety is a scam for attention, but Anna's gentle nature softens the nurse's heart. As Anna's health deteriorates, Lib investigates and discovers that the girl's heart is burdened by a deep shame reinforced by her loved ones' narcissistic pieties, while the medical implications of Anna's fast blind her physician to her alarming decline. Lib resolves to save Anna's life. To do so, however, she may have to commit a murder. The author's depiction of Anna is especially marvelous and her narrative pacing masterly. VERDICT Donoghue's most recent offering is as startlingly rewarding as her celebrated novel Room. Heart-hammering suspense builds as Lib monitors Anna's quickening pulse, making this book's bracing conclusion one of the most satisfying in recent fiction. [See Prepub Alert, 3/14/16.]—John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
SEPTEMBER 2016 - AudioFile
Another powerful novel from noted author Donoghue, this one explores the dynamics of science colliding with faith and faith as an escape from responsibility. Kate Lock’s deliberately paced narration is fully voiced—with occasional lapses when a line spoken by one character begins in the tones she has crafted so well for another. Her performance suits this historical novel and the Florence Nightingale-trained nurse hired to evaluate the truth of a family’s conviction that their daughter lives without earthly food but on the mana of her faith. The nurse evolves from dismissively scornful to life-affirmingly helpful when she discovers the root of Anna’s self-starvation. The child, her parents, a doctor, a priest, and a journalist play significant roles both in the story and in Lock’s portrait of rural Ireland in 1859. F.M.R.G. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2016-06-30
An English nurse confronts Irish history and entrenched prejudices—some of them hers—in this stinging latest from Donoghue (Frog Music, 2014, etc.).Lib Wright has survived the Crimean War and a failed marriage by the time she’s summoned to central Ireland to watch over 11-year-old Anna O’Donnell, whose parents claim she has eaten no food in four months. The girl’s physician, Dr. McBrearty, and a committee of local bigwigs have hired Lib and a nun to provide round-the-clock surveillance. Lib quickly realizes that Dr. McBrearty, at least, is weirdly anxious to prove the girl’s fast is no hoax, even if he deplores loose talk of a miracle. An advocate of the scientific nursing principles preached by Florence Nightingale, Lib has nothing but contempt for such an absurd idea. Yet she is charmed by Anna, as whip-smart as she is pious, and alarmed when the girl’s surprisingly robust health begins to falter shortly after the nurses’ watch begins. Clearly someone has been feeding Anna until now, but it’s also clear she believes she has eaten nothing. Lib’s solution of this riddle says nothing good about provincial Irish society in the mid-19th century, seen through her eyes as sexist, abusive, and riddled with ridiculous superstitions. Irish Times correspondent William Byrne counters with a scathing analysis of the recent potato famine, angrily instructing this blinkered Englishwoman in her nation’s culpability for mass starvation as well as the centuries of repression that have made the Irish a defensive, backward people. Nonetheless, nothing can excuse the wall of denial Lib slams into as she desperately tries to get Anna’s parents and the committee even to acknowledge how sick the child is. The story’s resolution seems like pure wish fulfillment, but vivid, tender scenes between Lib and Anna, coupled with the pleasing romance that springs up between feisty Lib and the appreciative Byrne, will incline most readers to grant Donoghue her tentative happy ending. Her contemporary thriller Room (2010) made the author an international bestseller, but this gripping tale offers a welcome reminder that her historical fiction is equally fine.
