Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders – Geraldine Brooks

A best-seller in 2001, this book was the debut novel of Brooks, a journalist, essayist and historian. It’s surprising anybody’s first novel could engage us hardcore readers with so much storytelling skill and take us so effortlessly to a distant time and place.

From the fascinating initial chapter, we are transported into the setting, so strange yet at the same time realistic, of the autumn of 1666 in a small English village. Brooks appeals to our senses so we see its colors, we breathe its scents, we admire its misty green landscapes. This story is narrated in the first person by our protagonist, Anna Frith, the 18-year-old maid of the rector of the village. She has passed and will go through trials and come out with her head high, showing her strength and courage.

It is to widow Anna's house that nice Mr. Viccars, a tailor tired of London, will bring bolts of fabric infested by fleas which will then spread bubonic plague throughout the village. With a clear and concise narration, the author has us witness the succession of events in the small community, the disgusting deaths, the testing of Christian faith, the yielding to superstition and occult practices, the solidarity that will give way to selfishness and mob violence, the loss of clear thinking to anxiety, as the social and economic order withers away.

This is a superb historical novel. Brooks bids us to reflect on human nature and its strengths and weaknesses, when it is faced with unpredictable disorder and unrelenting grief. Reading this novel in the shadow of a million covid deaths in the US it’s impossible not to feel involved in the emotions of the characters or not be reminded that ordinary people are capable of both selfish and selfless behavior in extraordinary circumstances.