This is blatant xenophobia she assumes all Irish are 'shiftless' simpletons. While Lib has many admirable (even heroic) qualities, she is also arrogant and extremely derisive of the village's inhabitants, mocking their dilapidated homes and meager food and sneering at their beliefs. They find themselves flung together on a mission to save the girl from her own beliefs. With Anna's parents' heads seemingly in the proverbial sand, believing in the 'miracle,' and her doctor suggesting the child is an evolutionary marvel, advanced beyond human needs, Lib turns to the only other clear-thinking individual, a journalist sent from The Irish Times to report on the unusual story. Lib becomes so fixated on detecting duplicity that she fails to register the obvious: Anna is indeed starving herself and her physical condition is rapidly deteriorating. Anna repeats the same prayer compulsively throughout the day, she speaks almost exclusively in scripture, and all her worldly possessions are religious icons. Her backward doctor, ignorant parents, and the town minister seem certain of divine intervention, but they decide to bring in Lib and another nurse, the Catholic nun, Sister Michael, to watch the girl around the clock for two weeks to verify Anna's claims that she truly is not eating.Īs the days pass, Lib sifts through the scant available evidence and begins to piece together a troubling narrative. Anna insists she requires no further sustenance, and is deemed a 'Wonder,' her home becoming a pilgrimage site for religious believers from neighboring towns. Shortly after Anna's older brother passes away, a casualty of Ireland's dire potato famine, she takes her last bite of food: the Eucharist at Communion on her 11th birthday.

Instead, she finds herself in a crisis where her professional ethics are tested and the stakes are life or death. Lib, level-headed and agnostic, is certain she will make quick work of uncovering a ruse. It is 1859 and Lib Wright, a nurse trained under Florence Nightingale on the battlefields of the Crimean War, travels from London to rural Ireland on a very peculiar assignment: 11-year-old Anna O'Donnell has reportedly refused food for four months, claiming to survive on God's grace alone, and a committee of town officials seeks independent confirmation that a miracle has transpired. Fraught with psychological tension, this novel from the author of The Room raises questions about morality especially when personal ethics clash against a community's beliefs.

The wonder emma donoghue review