Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks | book review

【 YEAR OF WONDERS 】

Genre: Historial Fiction
Audience: Adult
Author: Geraldine Brooks
Published: May 2002
Publisher: Putnam
Pages: 320 (paperback)

Straight onto my all-time favourites shelf this goes! I shouldn’t have expected anything less from Brooks. Truth be told, I’d had this on my shelf for a long time and had completely forgotten about it. But you know what? I’m so glad I did, because that meant instead of reading it when I first bought it, I’ve now had the pleasure of reading this post-Covid.

I think I would’ve loved this even without the context of Covid, but dang, did that offer me a way to seriously empathise with the characters. Despite this being set in the 17th century, and written nearly twenty years before Covid, so much of this resonates with that lived experience. So firstly, hats off to Brooks for writing such an astonishingly true and bang-on interpretation of a plague.

This is not the Black Death itself, but an outbreak of it a couple of hundred years after in 1666. This is the story of one town’s decision to quarantine itself when the plague hits, in order to try and save others and halt the spread. And for anyone of us who have lived through Covid, that immediately gives you spine-tingles.

This book starts off in a deeply foreboding way by foreshadowing what is to come. It begins at the end – with snatches of description about desolation and the depressed mood of the town, without the reader being quite clear as to the extent of the damage. And that really sets the tone of the book.

We then jump back to the start, and following along through the eyes of one brilliantly written woman, as the plague sweeps through her town. There are some highs, but oh boy, there sure are lows. There is an abundance of loss, of grief and of desperation throughout the chapters. And there are some magnificently poignant moments, such as when the main character describes the feeling of needing and wanting to go beyond the border once the quarantine zone is established, despite very rarely having gone outside it where there was no quarantine. It’s this uncanny mindset that Brooks has managed to capture – a mindset of railing against border closures and restrictions – something that resonates with the modern reader right down to the bone.

This is also a harrowing examination of what it means to be human, and how quickly people can lose their humanity. The speed at which close-minded people or scared people turn to blaming ‘witches’ and incite unnecessary violence in a town that so sorely needs less trouble, was scary. There are lots of little dramas that happen alongside the plague itself, that the plot seems like a terrifying, unwieldy beast of destruction.

Yet despite the heavy and sad themes of the book, it isn’t a depressing read. It’s a fascinating read and a positive page-turner. There are some wonderful themes of friendship and hope explored, and of female empowerment, too. The resilience of the main character is astonishing and it’s a bit like watching a train wreck as you wait and see which people keep it together and which ones lose their marbles as everyone copes with the day-to-day reality of not knowing who might get sick and die next.

This is the kind of book that feels expertly written and makes you want to tell all your friends about it so that you can dissect it together. It’s certainly a book that will stay with you long after you finish reading it.