I was instantly intrigued by these cases, which seemed to echo medieval saints starving as an act of penance, and also modern anorexics, but weren't exactly the same as either. It was a nominee for a Shirley Jackson Award (for the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic) as well as a Medici Award for book-club favourites.ĭonoghue has adapted (with director Sebastián Lelio and Alice Birch) The Wonder into a feature film with Element Pictures (with whom she made Room) and House Productions, coming from Netflix in 2022.Ī personal note: I came across the Fasting Girl phenomenon back in the mid-1990s - so long ago that I can’t even remember where I first read about these girls and young women (and very occasionally older women or men). The Wonder is a tale of two strangers who transform each other's lives, a psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil.ĭonoghue’s ninth novel – her first historical one set in her homeland of Ireland - was a bestseller in Canada even before publication, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize there, as well as for Ireland's Bord Gáis Energy Eason Novel of the Year and Kerry Group Novel of the Year.

Tourists have flocked to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, and a journalist has come down to cover the sensation. An English nurse, Lib Wright, is summoned to a tiny village to observe what some are claiming as a medical anomaly or a miracle - a girl said to have survived without food for months. Addressing themes of the dangers behind misperceptions and assumptions, in addition to motherhood, the loss of innocence, and the different ways human beings try to recover from loss, The Wonder portrays one woman’s struggle to help her patient while at the same time healing herself.The Wonder (New York: Little Brown Toronto: HarperCollins Canada London: Picador, 2016). By the end of the novel, not only has Lib found these qualities in herself, but she has changed her own life for the better. Although Lib believes that the scientific basis of her training will allow her to solve the mystery immediately, what she learns is that science is not a substitute for compassion and understanding. Told through Lib’s point of view, the novel chronicles Lib’s transformation from a nurse in name only to a nurse in the truest sense of the word. The Wonder OverviewSet in 1859, 12 years after the Irish Famine ends, Emma Donahue’s historical novel The Wonder (2016) depicts the increasingly complex relationship between Anna O’Donnell, an 11-year-old Roman Catholic girl in the midlands of Ireland who appears to have gone without food for four months yet remained relatively healthy, and one of the nurses who has been brought in to watch over her, Elizabeth (Lib) Wright.

The wonder synopsis emma donoghue