Title: The Wonder

Author: Emma Donoghue

Lib Wright a young English nurse trained by the legendary Florence Nightingale, arrives in an impoverished Irish village with a strange mission. Eleven-year-old Anna O’Donnell is said to have eaten nothing for four months. With tourist thronging to see the child, and the press sowing doubt, the baffled community looks to an outsider to bring the truth to light. Lib’s job is simple: to stay in the girl’s bare room at all hours, watching her.

An educated skeptic repelled by what she sees as ignorance and superstition, Lib expects to expose the first as a hoax within days. But the long hours she spend
s with Anna begin to erode all her assumptions about the child, the Irish, and herself. Is Anna a fraud or a “living wonder”? Or is something more sinister unfolding right before Lib’s eyes?

Haunting, spare, and written with all the propulsive tension that transported readers of Room, The Wonder is at once a psychological thriller about love petted against evil, and an unforgettable portrait of intimacy between people from different worlds.