Will I love The Wonder?

Part and parcel of being different and strange is perhaps being otherworldly. Emma Donaghue’s book, like her other books I’ve read, is a propulsive page-turner that also makes you think.

Is eleven-year-old Anna O’Donnell, who is said to have eaten nothing for months but appears to be thriving miraculously, a fraud? The question probes deep into our view of the miraculous, including religious conundrums that have always intrigued me: would there be Christ without miracles? Do we treasure and fear what we simply don’t understand?

Set in the author’s homeland of Ireland, this is a tale of two strangers who… show more.

Like many, I came to know Emma Donoghue through Room, which was adapted into the 2015 film. But she’s mostly a writer of historical fiction.

This book (which also became a movie) is set during the Irish Potato Famine when an English nurse is called to examine a supposedly miraculous “fasting girl” who claims to have gone weeks without food. 

I can be cynical. I can refuse to see the miraculous even when it’s right in front of me. I don’t want to be like this, but I’m a skeptic. But what if I let myself believe something surprising, beautiful, and impossible?

This book made me want to believe in miracles, prayer, faith, and one person’s ability to change everything.