Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks

Amy 

historical fiction

Wow.  Geraldine Brooks is really a fantastic author.  This is the fourth book I’ve read by her. I must admit that I’ve read none of them by choice.  I’d have never selected any of them based on their descriptions but they were all book club choices over the years.  This is why I participate in book clubs, after all.  This novel wasn’t as good as The Secret Chord, her best, in my opinion, but was amazingly beautiful despite the terrible topic of living through the plague.  For me to highly rate a book about such a doomed topic is high praise!

Year of Wonders tells the story of a small plague-inflicted village in England that made the tough decision to cut themselves off from the rest of the world so as not to spread infection.  It is a fictional story based on a real town, Eyam, in which this truly occurred.  It is told from one young woman’s point of view—a woman who grows so much during the course of the story and is quite a heroic figure in several ways.  The townspeople are described so vividly and the picture is painted so well by Brooks’ words.  As I listened to the audiobook, I would look forward to any opportunity to be able to listen. 

I was going to give the narrator a “B”.  But, at the end, the audiobook was credited as being read by the author herself!  This made me change my mind about her grade—I give her an “A”!  I love it when an author reads their own books because the reader’s interpretation of the story is JUST as the author intended!  The main reason I was going to give her a B was because she sometimes sounded like she was about to fall asleep while reading—she would get a little lazy and lose gumption so that it seemed as if final consonants were a struggle.  But, when not seeming sleepy, her tone was a perfect one for the character of Anna. And her inflections and acting when reading the more exciting parts were really perfect.  She did not bother to change her voice for different characters but that was not a problem for this story.  It worked.  And, I do appreciate her taking the time to record the whole thing for listeners like me!