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The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“One never imagined that as the decades went by, one might drift into an unbounded country. It struck Lib now how alone in the world she was.”

This book is truly a treasure for the historical fiction genre, because I let my whole mind and body feel the atmosphere that Donoghue has created. This takes place in the 1850s, in a rural Irish town, tucked away in some little corner of the world, as I like to think, so it was intriguing and doing something that you don't really see that often in literary fiction.

The best thing about this book for me, is that her writing literally transported me and injected me to that specific 10 day period of time and place. You really come to feel the various characters' frustrations and you grow to love main character(even though she's not the narrator)-Anne. You can really identify the sexism and non-sensitivity or lack of action that is happening all around by most of the secondary characters.

I had so much empathy for Lib, and all of her patience, that I kind of wanted to grow something at certain characters and her actions in this book were deeply admirable and have earned my greatest respect.

For me, the most fascinating thing was how much it touched on the religion of Catholicism and the corruption and various bad things that happened around that time because of people of that faith. As having an insider experience in growing up in this church, I was sometimes shocked at every page about how some people were being treated, and who they were being treated as. Donoghue makes you feel emotions: like rage, frustration, shock, scoffing,etc. and that is the mark of a excellent writer for me, if they can get a visceral reaction from me.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

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