The Wonder


Book Description

Now a Netflix film starring Florence Pugh: In this “old-school page turner” (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review) by the bestselling author of Room, an English nurse is brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle—a girl said to have survived without food for months—and soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life. Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl. Written with all the propulsive tension that made Room a huge bestseller, The Wonder works beautifully on many levels -- a tale of two strangers who transform each other's lives, a powerful psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil. Acclaim for The Wonder: "Deliciously gothic.... Dark and vivid, with complicated characters, this is a novel that lodges itself deep" (USA Today, 3/4 stars) "Heartbreaking and transcendent"(New York Times) "A fable as lean and discomfiting as Anna's dwindling body.... Donoghue keeps us riveted" (Chicago Tribune) "Donoghue poses powerful questions about faith and belief" (Newsday)




The Wonder


Book Description

The new novel from the bestselling author of Room "Emma Donoghue's writing is superb alchemy, changing innocence into horror and horror into tenderness" Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler's Wife "Donoghue's superb novel will leave few unaffected." Booklist An eleven-year-old girl stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story. Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, The Wonder - inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth - is a psychological thriller about a child's murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes. Pitting all the seductions of fundamentalism against sense and love, it is a searing examination of what nourishes us, body and soul. PRAISE FOR THE WONDER "Her contemporary thriller Room made the author an international bestseller, but this gripping tale offers a welcome reminder that her historical fiction is equally fine." Kirkus "Donoghue demonstrates her versatility by dabbling in a wide range of literary styles in this latest novel ... The closely imagined, intricately drawn story possesses many of the same alluring qualities as her bestseller, Room." Publishers Weekly "Outstanding ... Exploring the nature of faith and trust with heartrending intensity, Donoghue's superb novel will leave few unaffected." Booklist "a tale of claustrophobic suspense and the intense relationship between a woman and a child ... Donoguhue's masterful way with words and imagery has the reader sharing Lib's scepticism and disdain for Anna and her family's naïve religious fervour ... until a heart-thumping, palm-sweating dramatic denouement." Red Magazine




The Wonder


Book Description

Now a Netflix film starring Florence Pugh: In this “old-school page turner” (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review) by the bestselling author of Room, an English nurse is brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle—a girl said to have survived without food for months—and soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life. Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl. Written with all the propulsive tension that made Room a huge bestseller, The Wonder works beautifully on many levels -- a tale of two strangers who transform each other's lives, a powerful psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil. Acclaim for The Wonder: "Deliciously gothic.... Dark and vivid, with complicated characters, this is a novel that lodges itself deep" (USA Today, 3/4 stars) "Heartbreaking and transcendent"(New York Times) "A fable as lean and discomfiting as Anna's dwindling body.... Donoghue keeps us riveted" (Chicago Tribune) "Donoghue poses powerful questions about faith and belief" (Newsday)




Summary, Analysis & Review of Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder by Instaread


Book Description

Summary, Analysis & Review of Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder by Instaread Preview: The Wonder by Emma Donoghue is a novel about Elizabeth “Lib” Wright, a British nurse whose wits, beliefs, and compassion are tested during an unusual assignment in rural Ireland circa 1859. Lib’s charge is Anna O’Donnell, an 11-year-old who allegedly hasn’t had a bite to eat in four months. Dubious of this so-called miracle, Lib has just two weeks to uncover her young patient’s secrets and come to terms with her own difficult past. Lib, who trained under Florence Nightingale, is usually based in London. She arrives in Ireland with little information about her short assignment other than the knowledge that she will be well paid. The details of the contract were arranged through Matron, her boss at the hospital. The first surprise is Lib’s lodgings, which aren’t with a local family as she expected. After a long journey that involves two trains, a ship, and a horse-drawn cart, she’s… PLEASE NOTE: This is a Summary, Analysis & Review of the book and NOT the original book. Inside this Summary, Analysis & Review of Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder by Instaread · Summary of the Book · Main Characters · Character Analysis · Analysis of the Themes and Author’s Style About the Author With Instaread, you can get the key takeaways, summary and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience. Visit our website at instaread.co.




Room


Book Description

Kidnapped as a teenage girl, Ma has been locked inside a purpose built room in her captor's garden for seven years. Her five year old son, Jack, has no concept of the world outside and happily exists inside Room with the help of Ma's games and his vivid imagination where objects like Rug, Lamp and TV are his only friends. But for Ma the time has come to escape and face their biggest challenge to date: the world outside Room.




Summary, Analysis & Review of Emma Donoghues the Wonder


Book Description

Summary, Analysis & Review of Emma Donoghue's The Wonder by Instaread Preview: The Wonder by Emma Donoghue is a novel about Elizabeth "Lib" Wright, a British nurse whose wits, beliefs, and compassion are tested during an unusual assignment in rural Ireland circa 1859. Lib's charge is Anna O'Donnell, an 11-year-old who allegedly hasn't had a bite to eat in four months. Dubious of this so-called miracle, Lib has just two weeks to uncover her young patient's secrets and come to terms with her own difficult past. Lib, who trained under Florence Nightingale, is usually based in London. She arrives in Ireland with little information about her short assignment other than the knowledge that she will be well paid. The details of the contract were arranged through Matron, her boss at the hospital. The first surprise is Lib's lodgings, which aren't with a local family as she expected. After a long journey that involves two trains, a ship, and a horse-drawn cart, she's... PLEASE NOTE: This is a Summary, Analysis & Review of the book and NOT the original book. Inside this Summary, Analysis & Review of Emma Donoghue's The Wonder by Instaread � Summary of the Book � Main Characters � Character Analysis � Analysis of the Themes and Author's Style About the Author With Instaread, you can get the key takeaways, summary and analysis of a book in 15 minutes. We read every chapter, identify the key takeaways and analyze them for your convenience. Visit our website at instaread.co.




Frog Music


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of Room, a young French burlesque dancer living in San Francisco is ready to risk anything in order to solve her friend’s murder—but only if the killer doesn’t get her first. Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice—if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts. In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other. "Her greatest achievement yet . . . Emma Donoghue shows more than range with Frog Music—she shows genius." —Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life.




The Pull of the Stars


Book Description

THE NEW #1 BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE WONDER AND ROOM Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the great flu. A small world of work, risk, death and unlooked-for love, by the bestselling author of The Wonder and Room. In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, caregivers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work. In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.




Akin


Book Description

This "soul stirring" novel by the New York Times bestselling author of Room (O Magazine) is one of the New York Post's best books of the year. Noah Selvaggio is a retired chemistry professor and widower living on the Upper West Side, but born in the South of France. He is days away from his first visit back to Nice since he was a child, bringing with him a handful of puzzling photos he's discovered from his mother's wartime years. But he receives a call from social services: Noah is the closest available relative of an eleven-year-old great-nephew he's never met, who urgently needs someone to look after him. Out of a feeling of obligation, Noah agrees to take Michael along on his trip. Much has changed in this famously charming seaside mecca, still haunted by memories of the Nazi occupation. The unlikely duo, suffering from jet lag and culture shock, bicker about everything from steak frites to screen time. But Noah gradually comes to appreciate the boy's truculent wit, and Michael's ease with tech and sharp eye help Noah unearth troubling details about their family's past. Both come to grasp the risks people in all eras have run for their loved ones, and find they are more akin than they knew. Written with all the tenderness and psychological intensity that made Room an international bestseller, Akin is a funny, heart-wrenching tale of an old man and a boy, born two generations apart, who unpick their painful story and start to write a new one together. "What begins as a larky story of unlikely male bonding turns into an off-center but far richer novel about the unheralded, imperfect heroism of two women." -- New York Times




Slammerkin


Book Description

Mary Saunders' lust for linen, lace and a shiny red ribbon leads her to a life of prostitution.