Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague, by Geraldine Brooks

Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Geraldine Brooks

The famous story of the village of Eame, which faced plague in the mid 1660s, inspired this novel that amplifies or alters some of its elements but takes off from there to focus on themes of punishment and forgiveness.  The basic plot is there.  A tailor named George Vickers unwittingly brings plague to a small rural town in a shipment of fabric.  He is the first to die.  By the time the two clergymen take their famous stand to islate the town, many more have succembed.  The Anglican vicar, here renamed Mompeliaon, and the historically named Puritan preacher Thomas Stanley rather than causing a wall to be built around the town so "the plague will be contained" simply procure an oath from the town's citizens to stay put.  Throughout the concept that the plague is some sort of punishment by God for the people's wickedness throws the townspeople into strange and often deadly actions.

The story is told by Anna, a young woman whose miner husband has just been killed.  She is a daily servant at the vicarage where she comes into close contact with the vicar, Mompelion, and his bright and caring wife, Eleanor.  When the plague hits Anna and Eleanor take on the responsibility of caring for the sick and dying.  At first the two "wise women" in the town are blamed for the disease.  No one is safe after that, as whether or not an individual is blamed, he or she may take the brunt of the anger and grief of  neighbors.  When Anna's own drunken father in his greed buries a living man to get his possessions, he is tied out on the structure at the mouth of the mine and dies.s  His widow turns bitter and loses her mind, adding to the victimization of the desperate.l

The relationship between the precociously intelligent and resourceful Anna and the strangely wistful Eleanor becomes stronger as they try to take the place of the "wise women" and learn their herb lore.  In the meantime the morality in the town is disintegrating, the formerly Puritan becoming libertines and the pious Mompelion growing more and more unforgiving.  It is in fact his inability to forgive that brings this odd and wrenching story to its unexpected crisis.

The facts about Mompelion are central to a problem I have with first person narrative.  I firmly believe that this style should be used only when it will reveal something third person cannot.  This novel might be seen in that light, but the fact that a woman who has her world turned upside down in what she believed is true telling her own story from before her illusions are shattered disturbs me. Knowing that Anna learns some dreadful things later on makes the concept of her telling such an intricate story as complimentary as she does seems false to me. 

Her own intellectual and emotional development, however, are fascinating and well conceived by the author.  The small dramas in the large tragedy are interesting, often disheartening, and sometimes admirable.  The epiloguee is rather outlandish,  however.  My husband would say, "It's fiction!"  but I answer that it has to make at least some sense.  It may have been a wise decision to skip that part.

This book was available on Kindle, making it possible for me, who cannot read print, to listen to it, and for that i am grateful.