Tag: Emma Donoghue

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue

This novel, The Wonder (2016) is set in rural Ireland in the 1850s. There is no descriptions of daffodils under the trees, clouds in the sky or ravens in the belfry to begin this story. Donoghue jumps right in. The plot begins in the first sentence. Nurse Lib Wright is on a train to a new and very unusual job to the town of Athlone slap bang in the centre of Ireland, something the locals are very proud of.

I was not aware of the nature of the job when I started reading. Therefore, I’m not going to tell you, so you too will discover the strange job it is just like I and Nurse Lib did. I will say though that there is a lot of waiting and looking.

Mrs Lib Wright, a widow, is a very proud nurse since she was chosen and trained by the then and now iconic carer, Florence Nightingale. The parents, the maid, the doctor, the priest, a nun and a reporter complete the list of characters who all, as far as Nurse Lib is concerned, get in her way. The parents and maid because of their ignorance; the doctor and priest because they are not telling Nurse Lib everything she needs to know and Lib Wright needs to know a lot; the nun because she hardly says anything at all and the reporter because he can sniff a story. A story that Nurse Lib cannot tell.

Emma Donoghue, an Irish-Canadian writer, has written sixteen novels, the most famous of them is Room (2010) which was subsequently and successfully filmed in 2015. Donoghue received many awards for writing the screenplay and was nominated for an Oscar.

The most remarkable aspect of Donoghue’s writing here is that although, as I have said, the story revolves around a lot of waiting and looking, it’s a very engaging read. The theme is belief, whether you have it or not and Nurse Lib, although baptised as a protestant, has a very flimsy belief in Christianity. The various levels of belief of the other characters go quite a long way to supplying the story with tension and propulsion.

In 2022 The Wonder was filmed starring Florence Pugh and directed by Sebastián Lelio. Emma Donoghue contributed to the screenplay along with the director and Alice Birch. You can find it on Netflix.

One of the great attributes of fiction is that it can take you to worlds and people you would never meet in a million years. And they can be with you in your reading chair. I hope you will love this story-rich book as I did.

by Categories: Historical Fiction, Irish literature, Literary criticismTags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Touchy Subjects by Emma Donaghue

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Irish-Canadian writer, Emma Donoghue

In April 2008 in the Lower Austrian town of Amstetten a woman called Elizabeth Fritzl told police that she had for the past 24 years been held prisoner in an underground room under her father’s house. He had systematically raped her, she bore him seven children, and kept her from the world; even his wife didn’t know she was there.

This was the inspiration for Donoghue’s 2011 Man-Booker long-listed novel, Room, which went on to be filmed, with a script by Donoghue, in 2015, starring Brie Larson, who won an Oscar for Best Actress.

This book is a collection of short stories, her third, and came out in 2006. She tackles the foibles of modern people in stories told by various voices, genders, and sexualities: the desperate, but hilarious, lengths a forty-something woman will go to, to beat her biological clock; a cool romance set against the rough and back-slap masculinity of football where two rookies find more than the ball during their training sessions; and a touching and romantic story about the meeting of two minds and two bodies told in two narratives that weave and tangle with each other just like their hands do in the back of a van in the middle of a dark night, lost in the back lanes of Connemara. And that’s just three of them.

There’s a thread here running through these stories: of inner thoughts shared only with the reader that gives Donoghue’s writing the personal warmth and favouritism of dramatic irony; an intimacy with the reader that draws you in and makes you part of her intent.

Donoghue not always, but mostly, instills in the reader a confidence that you are in good literary hands. This is a book that could sit comfortably in your bedside book pile so you can dip into it again and again. Some stories will become favourites.

You can get the book, in various formats, here.

 

by Categories: Book review, Literary criticism, Short story collectionTags: , , , , , Leave a comment