Doesn’t it seem like every time you read a book you love, it is made into a film or TV show? Well, here is your head’s up -it is happening again.
The Wonder, a 2016 novel by Emma Donoghue, will be out sometime this year on Netflix and will star Florence Pugh. Why not read it first?
This historical novel takes place in the Irish Midlands in 1859, shortly after the end of the potato famine in Ireland. There, eleven-year-old Anna O’Donnell has become a sensation. Anna has stopped eating, yet continues to live and appears healthy regardless. The girl’s actions create a stir. All who hear of her assume this must be a miracle and flock to witness it. Nightingale-trained Nurse Lib Wright is sent from England to investigate whether Anna is a fraud. Lib is sure she is there to expose a hoax, but as she spends more time with Anna, she begins to soften her feelings about the girl and question her own lack of belief.
Pick up this atmospheric, psychological thriller of a novel, based on real historical accounts of European and North American cases of ‘fasting girls’ from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. And then, feel free to watch the film.
-Carol
Read it or Weep 