Year of Wonders: Portrait of Plague Village

"Dear friends, here we are, and here we must stay. Let the boundaries of this village become our whole world. Let none enter and none leave while this Plague lasts."
~Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks

In the book Year of Wonders, the charismatic rector Michael Mompellion implores the villagers to stay and not spread "the seed of the plague" outside of the village, and most agree to this self-imposed quarantine. But they are ill prepared for their fate and the depth of how all this hideous sickness and death will affect them. The descriptions of the plague are riveting; I knew so little about the particulars of this dreadful disease before reading this book, which starts as a fever or cough, "marks" victims with a large, painful, grotesque boil that appears suddenly, and progresses so rapidly that many victims would die within a couple of days. It's a very moving novel, based on the true story of the English village of Eyam, although the book blends historical fact with fiction. Some believed that the plague was God's judgement on the sinful world, and pleaded for forgiveness or self-flagellated; others questioned this, and looked to science for prevention and cures. The 1660s were the beginning of the age of modern medicine and the Age of Enlightenment, and in England, there was a shift from Puritanism to the ideas of the Restoration, so many questions about the role of faith are featured in this book. Year of Wonders deals with a most horrific subject and presents an unforgettable portrait of an isolated village outside of London during 1665-1666, which lost two-thirds of its inhabitants to the plague. The effects of all this loss are as widespread as the plague, causing some villagers to become more selfish, fearful of ghosts and witches, hateful, and murderous, while others, such as Anna Firth and Elinor Mompellion, become herbalists and healers who help ease the suffering, or Michael Mompellion, who serves those afflicted untiringly. I'm finished reading this haunting book, and may read more from this author, such as her book March, the fictional story of the father of the girls in Little Women, who leaves his family to fight in the Civil War.

On a different note, today's quest will be to obtain a copy of Nicholas Sparks' new book, The Lucky One, which is being released today. Wish me luck!

Year of Wonders

I'm traveling back in time, to England in 1665, when the dreaded Bubonic plague spread from London to the small villages. I've just started reading Year of Wonders, written by Geraldine Brooks and published in 2001, a first person narrative told through the eyes and heart of a young widow, Anna Frith, who works as a servant for the rector and his wife. When Anna's border, the dashing tailor Mr. Viccars, succumbs to the plague, death has made an appearance in her home, and she fears for the lives of her own two young children. Named after a poem by John Dryden, Year of Wonders has already captured my deep interest in the way that historical fiction always does, transporting me to another era, one which though harsh, bleak, and dark in many ways, is also illuminated by human warmth as if by candlelight, and compels me to keep reading about the villagers who live in the cruel and capricious shadow of the plague. Brooks' descriptions are vivid and evocative, sometimes morbidly fascinating, and she has mastered the phrasings of the seventeenth century as well. Here, she describes Elinor Mompellion, the rector's wife:

"At five and twenty, Elinor Mompellion had the fragile beauty of a child. She was all pale and pearly, her hair a fine, fair nimbus around skin so sheer that you could see the veins pulsing at her temples. Even her eyes were pale, a white-washed blue like a winter sky. When I'd first met her, she reminded me of the blow-ball of a dandelion, so insubstantial that a breath might carry her away. But that was before I knew her. The frail body was paired with a sinewy mind, capable of violent enthusiasms and possessed of a driving energy to make and do. Sometimes, it seemed as if the wrong soul had been placed inside that slight body, for she pushed herself to her limits and beyond, and was often ill as a result. There was something in her that could not, or would not, see the distinctions that the world wished to make between weak and strong, between men and women, laborer and lord."
~Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks

Although the devastation of the plague, a deadly disease transmitted by infected fleas and rodents, was widespread and horrific, it's presence forced many to live more intensely and honestly, including the heroine of this story, Anna Frith, which may be the reason why I'm reading Year of Wonders so avidly.