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FREE YEAR OF WONDERS: A NOVEL OF THE PLAGUE PDF Geraldine Brooks | 336 pages | 15 Oct 2011 | HarperCollins Publishers | 9781841154589 | English | London, United Kingdom Journal of a plague year | Books | The Guardian It begins with the scent of rotting apples and a flush that looks like rose petals blooming beneath the skin. Then the yellow-purple pustule appears, swelling to the size of a newly born piglet. Eventually it bursts, like a pea-pod splitting open, spewing pestilential pus flecked with spots of rotten skin. This is what the villagers of Eyam, Derbyshire, condemned themselves to in when they took the heroic decision to quarantine their plague-infested village and prevent the contagion from spreading further. InWilliam Wood, a descendent of one of the few surviving families, observed in his history of the village that: "The immortal victors of Thermopylae and Marathon have no stronger claim to the admiration of succeeding generations than the villagers of Eyam; Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague in a sub lime, unparalleled resolution gave up their lives - yea: doomed themselves to pestilential death to save the surrounding country". Some villagers, an estimated four-fifths of the population, succumbed to this final and most virulent outbreak of the black death in Britain; but as most of the evidence perished with the population, established facts are hard to come by. With the popular belief that the contagion arrived in a bolt of cloth delivered from London, the situation is tailor-made for fictional adaptation: the self-sacrifice of the villagers of Eyam has appeared in novels, plays and even Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague opera. In her first essay into historical fiction, Geraldine Brooks approaches the situation not as a novelist, but as a war correspondent whose experience of reporting from Gaza, Somalia and Bosnia is keenly felt on every page of this chilling, forensically detailed dispatch from the frontline of the 17th century. Most historical novelists would have difficulty imagining the near-extermination of an entire community. Brooks doesn't have to. She is acutely aware that a litany of grisly deaths loses its impact after a while, and uses her experience as a chronicler of contemporary disasters to tell the story of those lucky - or Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague - enough to survive. Year of Wonders is a tale of fragile hope pitted against overwhelming disaster. Like the flaring rosettes of the bubonic rash, it gets under the skin of what it means to be human. Brooks recounts Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague story through the eyes of Anna Frith, a shepherdess who aided the village rector in his mission to contain the disease. The relationship between Anna, Elinor and her husband forms the novel's precarious emotional core. History remembers the real rector of Eyam, William Mompesson, as a saintly, inspirational figure who persuaded the village to accept its quarantine. Brooks's imagined counterpart, Michael Mompellion, is a much more ambiguous and sinister character, cloaked with a charismatic power that occasionally lifts to reveal flashes of a demonic underside. Brooks develops an unsparing analysis of the mixed motives that lurk behind over- developed religious faith, and brings an unflinching eye to her depiction of Mompellion's perverse, personal war against God. More than a mountain of corpses, more than a sensual evocation of the Sapphic bond between two women, more than a pulse-quickening tale of misplaced sadomasochistic zeal, Year of Wonders is a staggering fictional debut that matches journalistic accumulation of detail to natural narrative flair. Brooks has been posted to some of the most hellish combat zones of the modern world; but her most harrowing assignment has been the interior world of her historical imagination. Journal of a plague year. Alfred Hickling is stunned by Geraldine Brooks' tale of the black death village that sacrificed itself for the health of a nation, Year of Wonders. Alfred Hickling. Topics Books Fiction reviews Reuse this content. Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague | Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague is a international bestselling historical fiction novel by Geraldine Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague. The novel is written in the point of view of a housemaid named Anna Frith, on what she lives through when the plague hits her village. It is based on the history of the small Derbyshire village of Eyam [3] that, when beset upon by the plague inquarantines itself in order to prevent the disease from spreading further. The plague that hit Eyam and other parts of the UK in was one of many recurrences that had taken place Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague the Black Death of the 14th century. The novel opens in the spring of when a young widow Anna Frith, takes on a tailor, George Remington Viccars as a boarder. Shortly after the arrival of a box of fabrics from London, Mr. Viccars develops a high fever, and starts exhibiting symptoms of the bubonic plague. He begs her to burn all he brought with him to stop the spread of diseasebut after his death, Mr. Viccars' Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague come to Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague their work and disregard the warning. Viccars' employerher two young sons, and a few other villagers fall ill with the plague and die. The spate of deaths is blamed on a widow, Mem Gowdie and her niece, Anys Gowdie, the village's herbalists and midwiveswho are accused of being witches. Both Mem and Anys are murdered by villagers. The Rector Mr. With the exception of the Bradfords, the local landed gentrythe whole village agrees. Over the following months, Anna and the rector's wife Elinor attempt to learn the uses of the contents of the Gowdies' physick gardenand take up the roles of village midwives. Anna and Elinor develop a strong bond through their trials, the relationship becoming one of friends and equals instead of a servant and her mistress. They support each other through their struggles, and Elinor confesses as to why a high-born woman such as herself married a humble rector and devoted her life to helping the less fortunate. Meanwhile, as Elinor and Anna take care of the needs of the living, Mompellion struggles to keep up with the spiritual needs of the dying. After the sexton dies of heart failure from digging so many graves, Anna persuades her father, Josiah Bont, to take up the work of gravedigging, but her plan fails when he takes to robbing the estates of the dead. Finally, the villagers hold Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague Barmote Courtwhere he is left to die or be saved by his wife, Aphra. But no one comes to save him. Aphra, already superstitious, quickly descends into complete madness upon the death of all of her children from plague and is discovered selling bogus charms and spells against the plague for extortionate prices. She does this by pretending to be the ghost of the deceased Anys Gowdie. The villagers punish her by casting her into a disused well that now serves as a manure pit, in which she nearly drowns. She is completely incoherent and in a catatonic state by the time she is brought out in the morning, and the rector postpones dealing with her crimes fully until the plague is over. As no more are stricken with the Plague, the remaining villagers become secure in the fact that the Plague is truly gone from their village. Mompellion chooses to hold a service of Thanksgiving for their deliverance. Mompellion succumbs wholly to grief and the total loss of his faith in God. Without their rector to guide them, the villagers also descends into ennui, too traumatized after so many months of death and suffering. As Anna discovers a will to live in spite of the ordeal, she seeks to comfort Mompellion, and they are drawn together in equal desire and desperation for each other. After they make love, Mompellion confesses his own dark secret regarding his relationship with Elinor He admits to never having sexual relations with his wife because of a sin she committed earlier in lifeand Anna is repulsed. She flees, and finds the newly returned Elizabeth Bradford, who confesses that her mother is in labour with a bastard child and sure to die. Anna goes with Elizabeth and is able to safely deliver the baby. As the Colonel would not permit the bastard child to live, Anna offers to Year of Wonders: a Novel of the Plague the child and leave the village permanently. In the epilogue, she briefly narrates the three years since she left Eyam. Upon her arrival, she seeks out a Muslim doctor, having found physick and midwifery to be her vocation. He agrees to take her in, due to his despair at sex segregation in Islam keeping women and their husbands from seeking his aid during medical emergencies and labour. To satisfy the customs of the Al-Andalus Arabshe takes her as one of his wives in name only so that she may continue her study and work with him freely. The book closes with her taking her two daughters by the hand before going into the city — the Bradford child, who is now named A'ishafor the sustenance she gave Anna during their sea voyage to Oran, and her birth daughter, conceived with Michael Mompellion, whom she has named Elinor. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.

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