Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague

Year of Wonders

It is rare, very rare, that I'll literally weep over the pages of a book. I think the last time I did was at the end of the His Dark Materials trilogy. So, yeah. Not too often.

But Brooks managed it. Perhaps I was in just the right mindset, because it wasn't as if she didn't prepare you for what was about to happen. Or maybe it's because it's far too easy to imagine myself in a similar role. So while I can't promise you the same emotional outburst, you will get a suspenseful tale.

Anna, a seventeenth-century rectory maidservant, recent widow, and mother of two young boys, offers a kind London tailor lodging. By the time the villagers realize exactly what it is the young man has unleashed among them, their fate is sealed. What they decide to do together is an act of supreme courage.

I did find that the anachronistic (and inconsistently so) thought a bit of a hurdle to my belief suspension at first. Able, shortly, to accept it for the fiction it is, I was still often aware despite myself.

If you read it, be sure not to miss the afterword. I found the information there surprising.