The Wonder by Emma Donoghue

March 15, 2017 by Christina

Fiction – print. Little, Brown and Company, 2016. 291 pgs. Library copy. Seven years after the Irish potato famine of 1845 and 1852, a Nightingale-trained English nurse by the name of Lib Wright is employed by an Irish town council to investigate the claim that an eleven-year-old resident by the name Anna O’Donnell has existed some four months without consuming any food. As deeply pious Catholics, Anna, her parents, and her cousin-turned-maid believe the young girl’s faith in God is sustaining her life, and the […]

Categories: 2017 Reads, Book Club, Europe, Fiction, Giller Prize, Ireland, Religion • Tags: Emma Donoghue

Room by Emma Donoghue

June 15, 2011 by Christina

Fiction — print. Little, Brown and Company, 2010. 320 pgs. Library. Five-year-old Jack lives in an eleven-by-eleven square room with his twenty-seven-year-old mother. The two are locked into the Room, as Jack calls it, by his mother’s kidnapper whom Jack calls Old Nick. Ma hides him in the wardrobe when Old Nick visits; she doesn’t want her their attacker looking at him. Having never ventured outside the four walls, Jack is convinced that the only things real are him, Ma, […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Ireland, Man Booker Prize • Tags: Emma Donoghue

The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue

March 21, 2009 by Christina

Donoghue’s novel  was an interesting read — largely due to the fact that it is so heavily based on a real divorce case and the state of women’s rights during a divorce. But I found it very difficult to slip into the story and care about the characters. The outcome is what interested me — whether or not Harry would get his divorce from Helen. Interestingly enough, the contents of the sealed letter were not what kept me turning the […]

Categories: 2009 Reads, Europe, Fiction, United Kingdom • Tags: Emma Donoghue