Lib watches in horror as Rosaleen and Malachy take money from the hordes who turn up every day to grovel at the child’s feet. Yet for all the girl’s obvious suffering, Lib still has reason to believe the girl was getting plenty to eat on the sly. Takes notes, recording Anna’s physical condition so that she can to impose something of the systematic on this incongruous situation. Is an unadorned square inside which this tiny redheaded girl fades away before Liv and Sister Michael’s eyes. Lib is anxious to accept the Committee’s challenge to expose this “pitiful swindle.” Ensconced in the O’Donnell’s ramshackle cabin, Sister Michael offers to take the first watch. Lib is convinced that it will only take two weeks of supervision to catch them out.Īnna emerges here as the living marvel, the frail, mercurial, suffering child the author intends her to be. Together with elderly, rheumy-eyed Sister Michael, Lib establishes herself as a nursemaid cum jailer, convinced that “the squire and his lady” just want to keep their daughter at home so they can carry on slipping food to her. The committee hopes that by importing one of the scrupulous new breed of nurses, credence will be given to the O’Donnell’s mad story. Liv will be one of two scrupulous attendants who will stay by Anna night and day.

That her parents, Rosaleen and Malachy O’Donnell, are nothing more than cheats conspiring to feed their daughter secretly while making fools of world.Ī committee is formed and a decision taken to mount the watch. While a number of fervent letters from local parishioners proclaim Anna’s case to be an “out and out miracle,” Lib is convinced the girl is a fraud and Yet a vital force seems to burn strong in Anna, and she seems to be in full For four months, Anna hasn’t taken any sustenance of any kind except clear water, Anna is not ill not with any known disease she simply doesn’t eat. Who claims-or rather her parents claim-to have not taken any food since her eleventh birthday. Lib’s duty will be to observe Anna O’Donnell who is not exactly ill but McBrearty tells her that her services are needed for no less than a fortnight. Resents having been dragged to the provincial village of Athlone, where whiskery-cheeked Dr. Possessed with a healthy suspicion of Catholicism, Lib She’s a stock creature, a nurse with a heart of gold, a proto-feminist who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Lib has attributes endemic to independent Victorian women. In Donoghue's intense exploration of religious faith, London nurse Lib Wright arrives in the Irish Midlands, fresh from the Crimean Campaign where she worked with the famous Florence Nightingale.

Book review: Emma Donoghue's *The Wonder*Ĭlick here to read reviewer Luan Gaines' take on The Wonder.

The wonder emma donoghue review