![]() ![]() Anna and Mompellion can occasionally appear to be modern sensibilities unaccountably transferred to 17th-century Derbyshire. Year of Wonderssometimes seems anachronistic as historical fiction. All is complicated by the intense, unacknowledgeable feelings she develops for both the rector and his wife. Together with Mompellion and his wife Elinor, she tends the dying and battles to prevent her fellow villagers from descending into drink, violence and superstition. The narrator, a young widow called Anna Frith, is one of the few who succeeds. Cocooned from the outside world and ravaged by the disease, its inhabitants struggle to retain their humanity in the face of the disaster. His oratory wins the day and the village turns in on itself. ![]() The rector, Michael Mompellion, argues forcefully that the villagers should stay put, isolate themselves from neighbouring towns and villages and prevent the contagion from spreading. ![]() Do they flee their village in the hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay? The lord of the manor and his family pack and leave. As villagers begin, one by one, to die, the rest face a choice. What Amazon says: “Geraldine Brooks’s Year of Wonders describes the 17th-century plague that is carried from London to a small Derbyshire village by an itinerant tailor. ![]()
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