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. As villagers begin, one by one, to die, the rest face a choice: do they flee their village in hope of outrunning the plague or do they stay? The lord of the manor and his family pack up and leave. The rector, Michael Mompellion, argues forcefully that the villagers should stay put, isolate themselves from neighboring towns and villages, and prevent the contagion from spreading. His oratory wins the day and the village turns in on itself. Cocooned from the outside world and ravaged by the disease, its inhabitants struggle to retain their humanity in the face of the disaster. The narrator, the young widow Anna Frith, is one of the few who succeeds. With Mompellion and his wife, Elinor, she tends to the dying and battles to prevent her fellow villagers from descending into drink, violence, and superstition. All is complicated by the intense, inexpressible feelings she develops for both the rector and his wife. Year of Wonders sometimes seems anachronistic as historical fiction; Anna and Mompellion occasionally appear to be modern sensibilities unaccountably transferred to 17th-century Derbyshire. However, there is no mistaking the power of Brooks's imagination or the skill with which she constructs her story of ordinary people struggling to cope with extraordinary circumstances. --Nick Rennison, Amazon.co.uk

When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders."

Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England, Year of Wonders is a richly detailed evocation of a singular moment in history. Written with stunning emotional intelligence and introducing "an inspiring heroine" (The Wall Street Journal), Brooks blends love and learning, loss and renewal into a spellbinding and unforgettable read.

"The novel glitters . . . A deep imaginative engagement with how people are changed by catastrophe." (The New Yorker)

"Year of Wonders is a vividly imagined and strangely consoling tale of hope in a time of despair." (O, The Oprah Magazine)

"Brooks proves a gifted storyteller as she subtly reveals how ignorance, hatred and mistrust can be as deadly as any virus. . . . Year of Wonders is itself a wonder." (People )

I just this moment finished reading Year of Wonder. Anytime I find myself talking to the pages as if they would me in reply I know it's a great read. I was elated to get to the end as the ending was not at all what I expected. As a matter of fact I scarcely imagined Anna & Michael's rendezvous, though I hoped for it once Elinor was gone.

The story is fluid & engaging & it drew me in like a friend confessing a her truth to me in confidence. I am glad that I generally choose what I read based on the way the cover looks. Year of Wonder like the painting on the cover is a sensual, full-bodied tale chocked full of historical references & language (including idioms that I had to research)that made the story most believable. I was swept into the story & enjoyed it immensely. I plan to add this to my own library so that I may read it again.

I highly recommend the book to anyone - man or woman, who has a taste for brilliant literary storytelling.

'Year of Wonders' is a fantastically well-written novel based on the real English village of Eyam, where fictional residents chose to seal themselves off from the rest of the country in an effort to quell the spread of the plague in 1665. As conditions in the town worsen and the residents begin to die overnight and in mass numbers, resident and widow Anna Frith must help the Mompellions cope with the disasterous effects of disease, fear, religious zeal and murder. While the book was far more graphic than I expected, I was very affected by it -- it's not a novel you'll soon forget. I found myself doing a lot of research on the Plague and English history after finishing Brooks' fine work.

I'm writing this as a reader who went out and immediately grabbed "Year of Wonders" after reading and enjoying "March."

No doubt a ton of research went into "Year of Wonders" but I would caution potential readers with the fact that Anna Frith, the main narrator, is just too perfect. And this gives the book a strange quality. Anna tends the sick, she manages as a teenage widow and mother, she is dutiful, forthright, and everywhere. At the end, she is tending to the mental (and then physical) well-being of her employer, a vicar. The plague is all around her and she refers to her sadness but we never feel it. The voice is distant, disaffected. It's reflective. It's the old "and then something incredible happened" kind of thing. The incidents throughout the book feel set up to show us how much Brooks learned about the period--whether it's about alternative medicine of the period, flagellation, or bits about commerce and farming. There's no tension. Okay, there's very little. Anna never so much as coughs or has a bad health day. She seems to rise above the action, to float above it even as others around to depths of misery and despair. The last wrinkle, the bizarre turn of events with Michael Mompellion, felt tacked-on; the relationship between Mompellion and Anna only surfaces as a point of potential interest and conflict after the plague cloud has started to lift.

Definitely worth reading if you are a fan of historical fiction. Brooks has a terrific eye for detail and creating a compelling backdrop. The main action just never seemed to rise and take off.

This is wonderful read, both from the perspective of the insights into the way of life at the time in question, and from the perspective of the development of the personalities and motivations of the charachters. I am a fan of non-fictional histories, so this was a bit off the track for me, but it was a wonderful diversion. Having recently read The Great Mortality by John Kelly, I found the intimate details of life in these times even more fascinating.

Emailed book vendor BUT NEVER RECEIVED A RESPONSE. Pages 1-34 were missing from Years of Wonder and vendor didn't even offer refund, replacement OR copies of missing pages. I'll order elsewhere in the future.