The subtitle of this book is A Novel of the Plague, which set me to wondering why epidemics are so grimly fascinating. There are plenty of contemporary specters to haunt us, of course: AIDS, Ebola, the threat of biological warfare (intensified by the anthrax scare and the prospect of facing a smallpox outbreak with little or no vaccine). Perhaps one way of dealing, psychologically, with these more present dangers is to become absorbed in the scourges of the past.
I think we're fascinated, too, by the contrast between 17th Century thinking and our own. Instead of the characteristically modern effort to find a rational explanation for disease or natural catastrophe, in those days the irrational --- the belief that such tragedies were divinely ordained to punish sinful humanity, or cooked up by the devil --- held sway. It is the tension between this theological view of the world, and particularly of the plague, and the nascent stirrings of the science of medicine, or at least of a rudimentary plant-based method of healing, that dominates YEAR OF WONDERS.
At the heart of the book is an account of how a community deals with crisis (another subject close to our modern hearts, especially in New York City). The year is 1665-66; the place is England, recently emerged from its Civil War and reestablished, to the accompaniment of a fair amount of post-Puritan debauchery, as a monarchy. The Black Death has ravaged London and now, in the person of a journeyman tailor, finds its way to an obscure mining village in the north. Geraldine Brooks, a journalist-turned-novelist, based her book on a real town called Eyam, which, led by its vicar, resolved to quarantine itself (no one in; no one out) until the plague had done its worst --- an act of extraordinary altruism and vision.
The tale unfolds through the eyes of an 18-year-old woman named Anna Frith. An escape route from her abusive father had appeared several years before in the form of marriage to a goodhearted but uncouth miner (his lovemaking technique and intellect left something to be desired) who gave her two sons then was killed in a cave-in. Now she works as a housemaid in the local rectory; she's also taken in a boarder: the tailor who becomes the town's first plague victim. Anna comes under the lucky influence of the vicar, Mr. Mompellion, and his wife Elinor, who teaches her to read and treats her as an equal and friend. Also included in this group of enlightened villagers is the local wise-woman and midwife, Mem Gowdie, and her niece, Anys.
Those are the good guys. The characters here are fairly black and white: Anna's father is so bad that eventually the whole town turns against him; the others are so good it makes your teeth ache (although the Mompellions do turn out to have some secrets that take the sugar out of their saintliness). As death passes inexorably from house to house, sparing almost no one, the villagers respond variously: panic, rage, greed, meek acceptance, murderous superstition. How Anna deals with the plague and its victims, and triumphs with her own kind of courage, is a moving story that Brooks tells beautifully, embedding it in the homely details of everyday life: the food and clothes, the landscape and passing seasons.
I do have a couple of caveats. Brooks's dialogue, perhaps out of a journalist's desire to be historically accurate, sometimes dips into the laughably archaic (does "You ignorant slattern" remind anybody else of Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtin on the original "Saturday Night Live?"). Ironically, given this effort to avoid anachronism, YEAR OF WONDERS also suffers from what I would call a modern agenda. Anna's religious doubts and inquiring proto-scientific mind --- "Perhaps the Plague was neither of God nor the Devil, but simply a thing in Nature, as the stone on which we stub a toe" --- verge on the too-good-to-be-true. Mem and Anys are clearly homeopaths, far more skilled than the local doctors (who mostly apply leeches and hope for the best); among their potions Anna even finds a "poppy tincture" that briefly tempts her to flirt with opium addiction. And Anys, ahead of her time, obviously believes in free love. Yes, historical fiction tends to single out the misfits and pioneers in a particular place and time, not its typical citizens; yet in this case Brooks goes too far in making 17th Century women into modern ones.
Still, Anna is a splendid, redoubtable heroine. In literature, the servant is frequently the invisible observer who proves to have greater wisdom, imagination, and just plain goodness than her "betters." Jane Eyre, for example (of whom there is more than an echo in YEAR OF WONDERS), scrutinizes her employer with a kind, sharp, yearning eye, and ultimately heals and transfigures him. Anna comes out of this tradition; unlike Jane, however, her destiny does not lie in the conventional state of marriage (even though the Reverend Mompellion is a bit of a Mr. Rochester figure), but somewhere far more exotic. Let the precise destination be a surprise to readers who have yet to discover this book. It's quite delicious.
--- Reviewed by Kathy Weissman
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