"Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague" by Geraldine Brooks

This book was loaned to me by Joyce, who said it was even better than People of the Book. (She's right, by the way). Kate wants to know what I think of it, too, since it's on her TBR list and she has enjoyed other books by Brooks.

Although this book was very well written from cover to cover, it starts in quite a depressing manner. It begins at what seems like the ending, after the plague has ravaged the town and the narrator has lost just about everyone she cared about; then it takes us back to the previous year so we can live through all of the grief with Anna Frith.

It has been a long time since I last cried over a book--so long that I can't even remember which book I might have cried over most recently. (Surely I have been brought to tears by something more recent than Where the Red Fern Grows when I was in grade school.) I don't believe I've shed a tear over any of the books I've blogged about here. But it was heartbreaking to read about the last hours of Baby Tom. Even though I expected his death (and dreaded it every moment, figuratively dragging my feet as I read) I was unprepared for the powerful grief of it. Then little Jamie quickly followed. Do yourself a favor and don't read the chapters "Rat-fall" or "Sign of a Witch" until you have some time alone. You don't want to be, say, in your doctor's waiting room and sobbing into your book.

Somehow in the midst of all the sorrow the author still manages to craft a beautiful story. I have come to the solid opinion that Geraldine Brooks is an incredibly gifted writer. I love how she makes the story all the more authentic by using period vocabulary, but that is merely one small example of what makes her writing excellent. For more evidence, just listen to the beauty of this passage:

"It was one of those rare days in early April when Nature lets us taste the sweet spring that is coming. It was so unexpectedly mild that I lingered in the garth, breathing the soft scents of the slowly warming earth. The sky was beautiful that morning. A tumble of fluffy, tufted clouds covered the whole from horizon to dome, as if a shearer had flung a new-shorn fleece high into the air. As I watched, the rays of the rising sun lit the edge of each cloud, turning it silver, until suddenly the fleece became instead a mesh of shining metal. Then, the light changed again, and the silvery gray turned deep rose-red."

When I read this, not only could I see clearly how lovely it must look, but I felt I had been there at that precise moment; even that I am there right now.

As the book reached its conclusion, there were several moments in which I felt like I turned a corner and received a whole new perspective. Kudos to Brooks for not taking the easy way out. I was sure I could not be happy with an ending that differed in any way from the one I had planned out in my head, but time and again Brooks opened my eyes to a wider world with just as much peace and joy (if not more) than I would have had in a book with my chosen ending and my narrow view. I know in my blog I claim that spoilers abound, but I absolutely refuse to ruin the story for you. I want you to come upon these discoveries in the same way that I did, with no prior knowledge of them to taint your perspective.

If you can get past the depressing and seemingly hopeless first chapter, and if you can accept an ending that is probably not what you would wish or expect, I think you will love this book as much as I did.

"March" by Geraldine Brooks

I finally settled on reading this one next, partly because I had been so looking forward to it ever since hearing about it, and partly because I thought my friend Joyce (who has loaned me 2 other Brooks books) might enjoy reading it after me.

For those of you who have not had the good fortune to hear about this book before, it is about the father of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (who, if you recall, had the surname March). The story follows Mr. March during his time away from his little women during the Civil War.

The first chapter kind of threw me off a bit. As I've said before, I generally prefer not to read books (or watch movies) about war. I don't like to read about the horrors of combat, and hearing about strategy tends to bore me. I had sort of expected this book to have a tone more similar to "Little Women," with its naive hopefulness, but "March" starts off with a vivid description of Mr. March's regiment (of which he is chaplain) retreating before the enemy, and I was beginning to dread reading the rest.

Until I came to the last two sentences of Chapter One. They may not hold the same magic for you as they did for me, but when I read, "Whatever the case, I was halfway up the wide stone steps before I recognized the house. I had been there before," I perked up and thought, Aha! Perhaps I'll enjoy this book after all.

If you read this book you must also read the afterword. I had initially struggled with the idea of labeling this post as "historical fiction," since this is a book about a fictional character from another work of fiction, but after reading the book and realizing its treatment of subjects such as the Civil War, slavery, and the Underground Railroad, I felt pretty comfortable calling it historical fiction. And after reading the afterword, all remaining doubts were dispelled. I was amazed to find the amount of research used in the writing of this book far more extensive than I had theorized. In fact, the character of Mr. March in this novel was heavily modeled after Louisa May Alcott's own father, Bronson Alcott, just as Little Women was modeled after Alcott's own family. Some of the aspects of March's character that I found most questionable came directly from Bronson Alcott's life: the extremity of his vegan commitment, to the extent that he considered a cow's milk to rightfully belong to its calf; his friendship with both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, which I found a little far-fetched until I read the afterword; and his staunch abolitionist stance and involvement with the Underground Railroad, which (according to my memory) was not even touched upon in Little Women.

I was so glad that this book did not cover the death of Beth March, although it does refer to her frighteningly serious illness with scarlet fever. There was too much awful sadness in this book already. I don't know if I could have handled watching Mr. March deal with the loss of his beloved Mouse during the slow regeneration of his body and spirit.

One minor consideration that I disagree with: I don't think that Mrs. March would have gone by the name of Marmee since her childhood. I always thought that "Marmee" was a variation on "Mommy" and was devised by her daughters. (Of course, it has been many years since I have read Little Women, so it's entirely possible that was written into the story by Louisa May Alcott and I have simply forgotten that fact).

All in all, this book contains more war, cruelty, and horror than I prefer, but (as I have come to expect of Brooks) it is extremely well written and probably an even better read than People of the Book. I must say I have even higher expectations for Year of Wonders now, and I hope I'm not disappointed.

"People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks

I liked this one right from the start! First of all, I nearly always love books about people who love books. I automatically identify with those characters. Second of all, the stage was set for a mystery to be woven into the story. Mystery is good! Of course it wasn't your garden-variety murder mystery, but it began with clues (the tiny artifacts found in the binding of the Haggadah, the book of the title), each of which developed into its own story. This book actually encompassed several beautiful, fully-realized tales within the framework of the main narrative.

I will admit I was somewhat put off by how quickly the main character, Hanna, jumped into bed with Ozren. It seemed like five seconds after the thought crossed her mind, she went for it. But once I remembered that I'm not Hanna, and a little more about her character was revealed, I decided I could handle it.

I actually felt bad for Hanna when I got to the part where she was grumpy and complaining to Raz over dinner. She was frustrated by the fact that she probably would never know much detail about who had handled or owned the book. I felt kind of guilty because I got to hear all about the book's backstory and Hanna only knew the bare-bones version!

The one part of the book that annoyed me was the half-page episode near the end when Hanna and Ozren realize they have left the fake Haggadah on the floor of the display room, and they must hurry to retrieve it before the guards return. That seemed like an unnecessary bit of fluff used to try to add excitement--something that belongs in a screenplay, and not in this otherwise well-written book. Had I the good fortune to be an editor, I would certainly have excised that part.

Now I'm almost even more excited to read two other books by Brooks: One, called Year of Wonders, mainly because now I know I like the author's style, and the friend who loaned this Brooks book to me assured me the other was even better (I just couldn't have it yet because she was in the middle of re-reading it). The other is called March and has the most interesting premise for a novel that I've come across in a long while: It is all about what happened to the father of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women while they were sitting at home waiting for letters from him!