The jaunting car turned off the road onto a narrower gravel way. Clearly the Irish Midlands were a depression where wet pooled, the little circle in a saucer. Sheets of reddish-brown peat wasn't bogland known to harbour disease? The occasional grey remains of a cottage, almost greened over. 'We're in the exact middle of the country here.'įlat fields striped with dark foliage. Lib waited, braced against the juddering of the cart. Perhaps that was responsible for the driver's missing teeth too. The few people on the macadamised road out of Athlone seemed wan, which Lib attributed to the infamous diet of potatoes and little else. On the other side of the bench, slouching so his back almost touched hers, the driver flicked his whip. This was better than the stuffy train, at least. She put up her steel-frame umbrella against the drizzle. Lib settled herself on the single bench down the middle, her boots hanging closer to the right-hand wheel than she liked. An Irish misnomer nothing jaunty about this bare cart. He carried her trunk to what he called the jaunting car. But that was some years ago, so her ear strained now to make out the driver's words.

A train from London to Liverpool the steam packet overnight to Dublin a slow Sunday train west to a town called Athlone. The journey was no worse than she expected.

'Donoghue poses powerful questions about faith and belief' ( Newsday) Read Excerpt Donoghue keeps us riveted' ( Chicago Tribune)

'A fable as lean and discomfiting as Anna's dwindling body…. 'Heartbreaking and transcendent'( New York Times) Dark and vivid, with complicated characters, this is a novel that lodges itself deep' ( USA Today, 3/4 stars) Written with all the propulsive tension that made Room a huge bestseller, The Wonder works beautifully on many levels - a tale of two strangers who transform each other's lives, a powerful psychological thriller, and a story of love pitted against evil. Lib Wright, a veteran of Florence Nightingale's Crimean campaign, is hired to keep watch over the girl. Tourists flock to the cabin of eleven-year-old Anna O'Donnell, who believes herself to be living off manna from heaven, and a journalist is sent to cover the sensation. Now a Netflix film starring Florence Pugh: In this “old-school page turner” (Stephen King, New York Times Book Review) by the bestselling author of Room, an English nurse is brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle-a girl said to have survived without food for months-and soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life.

The wonder donoghue