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by: AnniePosted on:

Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks

I finished listening to the audio tape of Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks last night. What a beautiful book. It was excellently written, thoroughly researched, with a great plot and great characters. I laughed; I got weepy. It was great.

I had read reviews of the book before I got all the way through, just to see what other people thought about it. The only thing people didn’t like was the ending. I was surprised, but I got curious to see what kind of left turn the book would make at the end.

Having finished the book, I get what people were complaining about. The ending was so unrealistic and unexpected. It didn’t fit with the rest of the book. It was interesting, but I just didn’t buy that the heroine, Anna Frith, would escape to Oran of all places, where she becomes the apprentice of a surprisingly liberal Muslim doctor. Unbelievable.

3 thoughts on “Year of Wonders, by Geraldine Brooks”

  1. I loved this book. And I didn’t even care that the ending wasn’t realistic. I mean, there are a zillion literary classics with unrealistic endings; my thought is, “Why in this day and age must an ending be ‘realistic’ for us to take the novel itself seriously, or to designate it as excellent, worthwhile, or otherwise beautifully done?” Maybe it’s just life doing a number on me to the point where I’ll take something upbeat wherever I can get it, literary taste be damned …

  2. It wasn’t the happy ending factor I was complaining about. It was the way Brooks got to that ending. I would have loved a happy ending.When I read historical novels and I find errors, I can’t get into the book as deeply. Up until the ending, Brooks research and setting were so on par that I could relax into the narrative. But I felt like I got thrown out of the book when Anna went to Oran. That’s what I mean by unrealistic. Given what I know about the history of the period and the people of the time, I don’t think it could have happened that way.Because Brooks spent so much time and effort making the book <>real<>, it was kind of a betrayal to take the route she did.However, I do agree that a happy ending isn’t necessarily unrealistic. And I think the coverse is true, too.

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