Rating: 
Summary: Not For The Squeamish ...
Review: Sometimes macabre, always riveting "Year of Wonders" is an amazing glimpse into seventeenth century England. Set in the plague-ridden village of Eyam, the story unfolds and is told in the voice of eighteen (eighteen!!) year old Anna Firth. Through Anna we experience what it was like to care for those infected by the plague, grieve for those killed by the plague, and experience the madness that overcame its victims (witch-hunting, self-flagellation, and sorcery). Inspired by the true story of the villagers of Eyam and their extraordinary choice, Geraldine Brooks does a phenomenal job of recreating this piece of history. She uses dialect and description that will thrill historical fiction readers and vocabulary that is fun to sort through: garret, masty, placket, croft, whisket, gritstone, and boose. She provides ample detail of the time period and all of its horrors, but also allows for good storytelling and character development. Most importantly she captures the disintegration of the time and makes us hurt for its victims. That said, the ending is a bit too pat (the reason for the four star rating) but this is such a great book otherwise it is easy to forgive. This is a perfect read for those who are interested in historical fiction or looking for an engrossing read. Enjoy!!
Rating: 
Summary: Couldn't Put it Down
Review: This book was positively riveting; the best book I have read in a very long time. The book is about an English village that is hard hit by the plague, and the main character is an interesting woman who helps to combat the disease.
Rating:
Summary: Taut, heartwrenching, a story of survival against the odds.
Review: Ms. Brooks' masterful story of heartbreak, death, and fear takes place in a time where life was far more fragile than today. Year of Wonder is a haunting, thought provoking tale of a woman's mental and physical survival against the plague after her husband and two children, succumb to it. I enjoyed that the book was written from a woman's perspective, and based on true historical facts. Vivid imagery.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read for Lovers of Historical Fiction
Review: Year of Wonders is a well-crafted work of historical fiction that will definitely appeal to lovers of the genre. Set in the village of Eyam, Derbyshire, during the English plague of 1666, the novel explores the consequences of the policy of isolation pursued by the villagers at the instigation of their charismatic pastor. Although there are all the usual gory details of births, deaths and exploding plague sores that one might expect from a novel set in this period, they are not especially gratuitous and don't detract from the wider story, which is well-paced and sympathetically written. The story is told from the perspective of Anna Frith, an engaging heroine whose struggles with temptation and defeat in various forms provide the impetus for her development thoughout the course of the novel. If the novel has a flaw it is perhaps that it occasionally tests the readers credulity. Anna gets involved in everything from medicine to mining (and flirts with feminism and recreational drugs for good measure) and, as a result, can seem an implausibly modern heroine at times. However, by and large the characters and their relationships with each other are well drawn, and the period itself is so interesting that even a less accomplished writer could probably have produced a decent novel. Geraldine Brooks has written a moving and thoughtful account of a devastating period in human history.
Rating:
Summary: A wonder indeed...
Review: A beautifully written and fast paced novel that wisks the reader back to a small village in England during the mid 1600's. Time and place carefully rendered. As a poor young widow and mother Anna Frith bears witness to the horror of the plague as loved ones and neighbors perish before her eyes. During her "year of wonders" she gains the emotional and physical fortitude to help others in need. The everyday lives of the villagers and their christian and pagan beliefs are described with rich detail.
Readers of historical fiction who truly enjoy history will enjoy this story of a dark time in our past.
Rating:
Summary: Oh yeah, this was definitely a good one.
Review: I loved this story. This is one of those rare books, that you can't wait to find out what happens at the end, yet you really don't *want* it to end because you know you'll have "nothing to read" once you've come to the final page. Yeah, the ending was a little bit of a let-down, but not *that* much, not enough to recommend to readers to just forgo that part of the book. It obviously didn't leave me disappointed. Ms. Brooks' writing style is the kind I love, and I enjoyed hearing the story from the perspective of a woman, one that I found I could relate to in many aspects of my own life. Cheers~
Rating:
Summary: Fleas Bite
Review: No epidemic has equaled the devastation of the Bubonic Plague, which decimated between one-third and three-quarters of Europe's population in the Middle Ages and continued to flare up in destructive pockets for centuries after. In Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks eerily captures every aspect of life during the plague -- the gruesomely painful death, the speed with which the disease spread and the superstitions surrounding it, which rivaled the plague itself for horror. Brooks takes as her inspiration the town of Eyam, a real-life village in England's Derbyshire countryside. The skeleton of her novel comes from history, from a mysterious and unpredicted outbreak of the plague in Eyam. For reasons we will never know for sure, but which played fiercely on the writer's imagination, the people of Eyam took a vow not to run from their village in the hope of saving themselves. Instead, they stayed put and nursed each other until death did them part. It is reasonable to view this extraordinary sacrifice as a public service, as the inhabitants of Eyam thus kept the contagion within their village when they could so easily have panicked and, in fleeing the scene of death, taken the infection all over rural England. The Bubonic Plague may sound like a morbid subject. Yet the topic fascinates, in part because a study of the plague is always a study in human nature, revealing the extremes of nobility and depravity people are capable of when faced with pain and fear of the unknown. Brooks uses the story of Eyam as a backdrop for characters and stories that illustrate these extremes. Year of Wonders could not have been an easy novel to write. In the ordinary disaster narrative, suspense comes from not knowing whether the community under attack will survive its menace. But anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Black Death knows from the beginning how Year of Wonders will end. At least two-thirds of the village will die. As a microcosm of the epidemic, Eyam's death toll will mirror the plague's overall totals. So Brooks must create suspense elsewhere, surprising us by how this character rises to the challenge with tireless dedication while that one succumbs to depression and another loses her mind. The full range of plague-related superstitions finds its way into Brooks' Eyam. Some villagers look for a witch to blame while others dabble in witchcraft, hoping to ward off their fate. One character takes to self-flagellation in the hope of placating an angry Christian God. The story is told through the eyes of Anna Frith, a young woman with two boys to raise. Frith is the widow of a miner, and she works as a servant in the homes of the village squire and rector. In most ways, she is a conventional, if unusually quick-witted, woman. She married young, her education is haphazard, and she is disinclined to question the religious beliefs that serve as the town's infrastructure. Were it not for the plague, she would no doubt have lived and died in the same 17th century English country village, without leaving a detectable trace. The extraordinary circumstances of the plague derail her from this path of least resistance and evoke a heroism in her character of which even she herself is only vaguely aware until the novel's last pages. A native of Australia and a former correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Geraldine Brooks has previously written two critically acclaimed works of nonfiction, Foreign Correspondence and Nine Parts of Desire. With Year of Wonders, she proves equally adept at writing gripping historical fiction.
Rating: 
Summary: Stop reading before the disappointing ending
Review: I agree with Rebecca, whose review criticized the ending. The novel is immensely satisfying if one stops reading just before the "surprise" ending that unnecessarily -- and unjustifiably, in terms of character development -- complicates the story. The story sends a beautiful, fully human, fully feminist, life-affirming message which comes to a "wonders"-filled resolution in Anna's promising new relationship, if only the story had ended before the startling "confession" which (I think) is unfounded throughout the rest of the book. My advice to a reader (which I wish had been given to me) is to read about Anna's return from her ride on the horse, read what happens next and then stop reading. It'll leave you feeling good about life.
Rating:
Summary: A small village suffers through the plague in 1665
Review: Geraldine Brooks writes of her inspiration for this story in the Afterword of "A Year of Wonders". Based on actual events in a village named Eyam in Derbyshire, England, Ms. Brooks tells a mostly fictional accounting of what it might have been like for the villagers suffering the devastation of plague and the consequences of quarentining themselves from the outside world. The tale is very successful in depicting historic details - about the social class system of a small village, the various trades that existed at the time, the plague symptoms - all very well told through the eyes of the narrator, Anna Frith. Anna is a woman of subdued character, whose strength sustains her throughout the trying ordeals she must endure on her own and with her fellow neighbors. I felt that Anna's character was almost too subdued, but she does grow and evolve, albeit slowly. The most disappointing aspect of the book is the ending. About 30 pages or so from the ending, the story takes a turn that most resembles some of the bodice-ripper romance novels I used to read at the beach as a teenager. Ms. Brooks fumbles with this inadequate ending and flimsily attempts to regain the strong-female character plot, barely redeeming the story. Despite the ending, it's an intriguing story.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Conclusion
Review: This is in reference to the slightly abridged audio edition of Year of Wonder. I loved the story ... being taken back in history during a time of such dread (An interesting comparison to what we are faced with today.) The narrator was sensational ... with a wonderful, flowing English accent ... she brought so much emotion to the story. I so enjoyed Geraldine Brooks' writing; however, I was very disappointed with the ending. Ms. Brooks took so much time developing her characters and her account of the plague; I wish she had carried it through to the end. I look forward to her second novel.
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