Claire's Reviews > Year of Wonders

A fictional recounting of the Great Plague of London from 1665-1666. The plague is thought to spread to the village of Eyam through a contaminated cloth, and the villagers make the decision to stay quarantined to prevent spreading the disease to other nearby villages.

This book is worth reading just for the prose, which is beautiful. You can tell from the versatile attention to detail, ranging from the gruesome to descriptions of light falling in certain ways on the scenery, that the author is a foreign correspondent (having covered many crises abroad for the Wall Street Journal) as well as an excellent writer. I'm no history expert, but it also seemed to me that the author carefully researched small details about everyday life during the time period, even if some aspects seemed slightly romanticized (how many servants would have been taught to read and treated as equals by their employers?).

Year of Wonders is at its core a study of the human response to catastrophe. While the historical setting is different (e.g. at that time women behaving outside the norm could be quickly accused of witchery) it is interesting to read during the covid pandemic.