I was introduced to the concept of fasting at an early age. My mum and older sister would fast (or ‘abstain’ from food) for the hour before we went to mass on Sunday. In church we’d sing hymns with lines like “help me to mortify my flesh”. Lent was book-ended by fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. I joined in when I reached age 18.
But the attitude to fasting was changing. The rules had already relaxed a lot – when my Mum was a young woman she’d been expected to fast from midnight each Saturday and every Friday during Lent – and people were starting to question even the few that remained. My sister’s best friend openly refused to fast before communion on the grounds that “Jesus had just had his supper”. There was no bolt of lightning; the sky didn’t fall in.
In any case my Mum had a very loose interpretation of what fasting should look like, probably because food was so central to our family life. One Good Friday when I refused a biscuit with my mid-morning cuppa, she told me “I know you’re fasting…but you can’t go hungry!”
Actually, Mum was spot on. The Lent fasting rules are about self discipline, not starvation, and common-sense is the key: it is stressed that no-one should jeopardize their health to fast. Plus ‘fasting’ means eating one full meal and two smaller meals, which (for me) is not really ‘fasting’; that’s what I tend to do anyway.
All of which is worlds away from the so-called Fasting Girls – some Catholic, some Protestant, some with no religious motive at all – who claimed to be able to survive for unfeasibly long periods without any food. The Wonder is inspired by almost 50 cases in the British Isles, Western Europe and North America between the sixteenth century and twentieth century.
Set in a village in Ireland in the 1850’s, English nurse Lib Wright is hired by a committee of “important men hereabouts” to “watch” eleven year old Anna O’Donnell. Anna’s parents claim she hasn’t eaten for four months and the committee has decided “to bring the truth to light, whatever the truth may be”. Lib and a second nurse, Sister Michael, are tasked with staying by Anna “turn and turn about, night and day, for a fortnight.”
What follows is a gradual unpeeling of faith, superstition, lies, shame and family secrets, as Lib tries to get to the bottom of what’s going on and find a way to save Anna. Thriller, psychodrama…call it what you will, Donoghue’s novel is definitely a page turner. The story is macabre and shocking yet beautifully observed and weirdly gripping, and suspense is maintained right until the ‘big reveal’ – not any easy trick to pull off.
Rating: *** Highly recommended.
PS A film of the novel was released in 2022 starring Florence Pugh as Lib Wright.
PPS I reviewed Donoghue’s historical novel, The Sealed Letter, in an earlier post.
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