She has no local loyalties and no reason to root for Anna-unlike the girl’s parents, the parish priest, or the town doctor, each of whom has a stake in Anna’s glory. Ostensibly, Lib has been chosen for her objectivity. A cabal of “important men” has hired Lib, along with a local nun, to take turns surveilling Anna continuously for two weeks to answer the question: Is Anna an honest-to-God miracle? The eleven-year-old Anna claims to have eaten nothing for the past four months, and yet she seems in perfect health. Upon arriving, though, Lib realizes she is not supposed to nurse but merely watch her. Three years after a stint working for Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, Lib is sent to the tiny village of Athlone, in the “dead centre” of Ireland, to nurse Anna. This paradox-between what is and what is seen, what is perceived and what is real-is as good a description as any of the novel’s central preoccupation. Early on in Emma Donoghue’s new novel The Wonder, our heroine Lib Wright poses a riddle to her young patient Anna: “There’s not a kingdom on the earth, but what I’ve travelled o’er and o’er, and whether it be day or night I neither am nor can be seen.” The answer is the wind, invisible but everywhere, an almost menacing presence.
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