On ironic titles

I've decided I don't want to skip books on this blog, but I've really had a time trying to figure out what to say about Geraldine Brooks' novel Year of Wonders. It's a very pretty book. Does that even make sense? calling a book pretty? Especially when the subject of the book is the plague, which wipes out the larger part of the heroine's village? And Brooks doesn't spare us much detail in the weeping buboes and the ugly actions of the terrified villagers. It is pretty though - I guess that's part of the wonder.

Anna, the protagonist, is a young pre-plague widow, working for the town's young rector and his wife. Were this book a little different - say, written by Lynne Cheney? - there'd be a love story between Anna and the wife. Instead, they're platonic "lovers" and tireless caregivers to the ravaged people of the town. Anna, already a strong character, matures throughout the novel, and emerges from the plague almost as a butterfly from a cocoon.

Okay, I feel like I sound ridiculous, so I'll skip to the interesting part. Brooks has worked as a Middle East correspondent based out of London. While traveling through England, she came across a plaque in a little village, naming it as "The Plague Town." Turns out that during the plague year of 1666, an unfortunate village over 100 miles away was stricken due to some imported goods. The villagers made a pact to prevent the spread of the disease by all staying within the village - instead of fleeing - and shunning contact with outsiders. Essentially condemning the greater part of them to death in an attempt to save the wider countryside. Year of Wonders is an imagining of what happened within that village during that fateful year. (You could almost see this as a movie, except it would have to be some sort of extraterrestrial disease, and probably more special effects. Definitely more sex.)

Like The Lady and the Unicorn, this book doesn't attempt to be great literature, but it does ground itself in historical fact, and tries to truly envision the past, give shape to it, to imagine the stories and dramas that made up forgotten lives. It's a different sort of "chick lit," one that asks a little more of the reader.