Geraldine
Brooks’ astounding first novel, and international bestseller, is located in the
notorious village of Eyam in Derbyshire which decided to cut itself off from
the outside world in an attempt to suffocate the Great Plague of 1666. The
book’s title is from the Latin phrase annus
mirabalis which was coined by John Dryden in 1666 in his poem “Annus Mirabalis, the Year of Wonders”. As the author says in the Afterword
“…. it
always seemed incongruous that Dryden should have chosen [that title] to
describe that terrible year of 1666, marked by plague, the Great Fire and the
war with the Dutch. But Anna would surely have believed that ‘God works in
mysterious ways his wonders to perform” [p309]
The prose
style is beautiful and concise and the descriptions of the natural world have,
in places, echoes of the style of Emily Bronte.
“There are
some who deem this mountainside bleak country …. Our only strong hue is green, and this we have
in every shade: the emerald velvet mosses, the glossy tanged ivies, and in
spring, the gold-greens of tender new grasses. For the rest we move through a
patchwork of greys. The limestone outcrops are a whiteish-grey, the millstone
grit from which we build our cottages a warmer greyish yellow. Grey is the sky
colour here, the dove-breast clouds louring so upon the hilltops that sometimes
you feel you could just reach up and bury your hands in their softness” [p65]
The main
characters are Anna and the couple for whom she works during the greater part
of the book, Michael Mompellion, the vicar, and his wife, Elinor. It is the
vicar who persuades his congregation to renounce personal contact with the
nearby villages despite unbearable personal loss which results in the deaths of
two thirds of the village’s population. Anna and Elinor become close as they
study herbs and medicines in an attempt to alleviate the deadly symptoms of the
disease. Whilst contemplating the spread of the disease, Mompellion hits on the
right idea when he commands the villagers to burn all their belongings
especially those which have been in contact with Plague victims. They are also
urged to scrub their homes with plenty of boiling water. The death rate begins
to fall away but it is too late to save most.
An
interesting character in the book is Anys Gowdie who has a very modern attitude
to life and her place in society. She shuns convention by her actions as a free
spirit and could have been a friend to Anna who is too timorous to risk
association with her. Anys and her mother cultivate an herb garden and assist
with births in the village but their medical knowledge becomes cause for
suspicion when they are accused of witchcraft and ungodly ways and Anys is
sacrificed by the superstitious villagers
Anna is, in
some ways, a puzzling character as she travels on her personal journey towards
maturity. Her positive relationships with men are short lived. Her marriage
seems to have existed on a basic level and, though it gives her two young sons,
when her husband is killed in a mining accident it is the practical
difficulties that she feels the most. Her tailor lodger, George Viccars, with
whom she becomes close, is the first Plague victim and Anna makes a fatal
mistake when she lets the villagers take their partly completed garments away
and carry the ‘Plague seeds’ with them against his instructions. Anna’s two
young sons are amongst the first victims. Anna discovers that she was not the
only woman in the village in George Viccars’ life which causes her some
disillusionment. Later in the book Anna has a strange and brief relationship
with Michael Mompellion, the vicar, after his wife is killed, but recoils from
him when she learns of his cruelty towards Elinor. Anna reveals that she only
began a physical relationship with Mompellion to get closer to Elinor who she
misses bitterly. Anna’s relationships with other women begin to seem emotionally
more compelling and fulfilling to her.
This was
Geraldine Brook’s first novel but she has since added four more including March (2006) about the author Louisa May
Alcott which won the Pulitzer Prize; People
of the Book (2008) and Caleb’s
Crossing (2012)
Although
Australian by birth Brooks has citizenship of the United States and worked as a
Foreign Affairs journalist before taking up fiction.
