Book review: 'The Wonder' by Emma Donoghue

Sarah Gilmartin reviews the latest offering from Emma Donoghue.

“ANGLES of shoulder blades and elbows, bulges of calves and belly; Anna had flesh on her, but it had all slid downwards, as if she were slowly melting.”

The young girl at the centre of Emma Donoghue’s new novel The Wonder hasn’t eaten for four months. Eleven-year- old Anna O’Donnell spends her days in bed in a tiny cottage in the Irish midlands, wilfully starving herself for some higher religious purpose.