Historical fiction can give us rare insight into lives we might never have imagined, beliefs we could not otherwise have understood. The believability is what engages us, and this requires that a story retain some of the mysterious quality of real life: the inexplicable suffering, the ineffability. The Wonder wanders away from this and into the realm of happy-ever-after. In this it is not so wondrous after all.

After making my way through several recent novels written in tiresome hey-look-at-me prose (Emma Cline’s “The Girls” comes to mind), “The Wonder” arrived as a welcome relief. Donoghue’s prose is as sturdy and serviceable as a good pair of brogans, but never nondescript...After making my way through several recent novels written in tiresome hey-look-at-me prose (Emma Cline’s “The Girls” comes to mind), “The Wonder” arrived as a welcome relief. Donoghue’s prose is as sturdy and serviceable as a good pair of brogans, but never nondescript..Even less palatable is the distracting romance Donoghue loads onto the second half of her tale..These are flaws, but not fatal ones. For the most part, “The Wonder” is a fine, fact-based historical novel, an old-school page turner (I use the phrase without shame).

Emma Donoghue leaves little to Wonder about in the plot of her latest novel..Clever and seductive as its premise is, the novel is ultimately marred by the explanatory overwriting that has sometimes affected Donoghue’s work in the past. Donoghue’s prolificacy extends not just to books (she’s written nearly 20) but to the page: cudgel-like repetition is too often used as a means of emphasis. That, combined with too many ponderous nudges and winks, means there’s little we don’t see coming from early on. Plot-wise, there’s little to wonder about in The Wonder.

Part mystery, part supernatural thriller, part meditation on religious fundamentalism, Irish-Canadian author Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder serves questions in triplicate about this very matter, through the mind and body of an 11-year-old Catholic girl who does not eat and yet continues to live.....The Wonder rides high on the acclaim of Room – which explored the lives of Jack and his mother as they lived in captivity in a shed belonging to the man who raped and kidnapped her as a teenager – and shares in its many themes. In Room, the pair lives in a claustrophobic physical space, but also a spiritual one that at times makes it a difficult read..The Wonder rides high on the acclaim of Room – which explored the lives of Jack and his mother as they lived in captivity in a shed belonging to the man who raped and kidnapped her as a teenager – and shares in its many themes. In Room, the pair lives in a claustrophobic physical space, but also a spiritual one that at times makes it a difficult read