Year of Wonders
2 journalers for this copy...
A fictionalised version of a true story. As the Great Plague of 1665-1666 travelled to a small Derbyshire village, the young local rector managed to persuade the villagers to self-isolate, thus preventing further spread, but dooming many to die.
TBR since May 2012.
TBR since May 2012.
So far everything I've read by Geraldine Brooks is a winner. This is no exception and especially fascinating reading during the worldwide Covid pandemic. These are the only notes I made.
1665-1666 Great Plague. It wasn’t the first outbreak in a long series, or the one in which the most people died. It’s remembered as the Great Plague because it’s the most recent and well-documented.
30,000 deaths due to the plague in 1603, 35,000 in 1625, and 10,000 in 1636, as well as smaller numbers in other years
The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people—almost a quarter of London's population—in 18 months.
As a historical novel covering a period I know very little about, I’m learning and all sorts of fascinating snippets as I read. For instance, this was just after the Restoration of the monarchy after Cromwell’s reign, so young people in this period would have grown up under Puritan rule. Witch trials were still ongoing, so anyone practising herbalism was viewed with suspicion and the puritans believed that sickness was sent by God to teach us something, so medicine was frowned on. This was the same period that England was intermittently at war with the Netherlands in the naval battles of the Anglo-Dutch War and the time of the Little Ice Age in Europe when the Thames froze over.
I may have to put Hilary Mantel’s trilogy on my wishlist.
Quarantine or run in the face of epidemic? “If all who have the means run each time this disease appears, then the seeds of the Plague will go with them and be sown far and wide throughout the land until the clean places are infected and the contagion is magnified a thousandfold. If God saw fit to send this scourge, I believe it would be His will that one face it where one was, with courage, and thus contain its evil” says Mr Mompellion. (p.61)
Why was the wisdom of herbalists so disregarded in this period, before the scientific period? In this village, the wisdom is almost lost as only Mem Gowie and her niece Alys know how to make salves and medicinal remedies. We tend to think everyone used to know these things in the past, or at least the women. We’re in the same situation now. What will happen if our civilisation collapses? Especially if everyone expects the information still to be available on the internet; who says the internet will survive?
It is fascinating to see a point made in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, that I’m in the process of reading, being reiterated here. Hariri mentions that the start of the Scientific Age depended on a fundamental shift in thinking about the world, when people stopped believing that a supernatural being God) determined everything and started to believe that humankind could change things. Geraldine Brooks’ heroine understands this, realising “if we could be allowed to see the Plague as a thing in Nature merely, we did not have to bother about some grand celestial design they had to be completed before the disease would abate. We could simply work upon it as a farmer might toil to rid his field of unwanted tare, knowing that when we found the tools and the method and the resolve, we would free ourselves, no matter if we’re a village full of sinners or a host of saints.” (p.215)
1665-1666 Great Plague. It wasn’t the first outbreak in a long series, or the one in which the most people died. It’s remembered as the Great Plague because it’s the most recent and well-documented.
30,000 deaths due to the plague in 1603, 35,000 in 1625, and 10,000 in 1636, as well as smaller numbers in other years
The Great Plague killed an estimated 100,000 people—almost a quarter of London's population—in 18 months.
As a historical novel covering a period I know very little about, I’m learning and all sorts of fascinating snippets as I read. For instance, this was just after the Restoration of the monarchy after Cromwell’s reign, so young people in this period would have grown up under Puritan rule. Witch trials were still ongoing, so anyone practising herbalism was viewed with suspicion and the puritans believed that sickness was sent by God to teach us something, so medicine was frowned on. This was the same period that England was intermittently at war with the Netherlands in the naval battles of the Anglo-Dutch War and the time of the Little Ice Age in Europe when the Thames froze over.
I may have to put Hilary Mantel’s trilogy on my wishlist.
Quarantine or run in the face of epidemic? “If all who have the means run each time this disease appears, then the seeds of the Plague will go with them and be sown far and wide throughout the land until the clean places are infected and the contagion is magnified a thousandfold. If God saw fit to send this scourge, I believe it would be His will that one face it where one was, with courage, and thus contain its evil” says Mr Mompellion. (p.61)
Why was the wisdom of herbalists so disregarded in this period, before the scientific period? In this village, the wisdom is almost lost as only Mem Gowie and her niece Alys know how to make salves and medicinal remedies. We tend to think everyone used to know these things in the past, or at least the women. We’re in the same situation now. What will happen if our civilisation collapses? Especially if everyone expects the information still to be available on the internet; who says the internet will survive?
It is fascinating to see a point made in Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, that I’m in the process of reading, being reiterated here. Hariri mentions that the start of the Scientific Age depended on a fundamental shift in thinking about the world, when people stopped believing that a supernatural being God) determined everything and started to believe that humankind could change things. Geraldine Brooks’ heroine understands this, realising “if we could be allowed to see the Plague as a thing in Nature merely, we did not have to bother about some grand celestial design they had to be completed before the disease would abate. We could simply work upon it as a farmer might toil to rid his field of unwanted tare, knowing that when we found the tools and the method and the resolve, we would free ourselves, no matter if we’re a village full of sinners or a host of saints.” (p.215)
Journal Entry 3 by bookguide at BC meeting 2022 in Castricum, Noord-Holland Netherlands on Saturday, July 16, 2022
Released 1 yr ago (7/17/2022 UTC) at BC meeting 2022 in Castricum, Noord-Holland Netherlands
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Released during the wonderful Dutch BookCrossing meeting on the beach at Castricum-on-Sea.
This book has been released as part of the following BookCrossing challenges:
- The Ultimate Challenge - read and release books, with extra points for a monthly theme
- Reduce Mount TBR (To Be Read) - read and release books on the TBR list since before the end of the previous year.
This book has been released as part of the following BookCrossing challenges:
- The Ultimate Challenge - read and release books, with extra points for a monthly theme
- Reduce Mount TBR (To Be Read) - read and release books on the TBR list since before the end of the previous year.
I got this book at the end of the meeting with the intention to release it somewhere, but now that I read the book blurb a bit better it sounds quite interesting. To the TBR pile it goes.
