I live through a year of the plague

Year of Wonders ***1/2
By Geraldine Brooks

I'm a fan of PBS's "Secrets of the Dead," a kind of forensic/archeology show for the morbidly inclined, and "The Mystery of the Black Death" is one of my favorite installments.

The program focuses on the village of Eyam, England, which was hit by plague in the 1660s. Parish records helped scientists track down survivors' descendants to find out whether something in their genetic makeup gave them immunity to the disease--and whether those resistant to HIV might have the same genetic makeup. An utterly fascinating science story.

A little less fascinating is Geraldine Brooks' novel, "Year of Wonders," which explores the social and psychological effects of the plague in a fictional village based on Eyam. Soon after the first cases of plague break out, most of the residents--from the town drunk to the medicine women, Quakers, Puritans, C of E partisans, ministers, miners, farmers, housewives--agree to quarantine themselves within the town's boundaries until the illness passes. A nearby village leaves provisions at the boundary stone, but the citizens are mostly cut off from any help from or communication with the outside world.

The set-up is great, but the dramatic tension in "Year of Wonders" is curiously slack, perhaps because it's not that difficult to predict what's going to happen. Unlikely heroes will arise, friendships and enmities will shift, beloved leaders will prove to have feet of clay, adversity will strengthen some and drive others mad. And, of course, many will turn to superstitious explanations for the plague's cause, and where scapegoats are sought, scapegoats can usually be found.

Maybe I've seen "The Crucible" just too damn many times, but as events unfolded, I kept thinking, "Yup, saw that coming a mile away." Except for the ending, which struck me as just far-fetched.

Part of the problem here is the first-person narrative. Anna, a local housewife, is a reliable and astute observer of events, but she doesn't seem really "there," and perhaps that derives from Brooks' own training as a reporter. Using the detached reportorial style just doesn't lend itself to this story, which requires that we understand not only what Anna perceives, but how people feel about it. Shifting points of view might have been a better narrative choice.

Brooks does shift POVs in her later (and better) novel, "March" (reviewed here). I look forward to reading her latest, "People of the Book."