This week there are four questions all relating to historical fiction. For now I’m choosing to deal with the second question
Do you have a favorite book that really pulled you back in time, or perhaps gave you a special interest in that period? Include a link to a review of it on another book blog if you can find one (doesn’t have to be a Weekly Geek participant).
but will try to return later in the week to take up the final challenge which is to see what books in the genre other Geek-ers have recommended and choose one to read.
For now though I’m going to talk about one of my very favourite books: Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague. As with all good historical fiction it’s based on fact: a village in rural England in 1666 was struck by plague and the residents cut themselves off from the outside world to prevent further spread of the disease. Brooks has created some memorable, multi-faceted characters to tell the grim but ultimately hope-filled story and her descriptions are so vivid that I was able to picture the isolated, misty, dark village and could feel the emotions the villagers experienced. This book is about people: what they think, what they do, how they react and what they learn. It is a fascinating and believable depiction of what might have been in 1666 in a world that began and ended within a few miles. I have always been morbidly fascinated by the plague and adding this fictional account to the many factual ones I’ve read only enhances my interest in the theme.
The book has been reviewed quite extensively including by
Much loved and missed creator of the Weekly Geeks, Dewey
