I hate Year of Wonders. I despise its cloying sentimentality, its militantly unsubtle feminism and its devotion to narrative and linguistic cliché, as devout as the pious villagers who are ravaged by the plague in Geraldine Brooks’ bestselling novel.
Year of Wonders, upon reflection, is much like the film Titanic. They are both unlikable for the same reasons. James Cameron’s 1997 Oscar-baiting extravaganza stretched credibility in its melodramatic acting and cheddar-scented dialogue, yet the shared gene is the overt sentiment. Never let it be said that I’m a nihilist. When moved by a work, I am transported. James Lee Burke does this to me. Raymond Carver does this to me. Yet what Titanic and Year of Wonders do to me is evoke one word more strongly than any other: artifice. That is why this book makes me feel nothing, and makes me feel angry at the simplism of those who are inspired and stimulated by it.
It has been claimed that Brooks has “natural narrative flair”. For those who need nothing more than a vanilla heartstring-puller, this may be the case. Yet consider the way in which Brooks presents her (admittedly compelling) subject matter: “The Plague is cruel in the same way [as a whiplash]. Its blows fall and fall again upon raw sorrow, so that before you have mourned one person that you love, another is ill in your arms”. One can almost see Kleenex’s share-price climbing in jagged red peaks, ever higher. The problem here is not the tragedy of loss. The problem is not the shattering of communities, nor a woman’s committed struggle to gain strength and self-possession. The problem is the way these subjects are presented. Brooks distances us with her formulaic, unimaginative language from her subject matter. It is impossible to care about what she says, because she goes beyond gilding the lily. Rather, she stands accused of simultaneously drowning and burning it in searing, molten gold.
The artifice begins at a linguistic level: “I open the door to my cottage these evenings on a silence so thick it falls upon me like a blanket.” For the thirty-somethings in bathrobes, curling up on the couch with a tray of chocolates, a glass of red wine and Brooks’ flaccid offering, this is heart-rending hardship which will be overcome – against all odds – by the resilient narrator, Anna. The more discerning remain unconvinced. Once more, these rejectors must not be viewed as nihilists. Instead, they are those who have graduated beyond Disney, knee-jerk, broad-brushstroke fiction – and accept no substitutes.
I refute all claims of bigotry. I see myself as a liberal, free-thinking individual whose preconceived ideas are subject to constant revision. That said, I encountered serious problems with Brooks’ feminism. Again, much of the problem lies in Brooks’ presentation. I would just as readily reject any exponent of our nation’s thriving oeuvre of immigrant fiction, for example, if its agenda was as poorly handled and blatantly blared out as it is in this novel. I would dismiss gay literature as propaganda if its overt and unsubtle message was Let us get married. And yet, I adamantly support a tolerant immigration policy, as much as I advocate an accepting society of marriage equality. I believe that women are frequently more capable, intelligent and resilient than men. My sister told me that women are genetically more capable of dealing with hardship. All the above should be taken into account as I reject the blatancy and clumsiness which characterises Brooks’ skywriting of her feminist agenda. This is the first book I have ever had to insert batteries into, as the flashing lights around one of Brooks’ dominant themes needed some serious juice. On attempting to rescue a baby from her crazed Satanist mother, Anna is fuelled by a feminine energy as powerful as it is wince-inducing: “I believe it was the dregs of my own mother-courage – the force within a woman that will drive her to do that for her babe that she would not dream was within her power to do”. Brooks’ narrative cruise-liner gouges itself once more on the cruel icebergs of unconvincing writing, imbued with more passion than subtlety. William Blake, at a time when his friend Mary Wollstonecraft was the forerunner of feminist thought, was a more convincing voice for feminine energy and the power of the female spirit. I would rather wade my way through Visions of the Daughters of Albion, a densely involved and rewarding treatise on sexual liberation, than watch Brooks fumble with a language in which she has limited capacity and themes which she advocates far less eloquently than either her contemporaries or her predecessors. When an agenda is tracheotomically inserted into your oesophagus, you will more likely cough it up than suck it down. In this way, Brooks does more harm than good for a meaningful cause whose undertaking she should leave to those more gifted in expression.
It’s a bestseller. It’s changed many people’s lives, I’m sure. Which is – in a way – heartening. Whether or not its position by the toilet is for less literary and more ad-hoc hygienic purposes, some people felt inspired by this book. More power to them. The rest of us – though we may be cultural elitists – will sit back in our ivory tower, and spit down on all the common folk clamouring below, desperate to find sanctuary within after the plague of cookie-cutter blandness has infected them all.
Ruminations 