Play Book Tag discussion

In the mid-19th century, Lib, a widowed young nurse, is sent to Northern Ireland to keep watch for two weeks over Anna, an eleven-year-old girl who, rumour has it, hasn’t had anything to eat or drink other than a few sips of water in months. William is an Irish journalist in town to try to discover something to write about Anna, and it is he who after a while makes Lib realize Anna is actually dying. So it is up to them to discover why, and to stop it.

At first, I was mostly irritated with Lib and all her prejudices, her absolute conviction that the whole thing was a hoax. Anna would be an absolutely sweet child, and all Lib would do was repeat to herself that she was a fraud and a trickster and she’d show her!

So I didn’t much enjoy the first third-ish of the book, but I enjoyed it more once William came into the picture and Lib decided Anna was a victim and not an evil eleven-year-old swindler. That’s when I found the page-turner that this book was advertised as being.

The ending was surprising, I didn’t see it coming, but in hindsight I do find it a bit contrived. It feels like Emma Donoghue looked a bit far to find an explanation for Anna’s fast, and when you think about it too hard it crumbles.

All in all I wasn’t sure what rating to give this, since at times I hated it and at others I loved it. So I aimed for about the middle, a bit heavier on the “I actually kind of liked it” side.