Year of wonders

What a disappointing book after reading others of hers that I liked a lot (esp. People of the Book). I see this as a Gothic historical novel with all the concomitant over-the-top elements: romantic lyrical language, witchcraft and potions, oozing sores and bodily fluids, and way too many implausible situations stuffed into a small space. Amidst all the goo the plot was hard to find.

The year is 1666, and the plague is in full bloom. A village in Derbyshire is struck and the community courageously decides to quarantine itself to prevent spread to other towns. The novel is based on a rural town in England that actually isolated itself for the same reason. Plague should be a timely topic, and some elements are familiar, with villagers socially distancing and meeting outdoors to avoid spreading the plague; but I was looking for more than just a relentless recitation of the horrors of an infectious disease like we all now know too well. There isn't much insight into what an uncontrollably horrible situation like this means for a community, both immediately and in the long term.

Although the book is well researched and the details historically accurate, it almost feels like Brooks needs to include all of that research regardless of relevance so we know just how much she did; and she includes way too much extraneous stuff. Some scenes were hard to buy, as when Anna and her friend doublehandedly manage to save a mine from being taken over by a greedy neighbor after most of the mine owning family dies from plague. In fact, Anna herself is a bit beyond belief. She is a servant who somehow is smarter, more courageous, more knowledgeable, and more compassionate than pretty much anyone else in the village, including the vicar. And of course she doesn't get ill. Her superhuman powers begin to wear on you. There is also a completely implausible and hard to believe ending.