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The Wonders: A Novel, by Paddy O'Reilly
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From the author of the “funny, irreverent, and highly entertaining” (Liane Moriarty, author of The Husband’s Secret) Fine Color of Rust comes a brilliant new novel about a misfit trio who become instant international reality stars, probing the nature of celebrity, disability, and the value of human life.
Perhaps every human being was a freak. Hadn’t he read somewhere that every person has at least a handful of damaged genes? That all humans embody a myriad of nature’s mistakes?
Meet Leon (stage name: Clockwork Man), a nervous, introverted thirty-year-old man with a brass heart; Kathryn (stage name: Lady Lamb), a brash, sexy woman covered almost entirely with black, tightly furled wool; and Christos (stage name: Seraphiel), a vain performance artist who plays a winged god with the help of ceramic implants inserted between his shoulder blades. These are The Wonders, three extraordinary people whose medical treatments have tested the limits of the human body. When they are brought together by a canny entrepreneur, their glamorous, genre-defying, twenty-first-century circus act becomes a global sensation. But what makes them objects of fascination also places them in danger.
With warmth, humor, and astonishing insight, Paddy O’Reilly has written a wonderful novel that will appeal to fans of Sara Gruen’s Ape House, Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, and Teddy Wayne’s The Love Song of Jonny Valentine—or anyone who’s ever questioned the nature of fame, our kinship with the animal kingdom, and the delicate balancing act of life and death.
- Sales Rank: #1497077 in eBooks
- Published on: 2015-01-14
- Released on: 2015-01-14
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
Praise for The Wonders:
“In a novel that feels both sharply realistic and wildly, indelibly imaginative, O'Reilly offers a story about the stars of a glamorous freak show that sidesteps any expectations of sentimental quirk with wit and deep feeling…The impossible slides skillfully into the believable here; O'Reilly's delightful novel never shirks its responsibility to emotional truth as it tells a story about being known and being different.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred review))
“Full of the humour and quick wit that attracted readers to O’Reilly’s previous novel, The Fine Color of Rust.... The Wonders asks how and why those who differ from the norm are desired or condemned by those who sit comfortably within it. This insight into the private lives of extraordinary people is reminiscent of Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants, and The Wonders has a similarly broad appeal.” (Books + Publishing Reviews (Australia))
“In The Wonders, O’Reilly uses difference to not only tell a great story, but to show us things that are so familiar we forget to notice them.” (Kill Your Darlings Journal (Australia))
“The Wonders is a surreal and exotic thing, a finely wrought interrogation of the ways we navigate being human and the presumptuous shambles we make of much of it.... Here, then, are basic human sensations played out against a backdrop of over-the-top circumstance and performance, and O’Reilly controls their intricacies with the sureness of a tightrope walker.” (Weekend Australian)
“O'Reilly makes Leon, the man with the metal heart, her primary focus. How he came by that heart and his need to reconnect with its maker add a level of mystery and intrigue to this thoroughly unpredictable modern day fantasy.... [She] has a light touch when it comes to irony, allowing her to explore themes of difference, disability and celebrity in a way that is both playful and profound before changing gear and ramping up the psychological tension.... O'Reilly pulls off a unique brand of magical realism with flourish.” (Booktopia (Australia))
“An extraordinary demonstration of wondrousness – a terrific read.” (Radio National (Australia))
“Bold and highly imaginative.” (Australian Book Review)
“O’Reilly’s skills are deployed in making the bizarre come to seem ordinary, and then jolting us into re-examining such a perception.” (The Age (Australia))
“It’s a brilliant conceit, dystopian but not unimaginable, and the ideas Paddy O’Reilly explores are vital: the value of life, the nature of ability and disability, and the crushing importance of celebrity in our culture.” (The Saturday Paper (Australia))
“A whimsical story ofcelebrity, trauma and self-acceptance” (Shelf Awareness)
“The Wonders captures the fickleness and dark side of fame…[forming] a story that makes a reader question their own heroes’ longevity, and what fate awaits us all. The Wonders makes you wonder not at the miraculous characters, but at the ephemeral fame of our heroes.” (The Daily (University of Washington))
Praise for The Fine Color of Rust:
“Delightful, laugh-out-loud funny, and unforgettable. I love this book.” (Toni Jordan, author of Addition )
“I adored The Fine Color of Rust. It’s funny, irreverent and highly entertaining. I was sad to finish it, and I still miss Loretta!” (Liane Moriarty, author of The Husband's Secret )
“Loretta is one entertaining, compelling narrator, funny and self-deprecating, with an acerbic wit and occasional histrionics that belie a deep love of the people around her, whether she likes them or not.... A truly moving surprise at the end reveals O’Reilly’s point all along, that there is value in things that don’t cost anything and true beauty in a pile of junk.” (Booklist (starred review))
“O'Reilly's tale of a backwater Australian town seen through the eyes of Loretta Boskovic, who struggles to make ends meet and do good for her community, is hilarious and tenderly moving.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))
“I just finished laughing and crying and laughing my way through The Fine Color of Rust. You have a new lifelong fan. I can't wait for your next book except I don't know how you'll top this one (I hope that's not a rude and jinxing thing to say to an author). Thank you for writing novels, you make it feel like there's meaning and fullness and joy in an everyday to-the-grocery-store-and-back life.” (Mia Novelli (reader, Burlington, VT, USA) )
“Paddy O'Reilly is a significant talent all readers should be aware of.” (The Australian)
“The Fine Color of Rust is a story about love: where we look for it, what we do with it, and how it shows up in the most unexpected packages.” (Big Issue (Australia))
“...[a] deliciously humorous, rural anti-romance.” (Booktopia (Australia))
About the Author
Paddy O’Reilly is the award-winning author of the novels The Factory and The Fine Color of Rust, as well as the short story collection The End of the World. She lives in Victoria, Australia. Find out more at PaddyOReilly.com.au or follow her on Twitter @Paddy_OReilly.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Wonders
LEON WAS TWENTY-SIX when the true fragility of his body revealed itself. He died for the first time. There was no flying, no tunnel. He didn’t see a light. He died, and a few minutes later he regained consciousness on a gritty carpeted floor under a pair of small hands pounding his breast as a female voice counted aloud. He opened his eyes. A male face loomed over him, so close that all he could see were stubby black mustache hairs sprouting from the pores of an upper lip and the rose-pink flesh of the mouth. The man was pinching Leon’s nostrils shut, about to give him the kiss of life.
Leon felt a grunt of exhaust wheeze from him as if a knee had pressed into his rib cage. He sucked desperately to get breath into his chest. Every cell right out to his skin lit up, an instantaneous electric surge through flesh and bone.
The owner of the rosy lips fell backward onto the floor, muttering, “Jesus fucking Christ.”
The firm’s first-aid officer, the woman who had been pumping his chest, shot out a laugh.
“My god, he’s back.” The armpits of her green cotton blouse were dark with damp. Clear snot trailed from her nose to her lip. “Leon? Leon?”
He moaned and rolled his eyes toward her, still unable to speak, and she laughed harder, as though the laughing was an expulsion of something trapped inside. She wiped her nose on her sleeve, rubbed her hands down her skirt and rocked back on her heels, staring at the ceiling, laughing that seesaw braying laugh Leon had never heard from her before. His head lolled to the other side, and he saw his work colleague, the one who had been breathing spent air into his body, kneeling with head bowed as if in prayer.
He had died and been brought back to life in an office. He remembered a phrase: Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful.
“The ambulance is on its way, mate.” Leon’s colleague punched himself in the chest, a frantic gesture of relief. “Jesus, you gave us a fright. Fuck.”
The next month he died again. Seven months later, again. Each time less mighty, less dreadful: his deaths were becoming modern and mean. Life tethered to the medical industry had begun. In a year’s time, when his ailing heart muscle had given out, they transplanted a new heart inside him, a heart removed from a healthy young woman whose brain had been unwired by a fall onto concrete. After an uneasy truce, his recalcitrant body began its assault on the invading organ. No quantity of immunosuppressants would convince his body to make peace with the muscular pump that could save it. His body and the heart battled on together in their bad marriage until he could barely walk.
By then he was living with his mother in the country. His sister traveled up from the city with her two children. The boy, his nephew, barreled out to the backyard and began tearing around the garden. The cat had bolted as soon as he arrived. Leon’s five-year-old niece came and sat next to him while his sister perched on the arm of the couch, her legs twined, hands resting in her lap.
“So how are you, Leon? Mum says you’re improving a little.”
He stared at her, amazed. “I’m dying, Sue.”
“Oh, Leon, always the pessimist. Let me get a cup of tea first, then we can chat.”
Once she had gone into the kitchen, his niece lifted her wide eyes to him.
“Are you really dying?”
He nodded.
“Where will you go when you die?”
He guessed it must be time to think about that. He didn’t believe in heaven and choirs of angels, or a sulfurous hell with eternal punishment. He didn’t believe he would be reborn into another body. He was perfectly confident in what he did not believe and unable to fill the resulting void with any positive belief. Which left nothing.
“I think I stop being. I won’t be here anymore but I’m not sure I go anywhere.”
She lowered her gaze and played with the hem of her dress. He was sorry to disappoint her.
“Maybe I’ll go to heaven.” That was what people did to children. They told comforting lies. His mother had told him the same thing, except he had never believed her. She had described it in the same singsong voice the third-grade teacher used to recite the times tables, as if something repeated enough times must surely be true.
“It’s okay if you don’t go anywhere,” she said. “It’s only that I wanted to visit you.”
Two weeks later he was bedridden, unable to eat, breathing with the labored effort of an aged man. The hospital still had no suitable donor. They rushed him in, implanted a pump beside his failing heart to keep him alive and sent him home again to wait and hope for a new heart.
It seemed there was an epidemic of heart disease. The waiting list was longer than ever. Leon had drifted to the bottom because this was to be his second heart. His body had already rejected one. New kinds of hearts were being grown in laboratories and artificial hearts that could last thirty years were at trial stage but not close enough. Preparing to die was his most logical course of action.
Until the call came.
He had to choose. One choice was risk, it was illegal, it was madness. His other choice was waiting for an impossible donation while he was being eaten up with fear and rage. And then dying anyway.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
"Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?"
By Amelia Gremelspacher
Woven by Leon, The Mechanical Man, the story of three "wonders" emerges as a unique exploration of the status of humans. He has a mysterious metal heart, visible through a hole in his chest. He joins Kathryn, covered in wool from a gene therapy she had undergone for Huntington's; and Christos, who has had the framework for articulated wings grafted into his back. They are managed by Rhona who has promised that rather than freaks, they will be presented as the rock stars in a finely tuned fulfillment of the public's wishes to view the extremes of our lives.
This paragraph does little to prepare the reader for the fine tuned prose that informs the character development throughout the novel. The plot flows in a tempo that is finely timed to reveal the story without shorting the lovely vignettes of the world Rhoda has prepared for her wonders. Literature is quoted with finesse and an eye for its optimal use. I find myself entwined with the story and indeed, remembering the secret thoughts iI have ever encountered in questioning myself.
I have to say, in one of my highest compliments, I will now seek out this writer's others works, bumping my teetering "to read list" out of the way. In this market saturated with the freakish and the supernatural, this book finds an envied place of a new way to think about "different". It is a gem to squirrel away in this long winter.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Original/Perceptive
By Myra King
In the beginning The Wonders have their own peculiar problems. Although thoroughly intriguing, these seemed far from anything to which I could relate. Flystrike fear for Kathryn's genetically wool-clad body, instability for Leon's open-hung-heart, and muscle fatigue for Christos's implanted wings. But, as the novel progressed I came to understand their conflicts were universal ones, albeit in different guises. The impact of love lost and the fear of the unknown are written between the words. And true for most of us.
Am I enough? And what really is success? In the end these are the questions each Wonder had to face.
I found O'Reilly addresses the answers deftly and, the mark of a perceptive writer, achieves it largely by what is not being said.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
The Price of Fame
By Cherie Searles
The Wonders is a book that can be deceptive in its depth. On the surface, it's the story of The Wonders, a group of three extraordinary people and their rise to fame. Leon has a hole in his chest through which can be viewed his mechanical heart. Kathryn is covered in black wool as a side effect of her treatment for Huntington's disease. Christos is a performance artist and has made himself into art by implanting giant metal wings onto his back. Rhona is the American entrepreneur with a history in the circus who brings them all together. They travel the country basically letting the public ogle them. Underneath, it's a commentary on the media, the price of fame, disability and what it means to be human.
The book basically follows the Wonders as they rise to fame. They start as three people with what some might call disabilities and Rhona brings them together and convinces them that they are special and should present themselves to the public. Like an old-school side-show, the three put themselves on display, starting with small private gatherings and working up to large public venues. Between shows, they live together at Rhona's compound where she also keeps retired circus animals.
I generally liked the plot. It was somewhat slow moving, although there is some excitement at the end, and I can see how some readers would not be satisfied. For me, that was ok in this case because I was fascinated by the characters and what was happening to them.
Leon, in particular, was intriguing. He is the books narrator, so we live the story through his eyes. He is the least confident and is somewhat socially inept. He is not a social person and putting himself on display is extremely uncomfortable for him although as the story progresses, he learns the draw of an adoring audience. His heart is visible to the world and that leaves him vulnerable both physically and psychologically. His relationships with the other characters, and even his wife are somewhat stilted because of it as well. What I found particularly fascinating is that, although Leon is himself a Wonder, the reader will find that he is a keen observer and is just as fascinated by his friends and fellow Wonders as the general public is. The idea of the public vs. the performer is turned on its head a little bit because Leon watches and forms opinions just like the viewing public does.
At its heart, this book is a thought provoking commentary on celebrity and our hunger for more, disability and our fascination with things different from the norm. What does it mean to be famous? How does that affect both the performer and the viewer? What really constitutes a disability? This is the type of book that has a decent story, but it's strength really lies in its ability to make you think without smacking you across the face with an agenda. It's the type of book that will only gain meaning on re-reading it.
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