Emma Donoghue crafted new novel around a pandemic – long before COVID-19.Emma Donoghue's stage adaption of Room shortlisted for playwright's award.Londoner Emma Donoghue's novel The Wonder coming to the big screen.Twice delayed by the pandemic, Room finally hits Grand Theatre stage.Room also was adapted for the stage, first produced in London, England, in 2017, rewritten and staged at The Grand Theatre earlier this year, followed by a run at CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre in April. Donoghue’s adaptation of her novel, Room, drew four Oscar nominations, including best adapted screenplay, best picture, best director for Lenny Abrahamson, and best actress, won by Brie Larson. The Wonder is Donoghue’s second book adapted to film. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.No two ways about it, I found those scenes harrowing, but I expect I was supposed to, and they masterfully convey the hardship of the era. It is the strength of the central character – front-line workers were heroes then, as they are now - and Donoghue's marvellous writing which carry the novel, however, and I'm glad I overcame my initial spinelessness. Nothing is held back in detailing the mechanics of how we come into this world, and, as a pathetic and squeamish weakling of a man, I have to admit that I had to put the book down and walk off a few times. Nurse Julia Power works in an understaffed maternity ward that must deal as best it can with infected, expectant mothers. The rebellion has left the city like a “great mouth holed with missing teeth” although the town’s modern inhabitants, and readers in general, will most certainly recognise something in wall-mounted warnings that advise citizens to “lie down for a fortnight” or “if in doubt, don’t stir out” and it’s difficult to suppress a wry grin when faced with the declaration that “the government has the situation well in hand.” The paranoia that ensues when someone expectorates on public transport will be familiar to all of us too. That being said, the publishers knew a good thing when it dropped in their lap, for this is the only release I know of that was actually brought forward in 2020. What’ll really spin your head is Donoghue’s assertion that she began the novel in 2018, prompted by the centenary of the great flu, and had the final draft in with the publishers while COVID-19 was still a distance from the front pages.

The longer the current 'emergency' drags on, the more timely Donoghue’s novel, set in the post-rising Dublin of 1918, beset, as is the rest of the world, by the Spanish flu pandemic, becomes.

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