Genre Fiction
![Elena Medel - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001JOJCNM.jpg)
The Wonders
"I read The Wonders in one page-turning night . . . This book achieves a rare combination of novelistic plotting and virtuosic interiority that left me rooting for Maria and Alicia as if I'd known them all my life."
-Anna Solomon, author of The Book of V.
NOW TRANSLATED INTO FIFTEEN LANGUAGES
From award-winning Spanish poet Elena Medel comes a mesmerizing new novel of class, sex, and desire.
Already an international sensation, The Wonders follows Maria and Alicia through the streets of Madrid, from job to job and apartment to apartment, as they search for meaning and stability in a precarious world and unknowingly trace each other's footfalls across time.
Maria moved to the city in 1969, leaving her daughter with her family but hoping to save enough to take care of her one day. She worked as a housekeeper, then a caregiver, and later a cleaner, and somehow she was always taking care of someone else. Two generations later, in 2018, Alicia was working at the snack shop in Madrid's Atocha train station when it overflowed with protestors and strikers. All women-and so many of them-protesting what? Alicia wasn't entirely sure. She couldn't have known that Maria was among them. Alicia didn't have time for marches; she was just trying to hang on until the end of her shift, when she might meet someone to take her away for a few hours, to make her forget.
Readers will fall in love with Maria and Alicia, whose stories finally converge in the chaos of the protests, the weight of the years of silence hanging thickly in the air between them. The Wonders brings half a century of the feminist movement to life, and launches an inimitable new voice in fiction. Medel's lyrical sensibility reveals her roots as a poet, but her fast-paced and expansive storytelling show she's a novelist ahead of her time.
-Anna Solomon, author of The Book of V.
NOW TRANSLATED INTO FIFTEEN LANGUAGES
From award-winning Spanish poet Elena Medel comes a mesmerizing new novel of class, sex, and desire.
Already an international sensation, The Wonders follows Maria and Alicia through the streets of Madrid, from job to job and apartment to apartment, as they search for meaning and stability in a precarious world and unknowingly trace each other's footfalls across time.
Maria moved to the city in 1969, leaving her daughter with her family but hoping to save enough to take care of her one day. She worked as a housekeeper, then a caregiver, and later a cleaner, and somehow she was always taking care of someone else. Two generations later, in 2018, Alicia was working at the snack shop in Madrid's Atocha train station when it overflowed with protestors and strikers. All women-and so many of them-protesting what? Alicia wasn't entirely sure. She couldn't have known that Maria was among them. Alicia didn't have time for marches; she was just trying to hang on until the end of her shift, when she might meet someone to take her away for a few hours, to make her forget.
Readers will fall in love with Maria and Alicia, whose stories finally converge in the chaos of the protests, the weight of the years of silence hanging thickly in the air between them. The Wonders brings half a century of the feminist movement to life, and launches an inimitable new voice in fiction. Medel's lyrical sensibility reveals her roots as a poet, but her fast-paced and expansive storytelling show she's a novelist ahead of her time.
Editorial Reviews
"A mesmerizing read. Medel's prose is hypnotic--it's hard to believe this is her first novel. I was completely engrossed in this story, in the shadow each generation casts on the one that comes after it, in the tension between caring for oneself and caring for others."
-Avni Doshi, author of the Booker Prize finalist Burnt Sugar
"A remarkable English-language debut . . . Arresting characterizations and vivid prose fuel Medel's searing look at the impact gender, class, and financial hardships have on working-class Spanish women's lives as the country is buffeted by wider cultural shifts. It adds up to a powerful story."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Prizewinning Spanish poet Medel's debut novel examines the lives of three generations of women in Madrid with an unsparing eye… The translation from Spanish of Medel's unvarnished look at three constrained lives is unsentimental and direct."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Medel's sensitive debut, charged with feminist insights but never losing sight of the particularities of its characters, weaves together the stories of two women whose deeper connection only becomes clear as the novel approaches its end . . . Spanish novelist Medel astutely examines the forces--political, economic, familial, and personal--that have shaped the two women's richly detailed lives. Though penned in by class and gender, often in ways they do not recognize, Maria and Alicia come across not as simple victims but as struggling survivors, still open to change."
-Booklist, starred review
"I read The Wonders is one page-turning night. Yet to describe Elena Medel's debut as gripping is to miss the point. An unflinching story about class, sex, family, and working women everywhere, this book achieves a rare combination of novelistic plotting and virtuosic interiority that left me rooting for Maria and Alicia as if I'd known them all my life."
-Anna Solomon, author of The Book of V.
"Dreamlike yet precise, internal yet expansive, The Wonders moves between generations of women with a clear-eyed empathy for their struggles to be free. Medel's characters are hungry, angry, imperfect, and completely alive."
-Adrienne Celt, author of Invitation to a Bonfire and End of the World House
"Completely unsentimental and with a harshness that hides the most radiant and painful of scars, Elena Medel's The Wonders brings to life several generations of working women: it's a serene and impious novel that puts class, feminism, and the eternal complexity of family ties at the fore."
-Mariana Enriq...
-Avni Doshi, author of the Booker Prize finalist Burnt Sugar
"A remarkable English-language debut . . . Arresting characterizations and vivid prose fuel Medel's searing look at the impact gender, class, and financial hardships have on working-class Spanish women's lives as the country is buffeted by wider cultural shifts. It adds up to a powerful story."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Prizewinning Spanish poet Medel's debut novel examines the lives of three generations of women in Madrid with an unsparing eye… The translation from Spanish of Medel's unvarnished look at three constrained lives is unsentimental and direct."
-Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Medel's sensitive debut, charged with feminist insights but never losing sight of the particularities of its characters, weaves together the stories of two women whose deeper connection only becomes clear as the novel approaches its end . . . Spanish novelist Medel astutely examines the forces--political, economic, familial, and personal--that have shaped the two women's richly detailed lives. Though penned in by class and gender, often in ways they do not recognize, Maria and Alicia come across not as simple victims but as struggling survivors, still open to change."
-Booklist, starred review
"I read The Wonders is one page-turning night. Yet to describe Elena Medel's debut as gripping is to miss the point. An unflinching story about class, sex, family, and working women everywhere, this book achieves a rare combination of novelistic plotting and virtuosic interiority that left me rooting for Maria and Alicia as if I'd known them all my life."
-Anna Solomon, author of The Book of V.
"Dreamlike yet precise, internal yet expansive, The Wonders moves between generations of women with a clear-eyed empathy for their struggles to be free. Medel's characters are hungry, angry, imperfect, and completely alive."
-Adrienne Celt, author of Invitation to a Bonfire and End of the World House
"Completely unsentimental and with a harshness that hides the most radiant and painful of scars, Elena Medel's The Wonders brings to life several generations of working women: it's a serene and impious novel that puts class, feminism, and the eternal complexity of family ties at the fore."
-Mariana Enriq...
