Wonder is a pretty thought provoking title if ever I heard one, particularly for a book that is classified as children’s. What first drew me to this novel is its cover, a cover that feels not only like its eye may be watching you, but that it almost sees through you. Which, in all honesty, is sort of what it felt like to read it.
I did honestly grow to love Wonder. I was genuinely very worried I wouldn’t because sop stories meant for children are usually far too twee and end far too well for my liking (they still end no better than they started, but my usual contemporary misery ends with people a lot worse off than they began, Tess of D’Urbervilles style). But I must give R. J. Palacio all the credit that she deserves in that Wonder is a true gem of insight into the mind-set of a child in the position of outsider.
One of the reasons I loved this book was its genuineness. It’s pretty rare to find a kid’s book that actually lets me feel like I’m reading a real child’s perspective, rather than either a stereotype or an angel or both. The multi-perspective aspect of the narrative helps this, as we get not only August, our original protagonist, but Summer and Jack, his friends, Olivia, his sister, and even some of his sister’s friends’ sides of the story, which creates just the kind of layering the deepens interest in the original story, as opposed to feeling like someone is shovelling mashed potato or polenta all over the book. This element was a real asset to the book in that, as a reader, a) you didn’t ever feel too consumed by August and his life but also b) from other people’s viewpoints, you got a far more three-dimensional viewpoint to August on the whole. He doesn’t feel like victim because he feels human and normal, and even irritating at times, which really drives home how “ordinary” (as he describes himself) and yet how truly extraordinary he is.
I won’t lie, this wasn’t a completely flawless reading experience. August is pretty whiney at times, but to be fair he should be, and everything does wrap up rather too nicely at the end like a weird saccharin after-taste at the end of a pretty balanced meal. By the end (obvious spoiler alert) August is accepted by near all and liked by most, and realises that it is not impossible to be special just for what you are, rather than in spite of it, and most who were mean and cruel to him sit on the peripheral of the novel, slowly vanishing into the soon forgotten sunset. That being said, it’s a much more realistic and entertaining ride to get to this conclusion than you’d think, rather than the standardised, linear upward slant that usually stands in these kinds of books. In fact, by the conclusion of the novel, I felt, as I believe I was likely intended to, that the victory of the end felt deserved and complicated and difficult rather than perfect (at least I hope that was how I was meant to feel upon reaching the end, or I must have seriously missed something).
This leads to an interesting note on a lot of other reviews I have read of this book which I read before writing this, and that is a comparison they seem to draw between this book and the infamous The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, noting this to be far more realistic, far less neat, and far less twee, sweet and ‘oh-so-romantic’ than TFIOS. I can kind of see where this idea is coming from, but I can honestly say I disagree pretty heartily with it. If TFIOS is all too nice, then Wonder is certainly on the same level, but, luckily for me, I haven’t really found that from reading either. Wonder holds an almost unique quality in its believable niceness that, despite my original misgivings, comes across in a truly charming and endearing manner.
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