“Sebastian comes to each film fresh,” says Donoghue. His 2017 film Disobedience explored a love story between two women (played by Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams), set in the closely controlled world of London’s Orthodox Jews. The Wonder’s director, Sebastian Lelio, is no stranger to the drama of devout communities. “You think, how can they believe this, how can everything confirm them further in their view? And then other times there’s a certain magnificence to their single-minded commitment.” “There are times when it’s a bit like having a relative who’s been sucked into QAnon,” she adds, referring to the monks in Haven. “Even if everyone around them doesn’t see it that way,” says Donoghue. In both The Wonder and Haven, the lead characters are driven by passion, convinced of their truths. “They’re both about religious obsession,” says Donoghue of the two stories – though with different expressions of gender, power and personality. They eventually land on a forbidding, boney-sounding skellig – a steep, rocky island – which pierces the ocean’s surface like a Gothic cathedral forged by nature. Haven, which Donoghue wrote through the pandemic (although it was conceived of before), adds a jolt of isolation and physical airlessness to the extreme conditions, enlisting three 6th-century Irish monks, essentially strangers to each other, on a holy journey to establish a hermitage in uncharted territory.

Florence Pugh’s character, Lib, a nurse and nun, is brought in to investigate Anna’s unusual case. As a living saint, Anna becomes a source of celebrity and spectacle. The Wonder, directed by Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Lelio ( A Fantastic Woman Disobedience) and starring Florence Pugh, focuses on Anna (newcomer Kila Lord Cassidy), a young girl in 19th-century Ireland who hasn’t eaten in four months, convinced that God has relieved her of the need. Both offer self-made extremity in the form of religious zeal, viewed through a historical lens. This premise unites Donoghue’s two current projects, the film adaptation of her 2016 novel The Wonder (screening at TIFF next week) and her just-released novel, Haven. “But sometimes you create your own extreme situation.” “Like in Room, she’s been kidnapped and locked up,” says Donoghue, referring to her 2010 Booker Prize-shortlisted novel, which she also wrote the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for, and adapted for the stage. The hyper-pressurized scenarios are reserved for her fictional characters some self-imposed, others enacted upon more vulnerable characters. But her characters? The more intensely acute the stakes, the more interested she is. Not for herself – ”I’m very well-balanced” – she admits. Log In Create Free AccountĮmma Donoghue prefers extreme situations.

The wonder book by emma donoghue