Eleven-year-old Anna has eaten nothing and drunk only ‘clear water’ for four months. Yet she is in miraculously good health. Some think that Anna is indeed a miracle. Others are sure that she is a fraud. The local doctor thinks that Anna represents the next stage of human evolution and has moved beyond the need for food. Emma Donoghue is refreshingly unafraid to draw up battle lines between right and wrong. What seems at first an even-handed discussion of conflicting systems of thought – religion, superstition, science – gradually reveals itself as a scalding indictment of the most senseless aspects of faith, especially Catholicism.

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