The Wonders

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 Wondersbrings 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.

This discussion guide was shared and sponsored in partnership with Algonquin Books.

Book club questions for The Wonders by Elena Medel

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

What opportunities—in life and work—does Alicia have that Maria might not have had when she was younger? How are their circumstances similar and different, and how do you think the next generation of women might fare in comparison?

Life in Spain under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco was difficult for women. Their freedoms were severely curbed by laws rooted in nationalized Catholicism. Despite Franco’s influence on Maria’s daily life and rights prior to 1975, the author chooses to mention him by name only once in the book. Why do you think that is?

Maria’s decision to step back from motherhood, leaving Carmen with Chico most of the time, feels gradual, almost passive. Was it a choice, or was Maria just doing her best to survive? Why do you think she and Carmen remained so distant?

Alicia’s decision to leave school and take a job at the train station seems to puzzle even some of her coworkers. Why does she keep the job? How do you think Alicia feels about money since her father’s death?

The book’s title comes from the scene where Alicia’s classmates come to her family’s house and are mesmerized by all their possessions, the “wonders” in their home. How did you feel reading that passage? Why do you think this scene is so central to the story?

Why does Alicia marry Nano? What do you think about their conflict over having children, and how Nano compares their life together to their friends’ lives?

The Wonders deals with the expectation that women care for others—family members, in-laws, and those they are paid to care for. What do you think the author is saying about unpaid versus paid labor, and our obligation to family?

How do Maria’s and Alicia’s experiences of the Women’s March in Madrid differ? What do you think Maria is trying to accomplish, and what would Alicia think of her goals as an activist?

Do you see parallels between the Women’s March in Madrid (a real event that took place in 2018) and the women’s marches across the US in 2017 and 2018? Did the book change how you thought about protesters’ different experiences of the marches, or about the women who didn’t or couldn’t participate?

Why do you think Maria and Alicia didn’t ultimately connect or intentionally seek out a reunion? Do you think they would have gotten along if they’d had the opportunity to get to know each other?

The Wonders Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the The Wonders discussion questions

“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.