Why did a readable novel about a plague year in a village fall short for me?

I read Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks because a friend recommended it, because I have walked through Eyam, the “plague village” where the White Peak meets the Dark Peak and where the novel is set, and because the novel tells a great story of how the village voluntary cut itself off in the plague year of 1665 to avoid spreading the disease. The novel failed to take light for me. Probably unfairly I was reminded of the Helensburgh Art Fair, which is filled with competent paintings of mountains, lakes, boats, and cats but falls a long way short of every picture in the National Gallery. How, I ask myself, could I explain the deficiencies in the amateur paintings to somebody “who knows nothing about art”? I fear that I’d struggle, especially if I had also to explain why the Helensburgh paintings were less than some modern art, where my listener might say “a child could have done that.” Some bit of me worries that I’ve been hoodwinked, taken in by some huge scam by beginning to think…