Emma Donoghue is an extremely talented author, each of her books are unique and each are gems. In her latest “The Pull of the Stars” she takes us the maternity ward of a Dublin hospital at the height of the Spanish Flu pandemic, so…TIMING!
This novel is action-packed! It left me breathless several times. I could see it in my mind as a 4-act play taking place over three days, almost all of it set in a cramped three-bed hospital room that has been annexed to quarantine pregnant woman who also have the flu.
First person narrator, Nurse Julia Power, describes in lurid detail the symptoms and progression of this deadly flu and the medical conditions and practices of 1918. Reader, you will be shocked at some of the Obstetrics “treatments” are herein described! (She had previously had a mild case of the flu herself, so she is now immune.)
I didn’t like Nurse Power at first. She was judgmental about her maternity patients. She was critical of ignorance in the poor Catholic mothers, yet likewise critical of the privileged rich Protestant mothers. I found this cold moral superiority to be off-putting. But then…we meet poor, young, and uneducated, Bridie Sweeny, who shows up to help Nurse Power. Bridie has no experience but she has two BIG things going for her; she’s a quick and willing learner and she’s a kind person.
Into the mix arrives a female doctor (quite rare in 1918). Dr. Lynn (who was a real person) is a general practitioner and so Nurse Power isn’t confident that she can help much on the maternity/fever floor. To complicate matters, Dr. Lynn is wanted by the Dublin police for participating in the 1916 “Rising” against British rule. Nurse Powers is not sympathetic to Dr. Lynn’s politics (Powers’ brother, Tim, was mentally damaged by the war), but she needs Dr. Lynn for her patients.
The four sections of the novel are titled: RED, BROWN, BLUE, BLACK, which stand for the progression of color on the face of patients who are cyanotic – starved for oxygen.
(Warning: Donoghue’s descriptions of both the flu and of difficult childbirth are vivid and detailed. If you are someone who is particularly stressed and fearful of our current coronavirus pandemic, and/or are pregnant, you might want to wait until conditions change to read this novel.)
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Popular Highlights in this book
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Obvious Medical Research and SO well done!
Pregnant women quarantined in a Dublin hospital during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918.I’m always alert to the work of the the lovely and talented Emma Donoghue, especially since I fell in love with her disturbingly good, ROOM.THE PULL OF THE STARS (New York: Little Brown; July 2020), seemed to be vying for my attention, whispering, “Read me, read me,” when I came across this historical fiction set in 1918 Dublin. For three days, we are midwives in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. There’s work, and risk and a claustrophobic sense of the world browning at the edges; and yes, it has so many parallels with today’s pandemic.In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new flu are quarantined. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.THE PULL OF THE STARS is Donoghue’s thirteenth novel (and seventeenth book of fiction), she is also a playwright. As a former R.N. myself, I was amazed and awed at the obvious medical research Donoghue must have done to pull off such an effortless and sustaining read, teaching me many things about> historical medicine and midwifery. The last bit had an unexpected turn that I didn’t see coming at all, and almost felt oddly tacked-on, without set-up, but others may feel differently. THE PULL OF THE STARS does end on a slightly devastating but equally hopeful note.THE PULL OF THE STARS reminded me of the PBS/BBC period drama CALL THE MIDWIFE, but also the work of Christina Baker Kline, particularly her new historical fiction, THE EXILES. But in also of Donoghue’s earlier work, THE WONDER, featuring Catholicism and a similar time period and setting. In terms of historical medical novels, you might also like the work of Sara Donati.L.Lindsay|Always with a Book
Top reviews from other countries
Sweta
Go For✨
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Sweta
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S Payne
Amazing - I was hooked from the start
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 8, 2021
