The Pull of the Stars - Emma Donoghue

The Pull of the Stars

ByEmma Donoghue

  • Release Date: 2020-07-21
  • Genre: Historical Fiction
Score: 4
4
From 567 Ratings

Description

In Dublin, 1918, a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu is a small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, in "Donoghue's best novel since Room" (Kirkus Reviews).

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 together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel 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.

In The Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.

Reviews

  • The Pull of The Stars

    4
    By e.peridots
    Liked the story but was unnerved by the lack of quotations in this book. I had to mentally add the quotes while reading dialogue, which slowed my pace and affected my reading experience.

  • Riveting

    5
    By Jasdoggie
    It’s been a long while since I could not put a book down.

  • The Pull of the Stars

    5
    By BpBonnie
    This is a narrative that pulls the reader in and immerses them in the midst of people who profoundly care and love deeply. It will touch your soul.

  • What Do You Think?

    5
    By Idysal
    Set in Ireland during the 1918 flu pandemic, this novel brings home the hospital and the struggle between life and death in a maternity ward. The lives of the people are varied, but they are fighting the flu and in various stages of pregnancy . Having the flu exacerbates and causes preterm delivery. How hospitals and nurses coped with the lack of staff and shortages of medical and food supplies is woven into the novel. The variety of issues introduced and how they complicated and added to the plot added to the storyline. It caused me to ponder and compare 1918 and our 2020 to 2022 response to a flu pandemic.

  • Okay. It’s okay

    3
    By Bdawgno1
    Started this book at the start of this current pandemic. Gave it several months rest before I started reading it again. I admire Emma Donahue writing this detailed story of Irish hospital birthing ward in the midst of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Truly a very detailed day to day on how midwives, nurses, Sisters, physicians and others coped with difficult patients. I can’t imagine what they went through. They did everything with nothing and survived. Story reminds me that our current pandemic has everything to end it yet so many people are selfish and don’t care about others.

    Well done Emma for depicting all that is good in humanity when they had nearly nothing to offer to patients. Great book.
    We are repeating the 100 year old pandemic whereby science and compassion are with the caregivers yet the patients think their personal liberty is meant to harm so many fellow human beings by not even wearing a simple face covering! By the way, we have a vaccine for prevention of death now!

  • Breathtaking

    5
    By jimmiepainful
    I read this book, first for the love of the author, but also because I have been in the company of women such as Julia, Nurse Power personally and professionally. Over the past year I have witnessed my collective crew question their choices, their methods but still they have come together just as Nurse Power did to rectify a wrong, find love in a sea blood, and they too have watched as the Pandemic of 2020-21 has stolen their patients. This book spoke to me as a family birth nurse of 27 years, a mother for 32 years and a woman of 56. What a time to have penned a novel, for the past has revisited our healthcare and stolen our loved ones. Thank you Emma, heartbreaking, yet beautiful in each written word.

  • Fantastic

    5
    By JoRangse
    I’m not much of a reader but this book kept me captivated. It’s hard not to fall in love with the characters. It gives you a glimpse of what life was like for during the world war and a pandemic. The story is regretfully relatable even though it takes place over 100 years ago. Highly recommend reading this book!

  • Spellbinding!

    5
    By Gr8ful in New Hampshire
    A captivating story of a young woman living through another pandemic. I couldn’t put it down! Thanks

  • Timely, realistic, heart rending and TRIUMPHANT

    5
    By Mimi M. 56
    This one will stay with me forever!

  • Amazing story of the 1918 influenza pandemic

    5
    By kaykaybean13
    Narrated by the protagonist, Julia, a nurse in the maternity ward during the 1918 influenza plague. From her perspectives we see first hand the misogynistic truths that prevailed in Dublin, the narrow minded and political unrest the country was experiencing, the harrowing abuse of the poverty stricken class and the bigotry from society. The story is dominated by a handful of pregnant women stricken with this deadly strain of influenza, the nurse Julia, the nun And Sisters in charge of the wards of the state, a female doctor, which is a rarity but sweet relief for Julia and most other female staffers by the name of Dr. Lynn who was on the lam from the law for protesting violently against citizens in a protests rebellion that killed more than 500 innocent people in the name of better treatment for the poor- she and her friend, though thinly veiled as her lesbian lover opened a hospital and refuge ward and recovery hone for the poor and impoverished mothers and their newborns, women and their illegitimate children and a recovery place after birth for them to get nourishment and rest and assistance and shelter if they were unwed.
    Julia learns from a volunteer Bridie, sent in by the nun when she was short staffed that the mothers who are unwed are forced to live in these institutions and give their help and work taking care of I adopted babies to pay for their hospital bills and stay at the shelter they are basically slaves held against their will, their wages when working outside the home are kept and they’re starved, beaten used for sex by society on “holiday men weekends” and horrific tales that makes her perspectives about the poor, Dr Lynn and the uprising shift drAmatically and about her own governments lies, propaganda and wickedness

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