The Pull of the Stars
This novel takes place over three days in Dublin in 1918, in a tiny makeshift hospital ward set up specifically for pregnant women who are infected with the flu that’s sweeping the world.
One might think bringing out a novel about a previous pandemic in the midst of our current one was deliberate, but it was not planned that way. In an author’s note at the end of this book, Emma Donoghue writes. “In October 2018, inspired by the centenary of the great flu, I began writing The Pull of the Stars. Just after I delivered my last draft to my publishers, in March 2020, COVID-19 changed everything.”
She calls this book “a fiction pinned together with facts.” The key characters are a 29-year-old nurse-midwife, Julia Power, and a young untrained volunteer, Bridie Sweenie. The rest of the cast include the patients who fill the three beds in their unit, and some of the other staff members in the hospital. Immersing us in this microcosm, Donoghue paints a vivid and heartrending picture, not just of this tiny ward but of the wider war and the pandemic, layered over Irish political unrest, the role of women at the time, and, of course, the individual lives of all these people.
One character is not fictional: she is Dr. Kathleen Lynn, a skilled doctor who was also on the run from the police as a leader of the Irish nationalist organization, Sinn Fein.
Donoghue writes, “The influenza pandemic of 1918 killed more people than the First World War—an estimated 3 to 6 percent of the human race.” At the time, no one knew what caused the flu pandemic; viruses were not identified until 1933. Doctors and nurses did their best to treat their patients, risking their own lives as they carried on with too few resources and decimated staffing levels.
The novel has four sections, headed Red, Brown, Blue and Black. These are the successive colours that a patient’s face may turn as they succumb to cyanosis, their body’s growing inability to absorb oxygen as their flu progresses. By analogy, things go from bad to worse throughout the novel. But despite this, the novel also shows that in the midst of tragedy there can still be great bravery, self-discovery and growth, and that love can bloom amid despair.
Donoghue is best-known for her novel Room (published in 2010), but The Pull of the Stars is her thirteenth novel. It was an instant #1 bestseller in Canada and Ireland, and has also made bestseller lists in the US (New York Times) and UK.
The youngest of eight children, Donoghue was born in Dublin in 1969. She grew up and went to school there, including completing an undergraduate degree in English and French. Since age 23 she has made her living from writing, beginning with a coming-of-age novel, Stir Fry. In 1997 she completed a PhD In English Literature from Cambridge University. Since 1998 she has lived in London, Ontario, with her life partner Christine Roulston, their son Finn and daughter Una.
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