The Pull of the Stars
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4.2 • 10 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From the international bestselling author of Room.
In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with an unfamiliar Flu are quarantined together. 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Donoghue's searing tale (after Akin) takes readers to a Dublin beleaguered by wartime shortages and ravaged by a lethal new strain of influenza. On Halloween in 1918, nurse Julia Powers, single and ambivalent about marriage, is about to turn 30. When Julia's supervisor gets the flu, Julia is left alone serving a ward of high-risk pregnant influenza patients. Kathleen Lynn (the story's only historical figure), an activist involved with the radical Sinn F in party, supplements Julia's own knowledge of obstetrics, and volunteer Bridey Sweeney arrives to help with the backbreaking work. Julia feels a powerful draw to the smart and willing Bridey, whose optimism belies her impoverished upbringing in a brutal charity orphanage. As they cope with the ward's unceasing cycle of birth and death, their closeness challenges Julia's sense of herself and her life. While the novel's characters and plot feel thinner than the best of the author's remarkable oeuvre, her blunt prose and detailed, painstakingly researched medical descriptions do full justice to the reality of the pandemic and the poverty that helps fuel it. Donoghue's evocation of the 1918 flu, and the valor it demands of health-care workers, will stay with readers.
Customer Reviews
Very close to home
As a hospital based midwife currently working through the worst Pandemic since the pandemic discussed in this book I found the story very close to home.
In NZ we are very lucky to have not lost any pregnant women due to Covid 19 but every shift at work you hold you breath, wondering who will be brought through those swinging doors.
The story shared obstetric and midwifery skills and proceedures that we still use today, and some that we thankfully have stopped using.
An interesting read by a masterful story teller.