I very much enjoyed this book. It has a good story and excellent main characters. I would definately recommend this book.

It is Dublin in 1918. Over 3 days a group of mainly women are working in a maternity ward during the global flu pandemic which killed between 4%-6% of the world population. This is also a time of great change following the end of the first World War.

Like a play the reader glimpses the ‘germ box’ of the real world outside the confines of the ward as they work to deliver babies and support expectant mothers often in quite graphic terms. There is a matter-of-factness in description which is balanced by a tenderness as relationships develop particularly between Nurse Julia Power and volunteer Bridie Sweeney. The men in the novel are damaged from war and personal tragedies but are very much secondary characters. Despite the grim subject matter the women, especially the non-fiction character Dr Kathleen Lynn, are beacons of change in themselves and in health and social care developments.

I finished reading this book last night and I’m so disappointed as I wanted it to continue for ever, it was brilliant. Excellent characters and descriptions had you almost hearing the coughing and the babies crying. I did wonder about reading about a pandemic during one but I’m so glad I did , mask and space and hands are still relevant then and today. Some disturbing and heartbreaking moments didn’t distract from the story. Lovely to have a real person in it and I now want to know more.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book.

This is a very interesting piece of historical fiction and I enjoyed the setting and the various characters that come in and out of the hospital ward. However it isn't for the squeamish!

I read this book in two sittings. I just couldn't put it down. Its relevance to what we are living today is almost eerie, considering it was written before the 2020 lockdown happened. Although influenza was of course much more deadly than Covid 19, the poor reaction of the Irish government described by nurse Julia Power is rather reminiscent of what is happening in many countries in response to our present day's crisis. But the dreadful epidemic is not the main subject of Emma Donoghue's new novel. It is in a way part of the background, alongside WWI and the civil unrest that Ireland knew at the time. In the foreground is nurse Julia Power and her work: helping pregnant women affected by the flu to deliver their babies. She does it with the help of a volunteer sent by a local convent, Bridie Sweeney, and their burgeoning friendship is one of the most beautiful aspects of the novel. I felt like I was there with them, witnessing the births and the deaths, the pains and the reliefs, the intense going-ons of a maternity ward in which women are risking their lives even more than they would had they been giving birth under more normal circumstances. The Pull of the Stars is a riveting book, beautifully written and utterly heartbreaking. An absolute must read.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for providing this arc in exchange for an honest review.
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Oof this one hits way too close to our present day. The pandemic parallels left me uneasy, but it also helped me get even further into the story. I didn't need to suspend belief the way I would have before 2020 so I was able to just focus on the characters and the plot instead of being horrified that a flu could devastate the human system quite so seriously.

Now for the real reason why you should pick this book up. This book is hard to read; these characters do not have an easy time of existing in the midst of their world being a constant chaos, and yet they do not stop showing up every day and giving their all to preserve life. You fall in love with each and every character you come across, no matter how little time you have with them even as you watch the realities of life ram into them time and again.

The lines that sum up this book and this life is "we'll go to sleep then, very soon. That's all we have to do for tonight. And then when we wake up tomorrow - We'll see what we'll see." There's no preparing for life during a pandemic, it just is. Donoghue's world is gritty and gory, and if you're squeamish this may not sit well with you, but life and childbirth are gritty and gory and oftentimes life threatening.

Three days have never felt so long and yet so short. Read this for the tender moments, read this for the tense moments. Just read this.

Such a good read in today's uncertain times. The parallels between Covid-19 and the Spanish flu epidemic described in the novel are very timely. The book is narrated by a maternity nurse in a hospital at the height of the flu and makes the reader realise just what it must have been like to experience everything that they had to go through. So different to Room but very good in a very different way.

The Pull of the Stars is set in Dublin in the aftermath of the 1916 Rising, during WW1 and also in the midst of the Spanish Flu epidemic. Set over three days, mostly in a city centre maternity hospital as one nurse tries her best to care for pregnant women amidst the chaos and unpredictability that is a global pandemic, poverty amongst most of her patients and the medical knowledge of the time.

I love books set in Dublin, my hometown and it made for extremely interesting reading, almost like a true narrative of the time. I loved reading about the conditions and state of Dublin after the Rising, along with thoughts of fathers, brothers, uncles away fighting for King and Country on the front lines of World War 1. It really gave a good overall sense of what Dublin was like during that time. The similarities from that time of trying to curb the spread of the "grip" as the Spanish Flu was known as, was fascinating.

However, this is a slow burner, and there are a lot of details, in fact in some parts I found it to be overly descriptive and here I found it difficult to maintain my interest in the book. On the whole though, a very interesting read that gives a lot of food for thought on today's current pandemic situation.

It is timely, of course, reading a novel about an airborne illness that necessitates changes in human behaviours in order to reduce its deadly impact upon a population. The Pull of the Stars is set over a three day period, sharply focused on one woman’s battle to keep her head about water as she cares for her maternity patients during the 1918 Dublin ‘spanish flu’ outbreak.

Julia Powers is a nurse, and she knows full well the effects that ‘the grip’ has upon those it targets. She has survived a bout of it herself. As more and more of her hospital is turned over to the management of flu cases, Nurse Powers must make the best of what she has at hand, which isn’t much at all. One cramped and re-purposed room, rapidly dwindling supplies and three heavily pregnant women in her ‘ward’ who all are experiencing the grip brings Powers a promotion of sorts. The sick and vulnerable mothers to be continue to be wheelchaired in, one after the other. Its only death or recovery from the flu that will release the mothers from Power’s ward, and the fate of their newborns is another concern entirely.

Doctor Kathleen Lyn is a revolutionary, practicing in an age where few women are permitted to enter the world of medicine. A lifeline to the struggling Nurse Powers, Dr Lyn has big plans for Dublin, and these dreams of accessible health care are relayed to Nurse Powers over the course of their three tumultuous days together at the embattled hospital.

Considering herself more fortunate than most, Nurse Powers has a brother at home to return to and is not living in the dire conditions of which most of her patients must endure. Finding herself the sole attendee to three labouring women, Nurse Powers is assigned a volunteer, young Bridie Sweeney. Bridie is an absolute find; a quick learner in possession of a kind heart, an inquiring mind and a gentle hand. It puzzles Powers that Bridie seems to know so little about the world, and it puzzles Bridie that Nurse Powers knows so little about how the world really works for those in the ‘pipe’ – unwanted children who grow up in care and have no benevolent eye guiding them to any kind of hopeful future.

If this author’s name rings a bell with you, it will most likely because of Donoghue’s 2010 novel, Room. Room was one of those books that many readers have said can only be read once, for the reason that the heart can only take so much pain. (I’ve never been able to face reading this book about a child raised with his mother in captivity – I know my limits).

The Pull of the Stars is written only from the viewpoint of Nurse Powers, and there is no helpful punctuation with which to assist the reader. It’s more a stream of consciousness, the observations of Powers relayed in real time as she struggles to keep up a reasonable level of care for her charges, whilst also rejoicing that she has found such a friend in the mysterious Bridie Sweeney. The style of writing is both a hindrance and a help, and so it may deter readers that struggle to invest in novels written in such a manner. It’s a curious way to write an entire novel but it works; creating an compelling work of such beauty and intensity that it hot houses the experiences of one to reflect the suffering of so many.

It is fascinating to read of what was considered useful to assist birthing women of that era. The methods used range from the misguided to charnel house horrific (imagine getting out a hacksaw to saw into the pelvis of a woman in labour) and over the course of three days, Nurse Powers challenges and stoically performs the many small assistances and practices, many of which have dubiously survived and continue to be practiced upon our most vulnerable.

The inadequacies and the inequalities of the age drive Nurse Powers throughout the novel and it is upon this that we are educated; how truly difficult it was to be a healthcare worker during a pandemic in such a poor and under siege European city. One of many cities, at that.

The pull of the stars is set on a Maternity/Fever ward during the 1918 influenza pandemic or the ‘grip’ as it was known. There we meet Julia Power, a nurse on the ward and her 3 patients and follow them over the course of a few days. We also meet a volunteer Bridie Sweeney; through all these characters we get an insight into the challenges of living in Dublin at this time across the span of a few intense days.
This book drew me in and immersed me into lives lived during a pandemic in a time very different to ours and I found it completely absorbing. Some may find the characters‘ backgrounds bring to mind many challenging issues but throughout Emma Donoghue portrays characters that bring these situations to life and deals with theme sensitively. Many thanks to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for an ARC.

A book that hits incredibly hard and close to home in these times, but in the best possible way. Honestly how does Emma Donoghue write so expertly across so many genres? Definitely a little eery to read during a pandemic but for that reason the themes are also timeless.

Where to start, The Pull of the Stars covers so many aspects of life in Dublin during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. The focus of the novel is Julia, a midwife looking after the makeshift Maternity / Fever ward and the three days she is left in sole charge. Her life is changed by the other women who come in to the ward during these 3 days, "volunteer" Bridie Sweeney, controversial Dr Kathleen Lynn and the patients in their care.
A moving story covering tragedy and heartbreak but also hope.

I was given a copy of The Pull of the Stars by Netgalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review.

There's something magical about writers as we all know but the fact that the author finished writing this book some years before the current pandemic, and manages to predict a lot of what is happening....mind blown.
this book is based on the Spanish flu and is set in the past of course but we are taken to a hospital/home in Dublin where pregnant women are about to give birth. The women who are there - the other women they meet - the stories that come from this - wonderful to learn but hard to take in at times. this is honest and raw. There are medical descriptions and it's very graphic in places but there are characters and situations you care about.

The Pull of the Stars would be a great read at any time, but as we find ourselves still fighting Coronavirus every page felt important.
Set in Ireland, 1918, we focus on a small part of a much wider problem. Still fighting the ravages of war, the effects of this flu sweeping the nation are evident everywhere. We see them through the eyes of nurse Julia, a woman dedicated to her patients on the maternity ward as she goes about her work.
I was struck by the hopelessness of the situation these people were in. The cheery slogans urging people how to fight this seemed so at odds with what they were experiencing due to poverty or a lack of social care that I felt real anger about how such situations are handled (more a response to what’s happening now than through any knowledge of the time).
From the opening pages I found myself fascinated by the little details Donoghue records about life on the maternity ward in the grip of a pandemic. There was so much to find bleak and dispiriting about this - with the characters we encounter having a high death rate - but there were also some beautiful moments that will stay with me awhile. The joy of the singing between Bridie and the orderly, the elation at a healthy birth after a problematic experience and the sense of hope found from the eating of the blood orange her brother brought all the way from Italy and saved for her birthday.
While there was a lot to find frustrating about this, the time overwhelmingly was one of resolve and determination to wring the life out of your time on this world. A good lesson.
Thanks to the author, publishers and NetGalley for sending me an ARC in exchange for my honest thoughts.

With obvious parallels to the world we are currently living through I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get into this book. But. I loved it! Moving story, powerfully told and manages to be both heartbreaking and uplifting at the sae time. Fantastic!

Wow, this book blew me away. I loved the characters of Bridie and Julia so much, and felt honoured to spend as much time with them as I did. The plot was gripping, engaging and incredibly well-researched without being too overwhelming with too many facts. Donoghue is an exceptional writer and I will read everything she writes.

This book was divided in 4 huge chapters : Red, Brown, Blue and Black.
Although I understand the purpose of the 4 parts I usually get frustrated when the chapter is too long and I need to pause but still there are so many pages missing for next one, so I would have wanted Chapters in each part.

It was a bit confusing "getting" when someone was speaking, there were many good dialogues but not one speech mark, so you had to guess that was dialogue versus inner monologue.

My favorite part was the last one and I felt that it took some time to get to the emotions. Some might adore the development of the characters, and even though I did, I wish the ending didn't feel so rushed when some other chapters felt like not much was happening.

Things that I liked
1-The characters, all of them, from the patients to the doctors & nurses.
2- It felt well researched and gave me that time traveling feeling.
3-The author's note at the end was very rich, and added value to the story.

3.5 Stars

This is one of those books where I felt I could have rated it any number of stars at least once while I was reading. It was such a mix of feelings but the last quarter really stole the show.

First off, this book was not what I expected. It was very much a slow burn with the story taking place over just a couple of days. There was a lot of mundanities as we were given a very descriptive insight into one nurse's life in a tiny makeshift maternity ward during Ireland's flu epidemic. As much as I'm interested in midwifery, I felt that the first half was long, drawn-out, and very graphic. There was a lot of character building and the story didn't seem to be going anywhere. The chapters were very long and the lack of speech marks really bothered me. In terms of readability, I found it very difficult to digest.

So the first half wasn't much of a win for me. However, as the story progressed, I found myself absorbed in Julia's life, both her professional and personal. She was faced with disease and death at every corner, yet she still pulled through and did everything she could to save women and babies. Her secondary storyline (secondary only because it came in the latter half of the book) caught me off-guard but in the best way. After the slow burn, the last quarter was rapid and intense, mimicking the disease that ravaged through the hospital. My heart was caught in my throat and I couldn't grasp what was happening. Although I usually hate when stories wrap up quickly, this was perfect as it showed just how suddenly life could spiral out of control during the epidemic.

I loved the integration of real-life characters and events interspersed with the fictional narrative. I thought this gave the story authenticity as well as explaining the slow burn beginning and accelerated ending. Overall, there were parts in the writing I would change for better readability but the story itself was raw, genuine, and honest.

Thank you to Netgalley for sending me a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

I read this book over the past few days and it really struck a chord with me. Set in Dublin in 1918 over a couple of days, Nurse Julia Power tends to expectant mothers who have contacted the nasty ‘grip’ ie. the Spanish flu pandemic. Trying to cope in an understaffed, under - resourced ward, Julia is faced with struggling soon-to-be mothers at a time in Ireland when nearly everyone was chronically poor and the country was within the grip of the Catholic Church.

As World War 1 rages on, Julia’s struggles are somewhat eased with the introduction of Dr. Kathleen Lynn, a rare female doctor who supports the rebel cause, and a young volunteer, Bridie Sweeney. Together the women try to help their patients in every possible way and also form a story that reminds me how far Ireland has come in every aspect of our lives.

This is an amazing story. It educates you on what women had to navigate in their lives at that time in Ireland. A country struggling with poverty, both ruled by a foreign government as-well as papal control and where Independence wasn’t yet fully embraced. Each of the women in this novel, bring a unique story of their own and although parts devastating, emotional and infuriating, the novel reminded me how strong Irish women were in the past and how they created a better future for us today.

I’d highly recommend this novel. Donoghue never fails to deliver on an emotional tale and I was engrossed in this one. If you are an expecting mother be warned that parts of this novel may be a trigger, if you’re not give this a read. So very worth it.

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue

Before the novelist Emma Donoghue gained worldwide renown for her incredible novel Room, I was already a fan of her historical fiction such as Slammerkin and The Sealed Letter. Her brand new novel, The Pull of the Stars, is another well researched and immersive historical novel that concentrates on 3 days in 1918 Dublin. The cover of this novel is beautiful, depicting an open silver pocket watch with tiny scratched drawings of the moon and stars. This watch belongs to our heroine Nurse Julia Power and those scratches have huge significance to her. Julia works as a midwife and every scratch represents a life lost on her watch; the lost mothers appear as full moons and the crescent moons are lost babies, either still births or those born too soon. The year is significant, because as wounded men return from the battlefield in France, they bring with them a new type of influenza. Named ‘Spanish Flu’, by 1918 it is a global pandemic and by its end it will have killed 6% of the world’s population. It is highly unpredictable, passing through some people with relatively few symptoms and killing others within hours. Due to a shortage of staff, Julia is left in charge of a small ward of pregnant women with flu. Some are full term and will deliver their babies, while others are mid- pregnancy, but affected by severe flu symptoms. Julia can run her ward with great efficiency, but not single handed, and into her world come two outsiders. Volunteer helper Bridie Sweeney is all mischief with bright red hair and a glint in her eye. Dr Kathleen Lynn is an intelligent and competent doctor, but is unfortunately on the run after taking part in an uprising against the King. Together, these three women must shepherd lives in and out of the world under extreme pressure and through their shared experiences lives will change in unexpected ways.

I found the novel so well grounded in time and place, with even the smallest details thought about from public information posters about the flu, to the drugs and methods used during childbirth, to the histories of each character and how their actions are so firmly based within their experiences of that period. Donoghue writes in the acknowledgements that her book is stitched together from facts and imagination. Dr Lynn was a real doctor in this time period, but also an activist and Sinn Fein politician who set up health facilities with her female lover. Barbaric practices such as the symphisiotomy and pubiotomy (unhinging or sawing through the pubic joint) were common practice in Ireland, even up into the 1980s. These were sometimes conducted without consent, and left women in agony with unstable pelvic joints, but capable of continuing to bear children - the recommended medical treatment at the time for women who had more than three Caesareans due to obstructed deliveries was a hysterectomy. This is still a cause for controversy in Ireland, where it is felt that hospitals run by the Catholic Church allowed their own ethos to come before women’s physical health and contemporary medical recommendations. The equipment on the wards, food shortages, porters with disfigurements from the battlefield, men with shellshock and political upheaval create such a rich background that the reader is pulled into era and firmly believes in this situation and these characters.

The Catholic Church looms large in the novel, especially regarding its attitude towards women. We see it in small ways through characters like night nurse Sister Luke and her harsh attitude towards some of the women, for their morals if they’re unwed and for any questioning of the church. She treats Bridie, who was brought up and still lives in a ‘home’ run by the nuns, as a slave who should feel beholden to the church for her upkeep. Decisions within the hospital are made by doctors but with adherence to church teaching and under the watchful eye of the parish priest. The controversy of the Magdalen Laundries is touched upon as one patient is back there for a second time and seen as beyond redemption by the nuns. Bridie fills Julia in on what it was like growing up in one of these institutions: being loaned out to work; physically abused; sexually assaulted by the nuns or worse ‘loaned out’ to a man for a period of time; the open pits where the dead babies were laid with no names and no markers. The belief that the mother’s sins are paid for by the child can be seen in the birth of Barnabas White, whose mother was unmarried and is born with a hare lip. When one of her patients dies and Julia readies her for burial she notices terrible marks where she has been burned and scarred all over her body in the care of the church.

Feminism is a strong theme in the novel, whether Donoghue is showing us what poverty and church are doing to women, or signalling hope for the future in certain characters. There is a feeling that this is both a national and personal turning point for women trying to shape their own future and making choices for themselves. Dr Lynn is a key figure because she is educated, political, professional and also a lesbian. Julia admires the doctor despite her status as a wanted criminal. She can see that female doctors could change obstetrics and women’s lives enormously by making the best and most compassionate medical choices, rather than moral judgements. Julia refers to the male doctor as a ‘butcher’ and the book doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the visceral reality of childbirth in the early 20th Century. These women are ravaged by poverty and sometimes on their twelfth birth, leaving them worn out shadows who can barely stand let alone make autonomous choices. Dr Lynn also represents a different type of sexuality, something that Julia has never thought of before, until Bridie tells her about the doctor’s private life. It opens a door for Julia, where lifelong companionship doesn’t have to come with regular beatings and endless child rearing. Julia is 30, still unmarried and has never been in love, until someone walks into her world and changes how she looks at things.

Bridie is also important because she never lets the darkness of her living situation and past cloud the here and now. She is spontaneous and gives Julia permission to live in the moment. The night they spend talking on the roof, under the stars, is a brief oasis of calm and friendship in a nightmare situation. They learn so much about each other, but also for Julia, who has been quite regimented in her life. Bridie brings out a playfulness and a sense that she can change and make her own choices. Julia marvels that, despite everything that has happened to her and from people she trusted, Bridie is still open and willing to give hope to others. She even has time for the porter, who Julia finds irritatingly cheerful and often inappropriate, and learns he has lost his whole family. Her generosity of spirit prompts Julia to make a bold and life changing choice of her own. Those final tense moments when we don’t know if Julia will be allowed that new future she wants, are so hard to read, My heart was in my mouth as I was willing her on.

Donoghue is a master storyteller. Her characterisations, even those of minor characters like Julia’s brother, are so detailed even down to their rich inner lives, Here in 1918, she has laid bare the horrors of a different battlefield, one that women have been fighting in since time began. I was startled by the depiction of a pandemic, whilst in a pandemic. There were so many things about the handling of the pandemic that echoed through the ages. The flimsy suggestions for home cures, jaunty government posters that in one breath downplay the severity of the flu, then in another place blame on the patient for not being strong minded or fit enough to escape infection all resonated with me today. Mainly the book left me astounded by the strength and determination of my fellow women. These women faced a backdrop of poverty, persecution, a world war and a pandemic yet were still bringing new life into the world. Reading these accounts of childbirth, it astounded me test at their lowest ebb, they pick up their babies and immediately give more: sustenance, nurturing and love. It is also a miracle that in these circumstances, amidst so much death and loss, a moment of love can grow,

I will be featuring this on my blog towards the middle of August.