‘The Pull of the Stars’ by Emma Donoghue

Three days, three women, one impossible task: the Great Flu.

Set in a hospital Maternity/Fever ward during the 1918 pandemic, in poverty stricken war torn Ireland, right after the devastation of the First World War, this story is not surprisingly quite dark and dismal, and yet is also full of life, light, and hope. Nurse Julia Powers works in a small three bed ward of patients who are both pregnant and fighting the flu. She is helped by a a spunky volunteer named Bridie Sweeney who becomes both a valuable assistant and a special friend as together they minister to those in need without much supply or support. Emma Donoghue has once again created a compulsively readable novel set with only a few characters who are trapped together in a very small space, as she did with Room and The Wonder and Akin.

It is a happy coincidence that this, her latest book, was published exactly during another pandemic, and I was almost reluctant at first to read it because of that. But reading a book on a pandemic during a pandemic was not nearly as difficult as it might seem, given Donoghue’s deft writing skills, and was actually interesting to compare. There was a lot of commonality with challenging public health leadership and health care workers being both at risk and short-staffed. “The human race settles on terms with every plague in the end, the doctor told her. Or a stalemate at least. We somehow muddle along, sharing the earth with each new form of life…a creature with no malign intention, only a craving to reproduce itself, much like our own.”