The Pull of the Stars

Starred review from May 15, 2020
Julia Powell, a dedicated nurse at a Dublin hospital in 1918, pours her energy into caring for patients in the women's fever ward, tending to pregnant women struggling to both give birth and fight off the flu. Turning 30, Julia is unbothered by the prospects of never marrying, focusing her concern instead on the prospects of recovery for her brother, Tim, back from the war with no physical wounds but deeply wounded, nonetheless. At work, Julia laments the extra cots jammed into wards and dire newspaper headlines. She is on the front line in what had been seen as a golden age of medicine conquering maladies from anthrax to malaria but is now no match for the disease beating us hollow. In the tumult of influenza and the post-WWI era, she meets two extraordinary women: a sprite of a helper, Bridie Sweeney, a young woman well acquainted with the battle to survive poverty, and the indomitable Dr. Lynn, a firebrand indicted in the Irish uprising who was released to help in the overcrowded hospital. These two women will change everything Julia thought she knew about life, nursing, politics, and love. Donoghue (Akin, 2019) offers vivid characters and a gripping portrait of a world beset by a pandemic and political uncertainty. A fascinating read in these difficult times.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Readers ardently pursue every book by Donoghue, but the prescient pandemic theme and valiant nurse protagonist in her powerful latest will increase interest exponentially.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

May 25, 2020
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 Féin 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.

June 1, 2020
A nurse in a Dublin hospital battles the ordinary hazards of childbirth and the extraordinary dangers of the 1918 flu. Donoghue began writing this novel during the 1918 pandemic's centennial year, before COVID-19 gave it the grim contemporary relevance echoing through her text: signs warning, "IF IN DOUBT, DON'T STIR OUT," an overwhelmed hospital bedding patients on the floor, stores running out of disinfectant. These details provide a thrumming background noise to the central drama of women's lives brought into hard focus by pregnancy and birth. Julia Power works in Maternity/Fever, a supply room converted to handle pregnant women infected with the flu. The disease makes labor and delivery even more high risk than normal. On Oct. 31, 1918, Julia arrives to learn that one of her patients died in the night, and over the next two days we see her cope with three harrowing deliveries, only one of which ends well. Donoghue depicts these deliveries in unflinching detail, but the gruesome particulars serve to underscore Julia's heroic commitment to saving women and their babies in a world that does little for either. Her budding friendship with able new assistant Bridie Sweeney, one of the ill-treated "boarders" at a nearby convent, gives Julia a glimpse of how unwanted and illegitimate children are abused in Catholic Ireland. As far as she's concerned, the common saying "She doesn't love him unless she gives him twelve," referring to children, reveals total indifference to women's health and their children's prospects. Donoghue isn't a showy writer, but her prose sings with blunt poetry, as in the exchange between Julia and Bridie that gives the novel its title. Influenza gets its name from an old Italian belief that it was the influence of the stars that made you sick, Julia explains; Bridie responds, "As if, when it's your time, your star gives you a yank." Their relationship forms the emotional core of a story rich in swift, assured sketches of achingly human characters coping as best they can in extreme circumstances. Darkly compelling, illuminated by the light of compassion and tenderness: Donoghue's best novel since Room (2010).

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June 19, 2020

Set in Dublin during the 1918 pandemic, this latest from Donoghue (Akin) follows nurse Julia Power over the course of three days at a Dublin maternity ward, where patients have contracted the dreaded flu. Among a crew perpetually short-staffed and overworked, Julia is not excited when new volunteer Bridie Sweeney is thrust onto her ward. But Bridie proves a quick study, and the chemistry between the two women supports them through three difficult births: Delia, Mary, and Honor, each more graphically detailed than the last. Looming over the combined trauma of the pandemic and world war is Julia's 30th birthday, which her shell-shocked brother Tim attempts to honor as best he can. Layered within all these story lines is the rumor that Dr. Kathleen Lynn, whom Julia depends on, is wanted for rebel activity. The question becomes, should Julia focus solely on medicine and ignore everyone else's loyalties, or should she follow her heart? VERDICT This female-centric story is a cross between Susan Meissner's As Bright as Heaven and Anita Diamant's The Red Tent, with a caveat: those wary of detailed medical scenes should avoid.--Tina Panik, Avon Free P.L., CT

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