Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* 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. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.
BookPage Reviews
The Pull of the Stars
As everyone now knows, the challenges of being a health care worker are exponentially greater during a global pandemic. As Emma Donoghue explains in the author's note to The Pull of the Stars, her thinly plotted but moving new novel, the centenary of the 1918 flu pandemic inspired her to write this work. She couldn't have foreseen how relevant this story would feel upon its publication.
The novel takes place over three days in Dublin, from Halloween to All Souls' Day, when World War I is winding down and the flu is ravaging the population. Nurse Julia Power is a single woman about to turn 30. She lives with her younger brother, Tim, who suffers from war neurosis and has remained mute since his return from the front. One morning, when Julia arrives at the Roman Catholic hospital where she has worked since age 21, she learns that the head of the maternity/fever ward has taken ill. Julia is to serve as acting ward sister in her stead.
In spare prose, Donoghue documents Julia's harrowing three days. Her patients are pregnant women of various economic backgrounds. Some characters are more fully fleshed out than others, but all suffer from the flu and other complications, much of which Donoghue renders in graphic detail. Among the people assisting Julia is the book's one real-life figure: Kathleen Lynn, the physician and Sinn Féin activist who was instrumental in the Easter Rebellion of 1916.
The book's most touching sequences dramatize the budding friendship between Julia and Bridie Sweeney, a volunteer who was raised in a convent and gives her age as "about twenty-two." The stories of Bridie's upbringing are among the book's most devastating passages, as when she tells Julia that punishments at the convent sometimes involved hanging the transgressor by the hair from a coat hook.
At its best, The Pull of the Stars confronts a reality as pertinent today as it was in 1918 Ireland: Some people are part of what Bridie calls "the pipe"—orphanages, reformatories, prisons—whereas others benefit from greater privilege. Donoghue's novel is a plea for an end to the inequality that pandemics make all the more stark.
Copyright 2020 BookPage Reviews.BookPage Reviews
Book Clubs: July 2021
No Tudor England here—these four novels transport readers to less familiar but no less fascinating historical settings.
In Asha Lemmie's debut novel, Fifty Words for Rain, young Nori Kamiza—daughter of a well-born Japanese woman and her lover, a Black American soldier—is raised by her abusive grandmother in post-World War II Japan. Kept in the attic because her grandparents are ashamed of her, Nori becomes accustomed to a lonely existence. But her world widens when she bonds with her half-brother, Akira, and senses the possibilities for a new life. Lemmie constructs a moving, dramatic narrative that examines family, loyalty and prejudice through both Nori's coming-of-age and her experiences as a biracial woman.
Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera is an unforgettable tale of female friendship set in the small town of Branchville, South Carolina, during the 1920s. Single mother Gertrude is desperate to provide for her children. She's aided by Annie, a member of a powerful local family, who gives her a job, and by Annie's Black housekeeper, Retta, who offers to look after Gertrude's children. The novel's Southern backdrop and indomitable female protagonists will draw readers in, and Spera's exploration of race, class and history will provide plenty to talk about.
Set in 1918 Dublin, Emma Donoghue's The Pull of the Stars tells the story of Julia Power, a nurse struggling to help pregnant female patients who have become infected and subsequently quarantined during the influenza epidemic that devastated the city. Julia's narrow life of work and survival is forever changed by the arrivals of volunteer Bridie McSweeney and Dr. Kathleen Lynn, a possible Irish nationalist who may be wanted by the authorities. Donoghue's compelling, compassionate novel unfolds over three days as the women face incredible challenges together. With its themes of female bonding, Irish politics and the nature of identity, this novel makes for a rewarding book club selection.
Christina Baker Kline's The Exiles is a powerful tale of female friendship set in 19th-century Australia. After being falsely accused of theft, London governess Evangeline Stokes—pregnant and alone—is sent by ship to the Australian penal colony of Van Diemen's Land. Facing a future of uncertainty and hardship, Evangeline connects with Hazel Ferguson, a teenage midwife, and Mathinna, a young Aboriginal woman adopted by the governor of Van Diemen's Land. From the intertwined stories of the three women, Kline spins an epic saga that book clubs will savor, with excellent discussion topics such as female agency and the rights of Indigenous communities.
Copyright 2021 BookPage Reviews.Kirkus Reviews
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). Copyright Kirkus 2020 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved.
LJ Express Reviews
Set in Dublin during the 1918 pandemic, this latest from Donoghue (
Publishers Weekly Reviews
Donoghue's searing tale (after