“ A visceral, harrowing, and revelatory vision of life, death, and love in a time of pandemic. I could have set The Pull of the Stars anywhere, but I went for my home town of Dublin partly because Ireland was going through such a fascinating political metamorphosis in those years, and because I wanted to reckon with my country’s complicated history of carers, institutions and motherhood. I’ve put into this story some of the labor dramas of women I know (and one of my own), and all my gratitude to frontline health workers who see us through our most frightening and transformative experiences. As soon as I began researching the Great Flu, one fact that leapt out at me was that women before, during and for weeks after birth were particularly vulnerable to catching and suffering terrible complications from that virus. I began this novel in October 2018, inspired by the centenary of the Great Flu of 1918-19, and I delivered the final draft to my publishers in March 2020, two days before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. THE PULL OF THE STARS does end on a slightly devastating but equally hopeful note.

The last bit had an unexpected turn that I didn’t see coming at all, and almost felt oddly tacked-on, without set-up, but others may feel differently. myself, I was amazed and awed at the obvious medical research Donoghue must have done to pull off such an effortless and sustaining read, teaching me many things about historical medicine and midwifery. THE PULL OF THE STARS is Donoghue’s thirteenth novel (and seventeenth book of fiction), she is also a playwright. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. 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 an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new flu are quarantined.

Pull of the stars book