Emma Donoghue is fabulous writer. I have read a lot of her work and she never fails to impress me.
Set over just three days in 1918 in Dublin #ThePullOfTheStars is a beautiful book. Very different to her most famous book Room, but just as impactful and moving. The research must have been extensive, as her knowledge of the Spanish flu, midwifery, and the political and social situation in Ireland at the time is faultless. It all adds to the story without overwhelming the main themes of loyalty, loss, friendship and hope. I highly recommend this beautiful book. It would be a really good choice for book clubs and for those studying history at school or college. I absolutely loved it.
Thank you to the publisher, the author and #NetGalley for the opportunity to read this special book.

1918. Ireland amid the Spanish Flu pandemic.
Nurse Julia works in an understaffed maternity ward where expectant mothers are fighting the flu.
Her life gets intertwined with Bridie Sweeney, a young volunteer, and Dr. Lynn, who is considered a rebel and wanted by the police.
Together they bring new lives into the world, but also lose some to the virus.

I requested this book blindly because I loved The Room.
What I hadn't realised though, is that this book was not of the same genre, and therefore initially, I struggled to get into it.
However, the story imperceptibly sucked me in, and I really enjoyed it.
I loved ''seeing'' the past, comparing the government's advice regarding the virus to what we're told to do now. It was good to see how the hospitals operated, some of the remedies they used to use made me cringe.
The downside was that the chapters - or more accurately, sections - were so long ( there were 4 of them in the whole book ) that there was no good place to stop. Also, there was no dialogue as such, the story was told through Julia's eyes, which I found confusing at times.
I didn't know what to expect from the ending, but I found it satisfying.
Overall, although it wasn't my go-to genre, I enjoyed this book.
There are some graphic scenes in there, so you might want to avoid this book if you're a bit squeamish, but otherwise, I think it's a book worth checking out.

What could be more topical: Julia Power is a nurse on a Dublin maternity ward during the 1918 flu pandemic.
This thoroughly gripping novel tracks what happens on the ward over three days as she battles to save the women and babies in her care with the help of new volunteer Bridie Sweeney.
We follow the harrowing stories of the women on the ward and the burgeoning relationship between Julia and Bridie.
But we also see the backdrop of the horror of the first world war, particularly through Julia’s brother Tim, a veteran whose trauma and suffering has left him unable to speak.
I always enjoy Donoghue’s novels - each one is very different. She is a beautiful and evocative writer.
I read this as England once again lives through a flu pandemic and it feels heartbreakingly familiar although the treatments were so different too. Whisky as a cure, anyone?
It’s not an easy read - heartbreaking and uplifting in equal measures - but I would thoroughly recommend it.

It's no ROOM, but then again, what is? It's interesting to read literature about sickness during a pandemic, but I felt distanced enough that I still was able to appreciate it. Thank you for the ARC.

I love Emma Donoghue's writing, and The Pull of the Stars is up there with some of my favourites.

Novels with long chapters can go one of two ways: they either sweep you up in the flow or you get lost in the flood of words. Thankfully, this is definitely one that sweeps you away. The narrative is told over three days with intense detail and sensitive intimacy.

I perhaps enjoyed the book more than it objectively deserved: at times it's a little glib and overly sentimental. And I can see that readers who don't gel with the protagonist are going to find this a slog. But I got so caught up in the action, I didn't really mind.

The Pull of the Stars is dizzying and claustrophobic, relentless and brilliant - and as a book about a pandemic, it's oh-so timely.

What an apposite time to be reading this wonderful book - with the world currently in the grip of The COVID pandemic and the book describing the influenza pandemic of 1918. It is centred on a maternity/fever ward in a Dublin hospital and in the context of the final months of the First World War. Donoghue’s writing is always exceptional, her characters beautifully realised and her plots fizzing with colour, momentum and urgency. The descriptions of illness, birth and death may be a little too vivid for some readers but to me everything in the book was perfectly balanced and real and I read it in one sitting. A truly moving and outstanding book.

The Pull of the Stars - Emma Donoghue
🌟🌟🌟🌟
“The public is urged to stay out of public places such as cafes, theatres, cinemas & drinking establishments.
See only those persons who one needs to see
Refrain from shaking hands
Laughing or chatting closely together
If one must kiss, do so through a hanker chief
Sprinkle sulphur in the shoes
If in doubt don’t stir out”

Prescient words of advice, not from today, but from Spanish Flu ridden Dublin of 1918. How could Emma Donoghue have known, when writing this book in 2018, how relevant this would be in 2020? The Pull of the Stars is set over 3 intense, dramatic days in a small maternity fever unit in a busy, overcrowded Dublin hospital where Nurse Julia Power looks after her charges. Dr Kathleen Lynn (an actual renowned Dublin doctor) is on the run from the police & Bridie Sweeney is a volunteer helper. Together these 3 women forge an unique friendship in the most extreme of circumstances as they battle to save the lives of mothers & babies.

Huge kudos to Emma Donoghue who has created a fantastic medical, social and historical account of a post-1916 Rising Dublin, divided by class & poverty, where the Church is all powerful. References are made to the horrors of the Magdelan Laundries & residential institutional homes and to the squalor of Dublin’s tenement buildings. I really enjoyed this book and refer you to these final hopeful words from Dr Lynn:
“The human race settles on terms with every plague in the end. Or a stalemate, at the least. We somehow muddle along, sharing the world with each new form of life”.
Thank you to @netgalley for this ARC in return for my honest review.

What makes a good book? I ponder this every time I read a novel that I deem to be worthy of 5 stars. I think the answer is, a good book makes you think. The Pull of the Stars made me laugh, cry, grip the sofa in terror, gape with awe, but above all, it made me think.

I have not been able to stop thinking about this book.

In my line of work, I read constantly, and most books I read are very, very good. But Emma Donoghue is one of only a handful of authors whose words are on another level entirely. In this novel, in a few deft strokes she conjures up the world of 1918, in the midst of the worst pandemic since the Black Death, and somehow manages to convey the fear, struggle, love and hope in people’s hearts, through the eyes of a single character.

The Pull of the Stars quite literally gripped me, like a pair of forceps around my head, from the first page, as I followed Nurse Julia from her home to the hospital where she works in the Maternity/Fever ward. I am not a nurse, or a midwife, or anything to do with the health service, and yet I have had cause to be thankful for the knowledge and care of our NHS on numerous occasions, not least when I gave birth, nearly six weeks prematurely, to my twins, sixteen and a half years ago now. I was thinking of that traumatic time in my life the whole time I was reading The Pull of the Stars, and thanking my ‘lucky stars’ that I live now, and not back in 1918. I would undoubtedly have died then. My twin babies would likely have died. This novel made me think deeply about that.

We are journeying through another pandemic as I write this, and The Pull of the Stars made me contemplate how different our world was back in 1918, and how little has changed in the hundred years since. We will always have pandemics of one sort or another, and how we cope with them, and care for each other in the process, will be the marker of our success or failure as humans.

Donoghue’s novel does what all good books do, it takes the reader deep into their own heart, and makes them think, and perhaps appreciate a little more those unsung stars of the NHS who help keep us alive.

Trigger warning: traumatic childbirths and graphic scenes of surgery

This is either the perfect time for this book to be coming out, or the worst possible luck in timing.
Set against the backdrop of the Spanish flu epidemic in Dublin, I enjoyed the familiar echoes of quarantine a century before the one we are living through now, but I am sure that many readers would prefer something more escapist at the moment.

Donoghue is a really stylish writer, and she conjures up evocative scenes of Dublin after the First World War. I enjoyed the brief glimpses we were given into life outside the hospital, however, I found this book far too graphic to be an enjoyable read. I don't consider myself to be a squeamish person, but I found the prolonged, meticulously described scenes of traumatic, and on many occasions, fatal, childbirths relentless. In my opinion, the balance was completely off between the scenes of surgical and insights into the characters' lives.

I would recommend avoiding this book if you are pregnant, or anyone close to you is pregnant.

Emma Donaghue’s latest novel is set in a Dublin besieged by Spanish flu at the beginning of November 2018. Julia Power works as a nurse on a ward for pregnant women with the ‘grip’. Over the two days in which she in put in charge because of staff shortages, we are exposed to the terrors and trials of the mothers to be, both medical and emotional.
Julia is helped by the indefatigable Bridie, new to volunteering. Herself an abandoned baby, she has grown up in a brutal world and yet is also strangely naive. However, Julia appreciates Bridie’s energy and warmth and the two strike up an unlikely friendship as they battle with complicated labours, still birth, pain, superstition and poverty as well as the arrogance of the male doctor who makes the occasional appearance.
This novel celebrates the courage and strength of the women at its centre. Whilst Julia and Bridie are fictional representations of those who actually nursed the sick, Dr Kathleen Lynn is based on a real woman: a pioneering radical who campaigned to improve the conditions of the poor. On the run from the police in this story, she advises and enables Julia before being arrested.
Focused as it is on inequality, toxic religion, abuse and death, this is not an easy read. However, Donaghue’s novel does not only capture brilliantly the pressure on the nursing staff and the dire conditions in which they are working. It also celebrates the bravery of ordinary people, the desire to help others and the importance of kindness. Whilst the novel’s emphasis is on women’s experiences, we are reminded that men suffer too. Julia’s brother, Tim, back from the Great War and now an elected mute is just as fragile as the vulnerable 17-year-old mother in his sister’s care.
‘The Pull of the Stars’ is a great read, full stop. However, it’s also an extraordinarily prescient story for a world in the grip of another pandemic. Readers will reflect that they are fortunate indeed not to have experienced the one of 1918, the deadliest of the twentieth century claiming over 50 million deaths worldwide.
My thanks to NetGalley and Picador for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

You never know quite what you’re going to get with Emma Donoghue, although you can always assume her historical fiction will be the literary equivalent of spiralling into a Wikipedia rabbit hole until 4am. This time the rabbit hole is a maternity ward in 1918 Dublin at the height of the Great Flu. And just like after a Wikipedia all-nighter, I’ve emerged bleary-eyed, confused, and not sure what day it is. Or maybe that’s just lockdown getting to me?

I’m torn on how to rate The Pull of the Stars. The first 200 or so pages are a minute-by-minute, graphic account of the trials of historically-accurate maternity nursing during a pandemic. Despite the lack of plot, or indeed purpose, I was completely engaged by Donoghue’s writing (and this coming from someone who can’t stand Call the Midwife).

After the 200 page mark, a lesbian romance finally kicks in. Donoghue does always like to leave these until the very last moment (see: Life Mask, The Sealed Letter, Frog Music) – but it’s not really a plot twist if she does it every time, is it?

Then the last 25 pages are packed with absolutely WILD plot escalations, some of which come completely out of left field, and some of which left me incensed with rage. I'm surprised that Donoghue, as a lesbian herself, would lack the contextual knowledge to realise that killing off a lesbian character mere hours after she's spent the night with another woman (by striking her down with sudden-onset plague, no less) is a bad look.

If it wasn't for the the pacing issues and the dissatisfying ending, I would have adored this book. As it stands, I'm still not going to write it off as lost reading time – I was certainly entertained. But I'm not necessarily going to be singing its praises. Which is a real shame, because I normally love Donoghue's historical fiction.

Another unusual book. Very uniquely written. I thought this was very apt for a book published in 2020- one written about a flu which was wiping out people left right and centre. Interesting characters and heart warming plot. A perfect book to read as the world goes through a pandemic- kind of gives you hope that good thinks do come out of bad situations.

Beautifully written and often moving, this novel is set in Dublin towards the end of the First World War and depicts the struggle of a young nurse, Julia, to make sense of the suffering around her. It is hideously graphic in parts - I found myself having to put my kindle down at one point, when I actually thought the description of a childbirth gone wrong (on top of all the other things that had just happened, in the book) were going to make me faint! And I am not normally squeamish. But it was marvellous stuff, no less enjoyable for that, and full of poignant, keenly drawn moments that made me draw breath. Finally, dealing with the Spanish flu as it does, it was also weirdly prescient!

In the first few pages I found myself transported to a dark morning in Ireland 1918. A place gripped by fear and rumour, struggling with the horrors of WW1 and now in the grip of a terrible flu epidemic. From the first page when you can really feel the cold damp of an early morning Irish winter the novel moves you, the reader with young nurse Julia Power into the seriously understaffed, under supplied and overcrowded hospital and into the small makeshift maternity/fever ward set up for expectant mothers with what became known world wide as the Spanish flu.
Due to lack of staff Julia finds herself in charge of the ward with only the assistance of a young 'volunteer' from the neighbouring girls home, Bridie Sweeny and a forward thinking female doctor Kathleen Lynn. These three women work tirelessly to help the living hold onto life and to bring new life into the world.

Pull of the Stars draws you into this world with such descriptive, emotional language that you are totally immersed in their world. When I read Daniel Mason's Winter Soldier I said that you could feel the cold, smell the blood and the rot of the gangrene and feel the itch of the lice. Emma's writing did the same thing to me. I felt the highs and lows, smelt the carbolic and came out the other side emotionally drained and somehow exhilarated feeling that Julia and women like her would change the world for the better.

After loving Room, I was so excited to receive the ARC for this novel.
While the relevance and the poignancy was so clear in reading this, I felt like the plot could have been quicker to keep me more interested. Strong characters, but I thought it needed a faster pace for me.

‘That’s what influenza means: influenza delle stelle - the influence of the stars. Medieval Italians thought the illness proved the sky must be governing their fates, that they were quite literally star-crossed. I pictured that: the heavenly bodies trying to fly us like upsidedown kites. Or perhaps just yanking on us for their obscure amusement.’

I’ve read a few books lately that feature characters based on real people and that always adds to my enjoyment, researching their lives, putting them into context in history. In this case, Doctor Kathleen Lynn was a fascinating person and I liked her inclusion in this story. A timely story, too, set in Ireland in the throes of the 1918 flu epidemic, over just three days in a maternity ward for expectant mothers who have the virus. Some graphic scenes of childbirth going well and going badly. Heart-breaking back stories for some of the patients highlight how far we have moved on since those days. Great writing, as you’d expect from Emma Donoghue. Not for the queasy reader, I’d recommend it for its social relevance rather than any plot or character development.

‘I pictured trams grinding their lines across Dublin like blood through veins. We all live in an unwalled city, that was it. Lines scored right through Ireland; carved all over the world. Train tracks, roads, shipping channels, a web that connected all nations into one great suffering body.’

Julia is a 30 year old Irish nurse dealing with pregnant mothers who have ‘the grip’, or what we know as the Spanish Flu, in a world struggling with the last days of WWI, and a population also torn between the fight between Protestants and Catholics. She is unmarried and lives with her gentle brother who has returned from the war emotionally damaged and mute with the horrors he has seen. With her at the hospital is a young volunteer from the local home for young girls run by nuns, and a female doctor who is trying to keep one step in front of the authorities for being a member of the radical Sinn Fein. The book is set over only 3 days, but in that time the amount of history and horrible conditions of the time packed into only 300 pages is phenomenal and just brilliantly done.
Despite my antipathy towards books that have no punctuation for dialogue, I was hooked very early on and that dislike of mine faded into insignificance as I was drawn totally into these peoples’ lives. Both the nurse and volunteer are fictional characters, but the rebel doctor is based on a real person, Dr Kathleen Lynn (1874 – 1955) and I was so taken with her story I had to actually Google her and read more fully about her.

Emma Donoghue started writing this book during 2018, the 100th anniversary of The Spanish Flu. Little did she know that the world was about to have its own pandemic 2 years later just after she handed in her manuscript. I found it very eerie to read many of the parallels of the world we are living in now. This is a nod to all the nurses, doctors, suffragettes, soldiers, women and men of the world with their own troubles who help others no matter the cost to themselves. This is a brilliant, moving and totally absorbing story, perfect for all types of readers and especially those who love their history as well as for all those who loved the Call the Midwives TV series, though with more gore and reality. I cannot recommend it highly enough!

I enjoyed Room by Emma Donoghue so had high hopes this would be as good. I'm happy to say it was albeit a different story line. Its makes you think how things are in the current climate with Covid 19 and the content in the book was scarily similar. There was some quite in depth writing of certain medical matters so just be aware of that before you read this book. All in all a great book i would recommend.

Thank you to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for this advanced reader's copy in return for my honest review. I'm a big Emma Donoghue fan, each book is so well written and the premise of each so different. Set during the great flu of 1918, this book has such remarkable timing. Beautifully written and the characters are so engaging. A master of her craft.

What I love about the Emma Donahue books that I’ve read so far is that they are all so well written but they are all uniquely good reads and this one is no different.

This story is a very vivid portrayal of a fever/maternity ward in Dublin during the flu pandemic that killed millions. It is set nearing the end of the Great War and amidst the Irish uprising. It is a really poignant story given the current pandemic and makes you feel grateful that despite everything medical care has come so far and although surrounded by despair. It is hard not to draw parallels with the current pandemic and it is fascinating that 100 years on that the situation can be the same but so different at the same time but ultimately this is a historical novel, and a really good one at that. The story is quite intense and is set over 3 days as we follow the work of Nurse Julia Power as cares for expectant mothers who have come down with a flu and are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.