The Pull of the Stars By Emma Donoghue

 

The Pull of the Stars

By Emma Donoghue

Julia Power is a nurse in Ireland during the 1918 influenza pandemic and World War I. She works in the Maternity/Fever ward, tending to pregnant women who have the flu in an understaffed hospital. She is often the only nurse on duty, but during the short three-days when the book takes place Julia is aided by a volunteer named Bridie Sweeney from a charity house.

During the three days Julia has to deal with the death of a newborn, the death of a new mother, training the eager Bridie, dealing with absent or new doctors and a smarmy nun working on the ward. She forms a close bond with Bridie and the two find themselves quickly falling for one another until tragedy strikes and Bridie suffers from a lie she told. Another outsider introduced into Julia's world is Dr. Lynn, who is a rebel on the run from the police.

In her home life we get a small bit about, Julia lives with her Brother Tim who is recently back from the war and is unable or unwilling to speak, though he seems to take good care of Julia and their home while she is at work. Julia celebrates her thirtieth birthday and wonders what her life will become as a single woman with no interest in marriage, devoted to her work.

Throughout The Pull of the Stars Julia is in an uncertain world of new life and tragic death, where her resolve and knowledge are tested, and where hard decisions have to be made on the fly. One decision in particular has the potential to change her life forever. She learns about some hard truth in the world thanks to Bridie that ultimately lead her to make this life-altering decision.

This was a good book and I liked the queer element, which I wasn't expecting. The characters were interesting and the pacing was swift. If you want to learn a lot about child birth and nursing during the early twentieth century, this is the book for you. I often felt like I was in the room with Julia learning how to do the things she was doing. However, those bits were almost like reading a text book for me at times. I was far more interested in the mothers and Julia's interactions with them and with Bridie and Dr. Lynn. More about Julia's relationship with Tim would also have been good for me. I felt that a lot of the meat of the story was left unexplored because of all of the nursing lesson bits.

Still, it's a 4-star book. There was a good amount of tension, the characters were believable, the setting and circumstances heartbreaking. But there was also hope and an uplifting element at the end that I think saved the book, which had a rushed sort of feeling at the end. All in all, a pretty great read.