The Pull of the Stars is set over three days in a small ward in a maternity hospital in Dublin—from context clues I'm guessing it's supposed to be the Rotunda—in late 1918. The First World War is in its final weeks, but the deadly flu pandemic is just getting going.

Though marketed as literary fiction, this read like Maeve Binchy writing a novelisation of an episode of Call the Midwife: all sentimentality and symphysiotomies. Emma Donoghue clearly did a lot of research on early 20th-century Ireland in general and midwifery techniques in particular for this book, but she neither wore that research lightly nor conveyed it fluidly to the reader.

Take for example how Donoghue introduces Kathleen Lynn (per the blurb, one of the book's major characters but really much more of a featured role):

Groyne, any word of when we can expect to see this new doctor?

Ah, the lady rebel! [...] He asked, Haven't you heard of her?

You're implying she's one of the Sinn Féiners?

(The Gaelic phrase meant us-aloners. They went around ranting that home rule wouldn't be enough now; nothing would content them but a breakaway republic.)

Implying nothing, Groyne told me. Miss Lynn's a vicar's daughter from Mayo gone astray—a socialist, suffragette, anarchist firebrand!

At best you could describe this kind of exposition as efficient, but even then it's clunky. Like who is that parenthetical for? Why would anyone in 1910s Ireland pause to clarify who SF are in their internal monologue? Surely if Donoghue was worried that she'd have readers who wouldn't know anything about this time and place, there were ways she could convey context in a subtler and more nuanced way.

When typing up that excerpt, by the way, I didn't forget to include the punctuation for the dialogue—that was a deliberate choice on Donoghue's part. Every time I realised part way through a sentence that I'd mistaken dialogue for prose, or mentally attributed a sentence to the wrong speaker, I had to start it again and felt irritated every time.

A wasted premise. ( )

The story was fine, but it felt clunky to read. There was a lack of punctuation, giving it the feel of a run on sentence at times. ( )

The majority of the action in The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue takes place in a maternity care room over a few days at an Irish hospital in 1918 as influenza rages. The heroine is Nurse Julia Power, who must balance the care and the lives of her patients as they fight for themselves and the lives of their babies. The book is heartbreaking, and I'm glad I'm reading it now in 2024 because I don't think I could have when it came out in 2020.

This is good historical fiction. Donoghue did her research. You are taken step by step through Nurse Power's thoughts and actions as she bravely carries on. Through the story, Donoghue explores the ramifications of poverty, disease, war, and institutions in the lives of the patients.

There is even a love story. ( )

This takes place over three days in a maternity unit in a Dublin hospital while the 1918 flu pandemic was raging. Donoghue offers little in the way of storytelling here, but her novel details the condition of hospitals, particularly the maternity unit, and as a sidebar, conditions in homes run by the Catholic Church. It’s all pretty dismal yet it must be remembered that some of the procedures, treatments and church-run homes were in effect until much later than 1918.

The character of the doctor, was based on a real person, Dr. Kathleen Lynn, who started a free clinic.

Donoghue wrote this for 100th anniversary of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic and days after it was presented to the publisher another pandemic hit. The title was taken from the medieval Italian belief that illness proved the heavens were governing fate, that people were star-crossed: Influenza Delle stelle - the influence of the stars. ( )

When I first started reading PULL OF THE STARS, I just couldn't get into the writing style. I found the lack of quotation marks to indicate dialogue challenging to follow. I was ready to give up twenty pages into the novel, but I switched to the audiobook for a final attempt, and I'm so glad I did! The narrator did a brilliant job. Within a few minutes, I was fully immersed in the incredible story Donoghue presented.

I adored Julia, Bridie, and Dr. Lynn, and my heart went out to every woman who crossed their path. Reading this in the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic made the story even more heartbreaking. I couldn't help but notice the parallels between our own situation and theirs. Though, frankly, we don't have even a fraction of the hardships to deal with that the folks in Dublin in 1918 had to endure.

Touching, heartbreaking, and incredibly immersive, THE PULL OF THE STARS was an excellent read -- especially in audio format. ( )