THE Reading room

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue, Pan Macmillan

It’s 1918 and as this tender novel opens, nurse Julia Power is turning 30. The war is inching to a close but another battle is filling its shoes and though Julia should be celebrating her milestone birthday, instead we find her working on the maternity ward in an overburdened hospital in Dublin. The ward is actually a converted supply room renamed “Maternity/Fever”; here pregnant women who have contracted

Spanish Flu are treated in isolation. These women and their babies are at high-risk, mortality a new daily reality.

“The spectre had a dozen names: the great flu, khaki flu, blue flu, black flu, the grippe, or the grip ... (That word always made me think of a heavy hand landing on one’s shoulder and gripping it hard,)” says Julia. On the tram she smells eucalyptus; the man next to her is pressing a soaked handkerchief over his nose and mouth. “I used to like the wood fragrance before it came to mean fear,” she notes. Julia has already had the virus so is now immune but her supervisor is ill at home, leaving Julia alone and in charge.

Emma Donoghue actually wrote her novel before COVID-19 was even a thing, but it’s tempting to think that the author had some second sight. “I just choose gripping plot situations which raise ethical questions,” she tells The Weekly. “Two of three of the population died in the Great Flu and it targeted young adults, so in many ways it was worse than COVID-19 has been so far. But there are so many similarities in terms of the panic and economic devastation.”

Certainly, the currency of The Pull of the Stars gives it a gripping edge, but at its heart this is a story about friendship, love and compassion in extraordinary times. We focus on the budding relationship between Julia and (real-life) revolutionary and physician Dr Kathleen Lynn and eager volunteer Bridie Sweeney.

Bridie was raised in a brutal convent orphanage, but is driven by a passion to help people. The women work together on the cramped ward, shepherding new life into a chaotic world against a background of seemingly meaningless losses.

It’s an engrossing read. Donoghue’s writing is visceral and her female characters strike a powerful chord of humanity that stays with you.