BooksCanadian

The Pull of the Stars

The Pull of the Stars is a book by Emma Donoghue.

Emma Donoghue

CBC Books Posted: Jul 06, 2020 4:33 PM EDT | Last Updated: December 4, 2020

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 together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsidersDoctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

InThe Pull of the Stars, Emma Donoghue once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds. (From HarperCollins Canada)

The Pull of the Starsis on the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist.

Emma Donoghueis an Irish Canadian writer. Her books include the novelsLanding,Room,Frog Music,The Wonderand the children's bookThe Lotterys Plus One.

From the book

The mortuary was deserted. I'd been down to its white chill before, but I'd never seen it so eerily full of coffins. Six high against all four walls, like firewood stacked ready for the furnace. I wondered how the attendants remembered who was whodid they pencil the names on the sides?

So many!

Doctor Lynn murmured, This is nothing. Out at the cemetery there are hundreds of caskets piled up, waiting their turn. Hazardous to the living, I call it. The Germans an eminently practical race cremate their dead.

Really?

A shocking notion, butfas est ab hoste doceri, you know.

My face was blank, so she glossed that: Learn even from enemies. It wouldn't surprise me if this flu turned out to be caused by a miasma of rot blowing over from the battlefields

From The Pull of the Starsby Emma Donoghue 2020. Published by HarperCollins Canada

Interviews with Emma Donoghue

White Coat Black Art26:30Author Emma Donoghue 'spooked' by overlapping narratives between her new novel and COVID-19

The Pull of the Stars tells the story of three women a nurse, a doctor and an activist in war-ravaged Ireland during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Emma Donoghue spoke with Dr. Brian Goldman, host of White Coat Black Art, about the inspiration for the novel. The book was written well before the outbreak of the coronavirus, and Donoghue was surprised by the way it mirrors our current situation but relishes the opportunity to talk about the role of health-care workers in challenging times.

More books by Emma Donoghue

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