The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue

Having read the galley for Emma Donoghue's last novel The Wonder, I put in a request for The Pull of the Stars before even reading the synopsis. I was not disappointed.

Donoghue revisits some of the same themes in this novel--an unmarried female nurse embracing scientific methods, women's lives in a repressive society, what we will do for family and love.

Set in 1918 in the middle of the Spanish Flu epidemic, in a Dublin maternity ward where an endless round of pregnant women ill with the flu come and go, the novel is a spine-tingling reminder of our vulnerability.

Donoghue began writing The Pull of the Stars in 2018. How chillingly providential that it would be published the year of the novel cornoavirus covid-19 epidemic.

Today as I write this review, violence and protests have been breaking out across America, demanding a just society.  Donoghue's novel depicts a world crushed by WWI, men broken in body and spirit like ghosts of the people they had once been. Unwed mothers are taken in by organizations that demand repayment through a kind of slave labor, their babies becoming trapped in servitude and subject to abuse.

The myth of progress is challenged by reminders of how little has changed in 100 years. War still crushes, the human body still is attacked by enemies large and small, society remains inequitable, ingrained social prejudices destroy lives.

Nurse Julia Powers is dedicated and hard-working, although underpaid and lacking authority. Readers spend several days with Julia at work, the action taking place in a small hospital room of three hospital cots.

This is not a novel for the squeamish. So many things go wrong. In graphic detail, readers endure the female patient’s suffering, the heroic endeavor to save the lives of mother and babies. We learn about their lives, their illness, their deaths.

Every loss is marked by Julia on her silver cased watch, a memorial and reminder to never forget.

This is not a novel to escape, the world too closely reflects what we are dealing with with today's pandemic. Warnings, fake cures, the uncertainty, government endeavoring to play down the threat--nothing has changed.

I finished the novel in two days.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Read an interview with Donoghue discussing the novel published in the Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2020/05/emma-donoghue-interview-the-pull-of-the-stars-the-blood-tax/610828/

The Pull of the Stars
by Emma Donoghue
Little, Brown and Company
Pub Date: July 21,2020
Hardcover $28 (USD)
ISBN: 9780316499019
PRICE $28.00 (USD)

from the publisher

Dublin, 1918: three days in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. A small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, by the bestselling author of The Wonder and ROOM

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 outsiders -- Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel 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.

In The 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.

As Bright as Heaven: Surviving And Thriving

In 1918 the Bright family leaves a tobacco farm in Quakertown, PA to move to center city Philadelphia. The father is to work for his uncle's funeral parlor, which he would then inherit. They have suffered the devastating--but at that time all too common loss--of a baby. Their grief travels with them into their new life.

In the autumn of 1918 the Spanish Influenza hits Philadelphia, leaving over 12,000 dead in its wake. The mortuary fills and the uncle dies. When a daughter falls ill, the mother keeps her alive but, worn down, succumbs and dies of the disease. Friends die, and a beloved neighbor leaves for the trenches of France. Amidst all this loss, one of the daughters rescues an infant in distress in a house full of the dead, and the child becomes the family's heart and reason to go on.

The women, the mother and her four daughters, speak in alternating chapters, their unique personalities and perspectives revealed through their own words. Philadelphia has a distinct presence, although fictionalized and geographically ambiguous at times. (The cover photo shows Logan Circle with City Hall in the background.) The time period, between 1918 and 1926, covers the flu and the war but also prohibition and the rise of the speakeasy.

The story is about people who suffer great loss and live through horrible times, who carry their ghosts and demons with them, until they are able to see that life goes on and somehow the world can be bright again.

My Goodreads friends have rated this a four or five star book and found it very engaging. So I will safely say that readers of historical fiction and woman's fiction will enjoy Meissner's book.

SPOILER ALERTS

I had several issues with the writing.

I lacked emotional connection to the characters. It could be the multitude of voices, but I think it was because the story is too much told and not enough shown. For instance, one daughter develops a crush on an older man who goes to war. He is gone for the bulk of the novel, and returns at age thirty-eight and the girl is still "in love." There is not enough interaction between them to make me believe she is "in love" with him for life. It seems contrived.

I found the book preachy and full of clichéd lessons. The ex-soldier, once returned home, consoles his now grown-up lover that the war was horrible and he had to heal. All this healing happened off camera and lacks emotional impact; he is just telling her a lesson he learned. Make peace with the past, he advises. Later, the foundling brother's family is discovered to be alive. The father forgives the Brights, saying that he was angry for a long time by his losses and is finally seeing there is good in life, ending with the old chestnut of 'we are all doing the best we can with what we have'. Nothing new here, kids.

And the story wrapped up with far too many predictable and implausible outcomes. I won't even go into them. There is talk of fate and destiny and finding patterns.

END OF SPOILER ALERT

Consequently, although I had looked forward to reading As Bright As Heaven, especially for its setting and the time period, I found the book an average read. For those who are not familiar with the Spanish Influenza, who like feel-good endings, and who want the horror of history softened by wish fulfillment romantic endings, this is the book for you. It was not my cup of tea.

As Bright as Heaven
by Susan Meissner
Berkley Publishing Group
Pub Date 06 Feb 2018
Hardcover $26.00
ISBN: 9780399585968