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9th October 2024
01:27pm BST
It's been years since I first read The Pull of the Stars and I still think about it all of the time.
Some books will stay with you forever and Emma Donoghue's harrowing novel is one of them.
Although it's set in Ireland during the Great Flu, like most historical fiction novels, it offered me escape and distraction.
The story of Nurse Julia Power and the harsh realities she faced during the war and the pandemic in 1918 is one more people need to read.
This has to be Donoghue's most underrated book but I can understand why it isn't as popular as some of her other novels.
Being released around the same time as the pandemic, there's no doubt many readers were reluctant to pick it up.
But trust me when I say you're missing out on one of the best Irish novels of our time.
It's gripping, heartbreaking and completely enthralling. It'll capture your attention from the very first page, but it will also haunt you long after you've finished reading.
You'll learn so much about the struggles healthcare workers faced, but you'll also be reminded of how incredible nurses are.
The Pull of the Stars is a book you'll regret not reading.
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.
