It may seem like insanity to read a book about a pandemic while currently living through a pandemic. And not just any pandemic but THE pandemic, the one to which all experts compare our current COVID pandemic - the Spanish Influenza epidemic. However, in the capable hands of Emma Donoghue, The Pull of the Stars becomes a story so much more than its setting with its universal themes of hope, love, and compassion.

Told through the eyes of one Julia Power, we experience her life as a midwife living in Dublin in 1919 before the end of the Great War but still in the midst of the Spanish Influenza pandemic. We experience three days as the head nurse of an isolated maternity ward for those pregnant women who have the flu. Short of staff and room, we see her come into her own as she must make life-or-death decisions while providing comfort and care to her patients.

Julia is a remarkable character, so well-defined that you forget that she is fictional. Her experiences in those three days are insane and yet one gets the impression that they are also completely normal. Her constant level-headedness and, most importantly, the compassion she shows each of her patients are a refreshing reminder of how people should act in times of crisis.

So much of the story could happen today. Through her patients and through her own commute to and from work we see the same poverty, the same loss, the same abuse, the same scorn for anyone who is different. Even eerier, we read posters that talk about keeping your distance from others to stay healthy, we see people wearing masks to protect themselves, and we see the fear that occurs when someone in public sneezes or coughs. Yet, at no time did I feel uncomfortable about reading the novel. If anything, there is a strange comfort one finds in understanding how little things change sometimes, even when it should.

The one thing The Pull of the Stars did do is to reinforce my belief that the Catholic Church is not only hypocritical but also evil in the damage it has done to those they profess to protect. Taking place in the very Catholic Dublin in a Catholic hospital no less, one encounters the policies established by the Church in a myriad of ways. However, it is the impact of those policies and the Catholic belief system on the women in Julia's care which drive home that hypocrisy.

The Pull of the Stars is a remarkable story for several reasons. For one, Julia Power is a fascinating character. She doesn't do anything other than act with compassion, but you finish the novel thinking her the wisest of women. For another, the story has a timeless quality to it because the social issues Julia sees occurring within her own little ward occur across time. Lastly, it reinforces today's messaging about mask wearing, hand washing, and social distancing as the only acceptable ways to maintain your health while the current influenza virus rages around the globe.

I was enraptured by The Pull of the Stars from the moment I began reading it. The author paints a shockingly parallel scene to current circumstances, depicting an impoverished country overran by the Great Flu. People wear masks, shun strangers, wait in line for medical care, while the government issues snappy slogans and onions to cull the spread.

Somehow in the midst of overwhelming poverty, war, and pandemic, Emma Donoghue manages to cultivate a heartbreaking love story that has you hoping for a happy ending that you know is highly unlikely. Carefully complex and flawed characters disrupt the normal girl meets boy story line for oddly satisfying ending. It is a great fiction read with some relevant substance.

I didn't connect with this story as much as I thought I would. I loved Room and her unique writing there, but I wasn't as excited by her writing in this book. I felt like the story dragged for way too long.

Gorgeous and almost painful in detail, I fell in love with Nurse Power and Bridie Sweeney. The parallels between present day 2020 and 1918 are almost shocking. I can't recommend this enough

Reading about a pandemic in another pandemic... it's something. There were a few scene-setting eerie moments early on that truly reminded me of today's headlines. This story takes place over three days, and it dives right in. I didn't feel I was able to properly connect with characters until it was too late. The stakes were always high in every scene - truly life or death, but I didn't always feel that. I think this book is intended to be immersive into that world but I never quite got there. Thanks to Netgalley and Little, Brown & Company for the digital copy.

Donoghue does a masterful job of creating characters that draw the reader in and make you care about them, wanting to know more even when the book is over. The historical fiction genre is not what I usually choose to read and I knew very little of the book prior to starting to read. Initially I was concerned that I would not enjoy the book, however that was not the case. I found myself feeling great pride for Nurse Power and sympathy for Birdie Sweeney. In reading the author's notes I was very pleased to learn that the Dr. Lynn character was based on a real woman. Each day depicted in the story was full of emotion and tragedy, keeping me hooked in wanting to know how things would transpire. The unbelievable struggles of war, poverty, a pandemic, and obstetrics in the early 1900s was quite a powerful package. Donoghue does not disappoint.

Thank you to LIttle, Brown and Company for allowing me to read and early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Try as I did, this book could not seem to hold my attention. It was more descriptive on what was going on in the maternity ward as far as medicial procedures were being done, but I really didn't feel like I got to know the characters very well.

"The Pull of the Stars" is a beautiful, gripping book that is made all the more timely by our current pandemic. Set in Dublin in 1918, it is narrated by Julia, a nurse in the maternity ward caring for pregnant women with influenza while the city is struggling through the effects of World War I and the 1918 flu. The whole novel takes place over a few days in the hospital as Julia cares for her patients and meets Bridie, a young assistant, and Dr. Lynn (a real figure), a female doctor who was involved in the Easter Rising of 1916. The characters are drawn so well, including the patients, and I loved Julia's voice. As an unmarried woman approaching her 30th birthday, she reflects on what it means to be a woman in Catholic Ireland, the harsh realities for those who become pregnant, and life for children growing up under the Catholic Church. The descriptions of life during a pandemic, from wearing masks to social distancing, feel very relevant, and the book also includes a lot of graphic details about the pain and dangers of childbirth in 1918. This is heavy subject matter for these times, but I loved this novel; at one point, Dr. Lynn offers the comforting thought that humans eventually always find a way to live with a virus.

Certain aspects of this book about the 1918 Pandemic could certainly apply to our current situation: the need for clean hands, masks and distance. That's about where any similarity ends. This book is set in a small maternity ward for expectant mothers who also have the flu. Nurse Julia Power finds herself in charge for the three days over which the story takes place; three days which will see her life change in many unexpected ways. This book should certainly leave you grateful for the miracle of modern healthcare. An excellent read!

Thank you to Little Brown & Co, Emma Donoghue and Net Galley for the advance digital copy of The Pull of the Stars. The book, set during the 1918 Spanish Flu, has many parallels to present day and that was very interesting. Unfortunately, this book did not land with me. Too many graphic medical procedures unnecessarily detailed and not enough plot and character development. It was almost over-researched - every historical detail was included regardless of whether it moved the story along or was of interest to the reader. Based on the other reviews, my opinion appears to be in the minority though! #ThePulloftheStars #NetGalley

This is a compulsively readable story of dedication to taking care of pregnant flu patients in Ireland during the 1918 pandemic. It covers only a few days but the narrative is so gripping that I felt exhausted after "living" just one day beside a maternity nurse. Time and place are perfectly described. This is oh so close to a 5* novel for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the ARC to read and review.

I’m not a cryer but this book was emotional, lovely, horrifying and sweet all at the same time. The predominantly female characters were strong, the timeliness was disturbing and the relationships were solid. Loved this book. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Emma and she is truly one of this generations great fiction writers. Loved this book so much.

Striking the perfect balance between historical realism and emotional intensity, this is Donoghue at her very best. Full review posted at BookBrowse: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr264832

I LOVED this book. I mean admittedly I'm a huge Emma Donoghue fan, so this is not surprising. But still, it's a great book regardless of my fangirl feelings about all of Donoghue's books. Pull of the Stars is the story of Julia Power, a nurse in a flu maternity ward during the 1918 epidemic. I wasn't sure how I would feel reading this book in the middle of our pandemic. Would I be too depressed or freaked out? Actually it made me feel so much better. Thinking about the history of the flu epidemic then, and the fact that life eventually returned to normal, and that there were beautiful moments like Donoghue describes, gives me hope for all of us.

I wasn't sure that I had the fortitude to read The Pull of the Stars, a disquieting novel set in Dublin about the 1918 flu epidemic, while we were in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, but it is a compelling story in many ways. Nurse Julia Power works in Maternity/Fever, a tiny supply room converted to handle pregnant women infected with the flu. The disease makes labor and delivery even more high risk than usual, so there are plenty of well-researched details of several harrowing deliveries and also plenty of death. Julia works with a new assistant Bridie Sweeney and they are portrayed as devoted health care workers, coping as well as they can under extreme circumstances.

Reading this book now was certainly a different experience than it might have been if there were no coronavirus, and much of it was eerily familiar. Posters proclaiming “Stay out of public places" and “The government has the situation well in hand,” could be from 2020. Emma Donoghue captures the mounting sense of dread from the epidemic then, as we are all too familiar with now.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of the book.

Well, certainly don't read this if you're squeamish about blood and graphic birth scenes! (Or if the pandemic subject matter might hit a bit too close to home just now.) That said, the writing was fairly clean, and the tone of desperation and relentless futility came through very clearly. Julia certainly felt real as a narrator, and good sketches were given of the supporting characters. To be honest, though, I think I was expecting something more. I've loved Donaghue's work in the past, particularly for her strong character perspective and careful narrative writing, but this particular story didn't feel as if it had much meat on the bone. While there were points of interest, and not everything in a book must push the narrative forward, so much felt like wheels spinning over minutiae; I don't really feel as if I understood Julia, the time period, or the situation significantly better due to the additional time spent. Although the period/subject matter/choice of place was interesting, and the writing fairly good, I wonder if this might have been stronger as a short story rather than a complete novel.

Emma Donoghue's The Pull of the Stars is gritty, graphic, emotional and immersive. The story follows Nurse Julia Powers as she navigates her small makeshift maternity room in an overwhelmed and understaffed hospital during the the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918. Quickly we learn how strong Nurse Powers is even if she has to give herself little pep talks. She often knows better through experience than some of the male doctors who have never worked maternity though she feels she cannot speak out of turn. She is also able to admit that she "know(s) enough to know that (she) know(s) nothing". The story unfolds over the course of three days in somewhat graphic detail, the patient's struggles, difficult births, last breaths, and even an autopsy. While the details may turn some readers off, I found it to only add intensity to each challenging scene. I appreciated the historical medical details throughout the story, show how far we have come. This book reminded me very much of Call of the Midwives only a rated R version. There is a brief love interest in the story which came out of left field for me and the fact that the author did not use quotation marks at all (my pet peeve) caused me to take away a star. Otherwise a well thought out story of hardships and triumphs, great characterizations, and emotionally stimulating.

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley for an ARC of ‘The Pull of the Stars’ in exchange for an honest book review.
Dublin 1918. The outside world is experiencing the effects of WWI and influenza. Within a hospital maternity ward, expectant mothers are in quarantine and being cared for by nurse Julia Power, volunteer Bridie Sweeney and Dr. Kathleen Lynn. Over a period of three days fevers run high, supplies are limited and challenges are faced as these women fearlessly face life, death and fight to save and deliver healthy babies.
Emma Donoghue does a wonderful job weaving historical detail into this story that enriches the characters and the realities of a woman’s life in Ireland at that time.
The world we are living in now, the effects of COVID-19 and the injustices that are being faced makes it very easy to become absorbed in this novel and to identify with the emotions that fill the lives within these pages.
I highly recommend this book and thank Emma Donoghue for another wonderful, heartfelt read.

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Wow! This book was amazing! It was ironic that I read it in the time of a pandemic. The author did a fantastic job researching for her book. It felt as if it was actually written during that time period. Well done!

There are families you are born to and those you acquire throughput your life. You face the fire together. You face off against each other, but through it all you know the outcome is shared or celebrated. A new century complete with war and death. The delivery ward at a Dublin hospital tests the mettle of every nurse that works there. Julia is happy to have employment in an area full of shortages. Like every ward those in charge set rules strict and necessary to keep life loss at a minimum. We see the everyday through a new hire Bridie,, young quiet a good eye foe detail. A new doctor stirs up the rumor mill with her arrival and modern views. A three day siege in the ward brings a new sense of purpose to more than one of these characters. A change that will startle and renew.