Lynn eventually inspires a kind of political awakening in the practically minded Julia. Kathleen Lynn, a rare female physician (and real historical figure) who is considered a wanted criminal by the Dublin police, for her role in Sinn Fein’s 1916 uprising. So desperate is the hospital for doctors that the higher-ups soon call in Dr.
Over the course of three harrowing days in this “small square of the plague-ridden, war-weary world,” Julia dashes from patient to patient administering what little treatment there is: mostly whiskey and chloroform. Like “Room,” “The Pull of the Stars” takes place almost entirely in a single room and unfolds at the pace of a thriller. Readers familiar with Donoghue’s masterly 2010 best seller, “Room,” will recall the focused intensity she can bring to bear on constricted spaces. When the novel opens, the pandemic has left one Dublin hospital with “more than twice as many patients as usual and a quarter the staff.” Julia Power, a 29-year-old midwife, suddenly finds herself the only nurse on duty overnight in the “fever/maternity” ward, the makeshift section of the hospital set aside for influenza patients who also happen to be pregnant. As Donoghue writes in an author’s note, “‘The Pull of the Stars’ is fiction pinned together with facts.” The year is 1918, and the illness, of course, is influenza. The parallels to 2020 are uncanny, but this is history, not prescience. Meanwhile, the government touts false cures and contends that the epidemic is under control. The sounds of wracking coughs cut through the air as medical supplies run short, and face masks become commonplace in the streets. In Emma Donoghue’s arresting new page-turner of a novel, “The Pull of the Stars,” an urban hospital is overwhelmed by victims of a cruel new disease.
0 kommentar(er)
