The Pull of the Stars

Julia Power is a maternity nurse working out of a repurposed supply closet that barely holds three beds and functions as a makeshift delivery ward. The book covers a mere three days in the midst of the 1918 flu pandemic in Ireland. The writing is breathless and steamrolls relentlessly forward. It starts to feel as claustrophobic as that tiny room and one wonders if author Emma Donoghue had stumbled across a turn of the century gynaecological manual in researching the story and is now intent on stuffing every page of her book with all manner of birthing catastrophes and unorthodox delivery procedures.

Still, amidst the turmoil of a mother gripped in fever coughing violently in one cot, another mourning the loss of her child and a third screaming through contractions, Julia strikes up a warm familiarity with her orphaned helper Bridie Sweeney. Their growing relationship a bright spot in an otherwise calamitous read.