![]() ![]() Donoghue seems most interested in the dramas of this one space - with which she manages to make clear the broader constrictions and injustices of an entire Irish society. ![]() The scenes in the 'fever/maternity' ward are so enthralling that the novel loses a bit of its fire - and realism - whenever it leaves that room, but these departures are thankfully rare. ![]() It was like Emma researched the complications of childbirth. Even in Julia’s slightly euphemistic voice, the sheer attention devoted to these descriptions functions as a kind of unadorned reverence for the work and pain and strength of women - and how the paths of their lives are so often defined by the workings of their bodies. The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue is 300 pages worth of medical jargon, disguised as a novel to appeal to a wide range of readers. The narrow aperture of the maternity ward allows Donoghue to focus on one of the novel’s most compelling preoccupations: the lives and bodies of women. Protagonist Julia Power is a midwife whose life is forever altered over the three days, due to the patients, doctor, and volunteers that she meets. Readers familiar with Donoghue’s masterly 2010 best seller, Room, will recall the focused intensity she can bring to bear on constricted spaces. In The Pull of the Stars, Donoghue’s novel takes readers through three days in a Dublin hospital’s maternity ward in 1918, when the country is ravaged by war and the great flu. ![]()
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