Good Reads / Community Library Notes
The Pull of the Stars
Emma Donoghue
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Pull of the Stars
Emma Donoghue
Review by Priscilla Comen
The Pull of the Stars, by Emma Donoghue, is the powerful story of Bridie Sweeney’s life, “fiction pinned together with facts.” Taking place in Dublin during the great flu pandemic of 1918 which shops shuttered, concerts cancelled, and rows of hearses lining up outside the undertakers. As the narrator rides the tram to her job at the hospital she reads headlines of the numbers of war wounded, shell shocked, and killed in action. More flu cases crowd the hospital when she gets there. Nurse Julia Powers narrates this tale. Grabbing a slice of bread and a cup of watery cocoa, she enters the maternity/fever ward where pregnant women with the flu are sent. Eileen Devine has died during the night. All doctors are at the front fighting the war or off sick, so Nurse Powers is on her own. A wealthy patient, Delia Garrett, reads a magazine and coughs. She wants to go home to her little girls. The nurse takes her pulse rate and asks about her symptoms, then helps Ida Noonan to the lavatory. A sign says to eat an onion a day to keep illness at bay.
Bridie Sweeney arrives as a trainee and helps Nurse Powers remake Mrs. Noonan’s bed. Sweeney is tiny, child-like, and anxious to learn. Nurse Powers shows her how to wash her hands and to fetch ice from the supply room refrigerator. The orderly tells Nurse Powers the new doctor, Dr. Lynn, is a socialist, suffragette, firebrand, and a vicar’s daughter. The orderly wheels in Mary O’Rahilly, seventeen years old, ready to deliver her baby. Nurse asks about the frequency of her pains and receives vague answers. Bridie shows Mary pictures in a book of a baby emerging from a mother. Mary is shocked, as she hadn’t known about this procedure.
Delia Garrett is in premature labor. Author Donoghue describes the symptoms graphically. Nurse Powers lays out needed items for delivery. She delivers a still-born baby girl and wheels it out of sight. Bridie comforts Mrs. Garrett the whole time. In comes Doctor Lynn. She has been deported for participating in a bloody uprising a year ago. They go like a juggler from minute to hectic minute doing what is needed for each patient. Mrs. Garrett weeps into her whiskey-laced tea as the priest comes to her bed. Ita Noonan, another other patient, convulses and Nurse Powers pushes and pulls on her back repeatedly. Bridie runs to get Doctor Lynn. Mrs. Noonan ultimately leaves seven children motherless at home.
At nine p.m., Sister Luke relieves Nurse Powers of her shift and Powers summarizes the day’s events. Bridie and Powers walk down the street together. Bridie boards at the “Mother’s House" as a charity case. Powers takes the tram then her bicycle, to her house where she lives with her brother, mute since the war, who has kept her dinner warm. He has “war neurosis” the doctors say.
The next day Bridie Sweeney shows up and Julia Powers is grateful. They are soon very busy helping Mary O’Rahilly give birth to a baby girl who is tiny but healthy. Mary nurses her and smiles. When Nurse Powers has Doctor Lynn sign the birth certificate, she says infant mortality is fifteen per cent in Dublin because of lack of fresh air, too much dirty milk, and living in the dampest, most crowded housing in Europe.
When Honor White is admitted, her water has broken and because of an obstruction, she is losing much blood. Nurse Powers volunteers to give her a transfusion. But her blood is rejected by White and they stop it. The baby emerges fine with forceps except for a cleft palette. In the evening, Nurse Powers and Bridie go to the roof to sleep as the nurse’s dormitory is used for men’s fevers. They take blankets, chocolates, and an orange her brother has given her for her birthday. Nurse Powers and Bridie kiss and Powers realizes she loves this skinny wonderful girl.
Does their relationship work out? Do they continue to work at the maternity ward of the hospital? Find this fine historical novel by a talented author on the new fiction shelf of your local library.
Bridie Sweeney arrives as a trainee and helps Nurse Powers remake Mrs. Noonan’s bed. Sweeney is tiny, child-like, and anxious to learn. Nurse Powers shows her how to wash her hands and to fetch ice from the supply room refrigerator. The orderly tells Nurse Powers the new doctor, Dr. Lynn, is a socialist, suffragette, firebrand, and a vicar’s daughter. The orderly wheels in Mary O’Rahilly, seventeen years old, ready to deliver her baby. Nurse asks about the frequency of her pains and receives vague answers. Bridie shows Mary pictures in a book of a baby emerging from a mother. Mary is shocked, as she hadn’t known about this procedure.
Delia Garrett is in premature labor. Author Donoghue describes the symptoms graphically. Nurse Powers lays out needed items for delivery. She delivers a still-born baby girl and wheels it out of sight. Bridie comforts Mrs. Garrett the whole time. In comes Doctor Lynn. She has been deported for participating in a bloody uprising a year ago. They go like a juggler from minute to hectic minute doing what is needed for each patient. Mrs. Garrett weeps into her whiskey-laced tea as the priest comes to her bed. Ita Noonan, another other patient, convulses and Nurse Powers pushes and pulls on her back repeatedly. Bridie runs to get Doctor Lynn. Mrs. Noonan ultimately leaves seven children motherless at home.
At nine p.m., Sister Luke relieves Nurse Powers of her shift and Powers summarizes the day’s events. Bridie and Powers walk down the street together. Bridie boards at the “Mother’s House" as a charity case. Powers takes the tram then her bicycle, to her house where she lives with her brother, mute since the war, who has kept her dinner warm. He has “war neurosis” the doctors say.
The next day Bridie Sweeney shows up and Julia Powers is grateful. They are soon very busy helping Mary O’Rahilly give birth to a baby girl who is tiny but healthy. Mary nurses her and smiles. When Nurse Powers has Doctor Lynn sign the birth certificate, she says infant mortality is fifteen per cent in Dublin because of lack of fresh air, too much dirty milk, and living in the dampest, most crowded housing in Europe.
When Honor White is admitted, her water has broken and because of an obstruction, she is losing much blood. Nurse Powers volunteers to give her a transfusion. But her blood is rejected by White and they stop it. The baby emerges fine with forceps except for a cleft palette. In the evening, Nurse Powers and Bridie go to the roof to sleep as the nurse’s dormitory is used for men’s fevers. They take blankets, chocolates, and an orange her brother has given her for her birthday. Nurse Powers and Bridie kiss and Powers realizes she loves this skinny wonderful girl.
Does their relationship work out? Do they continue to work at the maternity ward of the hospital? Find this fine historical novel by a talented author on the new fiction shelf of your local library.