Emma Donoghue - The Pull of the Stars

Dublin, 1918. In a country doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city centre, where expectant mothers who have come down with an unfamiliar flu are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over the course of three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.
In The Pull of the Stars , Emma Donoghue tells an unforgettable and deeply moving story of love and loss.

Comment: Since I've enjoyed another book by this author last year, when I saw this at the library I thought to myself I'd try it and I've finally managed to bring it with me.

As a nurse, Julia Power does what she trained to do with as much competence and diligence as she can but the devastation of the war and the flu in 1918 just don't help with the survival rate of the patients in the hospital. Julia is left responsible for the maternity wing while the nurse in charge is ill, but there are challenges ahead of Julia, both related to the patients and with the two new women coming in, the new doctor and the new volunteer. At a time where all efforts seem to be given to people who suffered so much already, will Julia be able to help those in her care? What to expect from the new doctor, will she understand the issues at hand or will she demand things as the other doctors too?

In this book we follow nurse Julia Power in 1918, at the peak of the flu pandemic. She works in the maternity section, especially with pregnant ladies who also have the flu and since she has had the flu, it is believed she won't get it again and that enables her to better help the mothers to be. At the moment the novel begins, she is in charge of three patients who also have the flu which affects their health and, therefore, how their pregnancy might develop.

If there is one thing this book did right was to offer quite a vision of what medicine was in the early 1900s and for that alone I feel glad to live in the 21st century... Once we learn or are knowledgeable about certain things, it is difficult to imagine something else, but the reality described in this book, with the notion of what we know now, makes reading this even more stressful, for the patients clearly go through medical conditions, pregnancy related, which modern medicine and current hospitals probably would help so much better. I also think the narrative style, which is focused on Julia and what she sees in a short span of time, makes us feel a bit claustrophobic and tense, because we want the patients to do well, and when something happens, we cannot stop reading to see what happens to them.

There are three patients in the room and we get to know them a little and infer a lot about their situations. The reality of Ireland, the reality of a woman's role, the reality of medicine, the reality of so many things in such short amount of pages can feel as if too many heavy and tiring and impossible things are presented to the reader, but the author could convey all these things without it being too devastating. I still felt many things for the characters and wish all of them could have had a much better medical treatment but it's a wake up call, with so much we take for granted but it wasn't always so.

While the author does touch many subjects and all could be the focus of several books, I don't mind the quick and apparent simple scenes where we can be influenced to think of them. If the author had delved into them a lot more, the plot might get too heavy or too convoluted and this way I think the precision of the choices helped with the goal of being touching as well as a little shocking.

The focus is on nurse Julia and her own descriptions of things, her reactions, her point of view in regards to the patients but also the doctors and their choices. I liked the introduction of the female doctor (who was a real life person at the time) and how it felt as if she had a better notion of how to better help the patients. I can't tell if this is simply the use of facts based on the actual person or if it was a way to contrast with male doctors treating women regarding issues they weren't experts on (the male doctors were general medicine doctors or surgeons if I remember correctly) but clearly there was an intention of separating things when it comes to the roles of man in women at the time.

There are things related to Julia and her new volunteer which I felt was a bit forced, but I liked how Julia felt she could teach this person, who also came from a terrible situation, on how to be a good nurse. Of course this contributed to the dramatic end, which after so much negative situations already makes this a rather melodramatic novel. Nevertheless, it was a compulsive read and I was really interested in seeing what else would happen. One can say this is like a novel based on a slice of life, and the plot isn't really as definitive as one might like, but I was certainly engaged.

Grade: 8/10

Emma Donoghue - The Wonder

An eleven-year-old girl stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story.
Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, Emma Donoghue's The Wonder - inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth - is a psychological thriller about a child's murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes. Pitting all the seductions of fundamentalism against sense and love, it is a searing examination of what nourishes us, body and soul.

Comment: This is the first book I try by this author...I have not entered the train of Room but the premise of this one caught my attention and I'm quite glad I read it. I might even try something else by the author (not Room since I already know the plot, and no, I have not seen the movie either).

The story begins with the depressing journey nurse Lib Wright embarks on from England to Ireland, around the 1850s. Lib discovers she is going to watch over a girl who claims to not have eaten anything for four months and she believes she will quickly find how she secretly eats, for it is impossible the child to still be healthy and not eat. She is initially surprised by Anna, a very quiet and unassuming young girl, terribly religious, but who wasn't in Ireland, and how much she starts to like the girl. As the days go by and she doesn't get to understand how the hoax is being conducted, Lib starts to have doubts about several things but, then, something happens and Anna does start to show signs of getting weaker. Will Lib find a way to help Anna or is the girl going to die in front of everyone?

The idea of this story, a young girl claiming to be fasting because she feels it's her religious duty to do penance over her recently dead brother's soul, has a certain fascination if one isn't familiar to what religion and sense of duty can make one think and act, especially at a time when people didn't defy ideas or dogmas that generations have carried on. I suppose one can still see something like this nowadays, in how fundamentalist sections/groups still follow rules and words written for a society of centuries ago...

Anyway, religions' ideas aside, the story also works because of the atmosphere... rural countryside at a time where information and science weren't as yet advanced as today can make it easier to sustain such a plot. I think the same could happen in any rural area today or in places where superstition and lack of civilization still exists somehow. I think the author has done a good job in crating an environment and atmosphere that enhanced this sense of foreboding, that something would happen at some point.

Still, I thought the author would go on to a paranormal scenario, as if something weird - opposed to miraculous - would actually be happening to Anna. I even considered the possibility this would turn out to be like The Exorcist or something, but Anna maintained her quiet behavior and innocent personality, and I started to be intrigued by how she could keep the idea she wasn't eating. If one really dismisses the physical impossibility and the magical supernatural, then the situation had to be faked. I'm as curious about religious hoaxes through time as anyone, but if it was the case, how was it happening?

Well, when we do find how, I was already past the importance of this crazy thing, because by then the author had given enough clues and the reader could connect the dots of the very clear explanation that the reason behind all this was a lot more unfair, sad and maddening than anyone could imagine. I confess I felt such anger when it is revealed the actual explanation for this whole plot and in that moment I felt the author was actually quite clever with her methods in writing. I was not really expecting that, I thought this would be really about the use of religious fanaticism in the person of an innocent young girl, so clearly influenced and suggestible to act this way. 

As for the main characters, of course Lib was that cynical person who isn't religious and who doubts everything and even scorns a little how the Catholics portrayed here worshiped their religion. I'm Catholic myself but I also couldn't help but "judging" the Catholics here, by how extremist their notions were, although it is very likely realistic for that time. Part of me liked Lib, she did convey more advanced views on science, feminism, religion and so on, and it is easy to connect with her POV. She is rather secretive and I found the reason for that to be a bit silly, but, again, adequate to the late 19th century.

The end was a lot better than what I imagined, to be fair. Everything was pointing at the possibility Anna would die of starvation but I won't say how this ends, only that the way chosen was one I liked. I think, however, that some details weren't solved/dealt with in a very decisive manner and it felt as if some things weren't given the necessary closure. Nevertheless, this was a surprise I enjoyed and there were even some emotional scenes that I wasn't expecting. The pace was also rather slow at times and there were moments I wasn't too happy with Lib... but this was certainly and engrossing novel and I'm more convinced of reading something else by the author.

Grade: 8/10