So many rules I was getting used to breaking, bending to an unrecognizable degree, or interpreting in the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Only for the duration, of course, for the foreseeable future, as the posters said. Though I was having trouble foreseeing any future. How would we ever get back to normal after the pandemic? [p. 204]
I came down with something that fortunately wasn't Covid, and The Pull of the Stars -- set in Dublin during the 'Spanish' flu epidemic of 1918 -- was what I chose to read while ill: it gave me a sense of proportion, and a great appreciation for how far medicine has advanced in a century.
Julia Power is a nurse working on a small maternity ward in Dublin in 1918: this ward is for expectant mothers who are also suffering from the flu. Julia has had the flu, and has recovered: she is once again working 14-hour days under the strict eye of Sister Luke, and then cycling home to look after her brother, who is mute with shell-shock.
This is an Ireland reeling from the Uprising, as well as the First World War and the flu. Most of Julia's patients are Catholics ('she doesn't love him unless she gives him twelve'), ground down by repeated childbearing and raising large families in the 'dampest, most crowded housing in Europe'. Julia's own middle-class privilege is called out by a new doctor, Kathleen Lynn, who was chief medical officer for the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising. Dr Lynn has been imprisoned, wears a fur coat lent to her by 'a friend who's a countess', and gives Julia free rein to administer medicine as she sees fit. ("You seem competent.")
Dr Lynn inspires Julia both personally and professionally, but it's Bridie Sweeney -- a teenage girl sent by the local convent as a 'runner' -- with whom Julia forms a close emotional bond. Over the three days of the novel, against a constant procession of mothers and babies (not all of whom survive), Julia begins to realise that Bridie comes from a very different background to herself.
I was caught up in the exhausting frenzy of Julia's work, and horrified by the primitive techniques in use. The rapid onset and progression of the flu was vividly described: so were the morale-boosting efforts of the government ("THE GOVERNMENT HAS THE SITUATION WELL IN HAND AND THE EPIDEMIC IS ACTUALLY IN DECLINE." [p. 235]) which felt eerily familiar. Another congruence: the slum children don't go to school because of the pandemic, so they miss out on free school meals ... Julia's world is almost entirely female, partly because she's on the maternity ward but mostly because so many of the men have died in the war or of the flu.
The Pull of the Stars isn't a cheerful read, but it is fascinating because of Julia's emotional and political transformation over those three days; because of the little details that make the historical setting both immediate and relatable, like the stories people tell about how the pandemic started (fish eating dead soldiers? the wind blowing from the battlefields of Europe?) and the government's insistence that everything is under control. Julia is a very likeable narrator, competent and sensible and with a true vocation. This novel will stay with me: it's already more vivid in my mind than books I've read more recently.
Published in July 2020, just after the end of the first UK lockdown, this must have seemed uncannily well-timed. In the Afterword, Donoghue notes that 'In October 2018, inspired by the centenary of the great flu, I began writing The Pull of the Stars. Just after I delivered my last draft to my publishers, in March 2020, COVID-19 changed everything.' [p. 292]
The human race settles on terms with every plague in the end.... Or a stalemate, at the least. We somehow muddle along, sharing the earth with each new form of life. [p. 265]
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