Member-only story
Set against the backdrop of the 1918 pandemic, in Dublin, it is the story of nurse Power and her makeshift maternity/fever ward. It takes place over three days and revolves around unsympathetic and shallow characters. The novel consists of 4 sections: Red – Brown – Blue – Black named after the sequence of colours, a consequence of the grippe. It is an account of the plight of gravid women from the so-called ‘golden age of medicine.’ The narrative uses distasteful, gory and graphic details to describe childbirth and the very disturbing saying, “She doesn’t love him unless she gives him twelve.”
“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. It was like Emma researched the complications of childbirth from a century ago and was so fascinated that she decided to turn it into a book. Reading it was like scouring through an obstetrics journal to look for the bits and pieces of a story.
- Disease
2. Poverty
3. Homosexuality
- 4. Miscarriages
- 5. Stillbirth
