The Pull of the Stars

The Sunday Times bestseller and Richard & Judy Book Club Pick, from the acclaimed author of Room. The Pull of the Stars is set during three days in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu.

‘Moving, gripping and dazzlingly written’ – Stylist

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.

‘A visceral, harrowing, and revelatory vision of life, death, and love in a time of pandemic. This novel is stunning’ – Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

‘Reads like an episode of Call The Midwife set during a pandemic’ – Mail on Sunday

Guardian, Cosmopolitan and Telegraph‘s ‘Books of the Year’