1918 Flu Inspired Donoghue's 'Pull Of The Stars' — A Disquieting Pandemic Novel

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. Emma Donoghue is known, among other things, as a novelist who tells sweeping stories within cramped settings. Think of her celebrated 2010 novel "Room," which was adapted into a film starring Brie Larson. Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says the story that takes place within the confines of a room in Donoghue's new novel, "The Pull Of The Stars," is also a story that's happening around most of the world right now. Here's Maureen's review.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: Readers are awaiting the first novel of the pandemic. Emma Donoghue may just have stumbled into writing it. As Donoghue explains in the author's note to her new novel, "The Pull Of The Stars," she began writing the story in 2018, inspired by the centenary of the Spanish flu pandemic. Donoghue delivered the final draft to her publishers this past March, just as a stunned world was taking in the enormity of COVID-19. Understandably, her publishers fast-tracked the publication of "The Pull Of The Stars," which is set in a maternity ward in 1918 in Dublin, a city hollowed out by the flu, the first world war and the 1916 Irish Uprising.

In doing a deep dive into the miseries and terrors of the past, Donoghue presciently anticipated the miseries and terrors of our present - the claustrophobia of days spent inside, empty schools and cafes and the ubiquity of masks, here quaintly described as bluntly pointed, like the beaks of unfamiliar birds.

Reading "The Pull Of The Stars" now is such a disquieting experience - and certainly a very different one than it would have been had the novel come out earlier. The fourth wall of fiction is broken here for us readers. The pandemic spreads out beyond the pages of Donoghue's novel into whatever rooms we ourselves are quarantined in.

The main character of "The Pull Of The Stars" is Julia Power, a nurse midwife, about to turn 30, who shares a flat with her shell-shocked younger brother. Julia works in a supply room that's been turned into a three-bed maternity ward/delivery room for fever victims. Julia's patients, among them a newly married teenage girl and a delirious woman who has seven children already waiting at home for her, are in various stages of agony.

The mortality rate for flu victims during and after labor is sky high, but Julia also observes there's another contributing cause that's never listed on the charts. After one of her patients dies, Julia says, I'm tempted to put down as cause of death, worn down to the bone. Mother of five by the age of 24, an underfed daughter of underfed generations - always on their feet, these Dublin mothers, living off the scraps left on plates and gallons of weak black tea. The slums in which they somehow managed to stay alive were as pertinent as pulse or respiratory rate. So instead of poverty, I'd write malnourishment or debility. As code for too many pregnancies, I might put anemia, low spirits, torn cervix or uterine prolapse.

Two other women squeeze into that improvised ward to work alongside Julia - Bridie Sweeney, an orphan sent over by the nuns to do grunt work, and Dr. Kathleen Lynn, an actual historical figure.

Dr. Lynn took part in the Uprising, was jailed by the British and founded a free clinic in Dublin. There's a risk that both these characters could turn out to be a bit precious. But Donoghue swerves away from contrivance. She's such a deft, lyrical and sometimes even cheeky writer.

For instance, during a quick break, a male orderly comes in and opines about women voting, which he dismisses because women don't serve, don't pay what he calls the blood tax. Donoghue knows to just let the irony of that remark lie. Hours before, Julia has had to manually remove the afterbirth from a hemorrhaging new mother. She's only practiced on an orange but gamely reaches into, what she describes as, a cave behind a waterfall; hot red past the gloves all the way up my arm. Hours later, another woman in labor almost dies in a sea of red. And not to forget, all these laboring women, certainly paying a blood tax, also have the flu, which they will pass on to some of their caregivers.

I suggested earlier that perhaps Emma Donoghue has given us our first pandemic novel, but that's not quite right. Instead, I'd say she's given us our first pandemic caregiver novel, an engrossing and inadvertently topical story about health care workers inside small rooms fighting to preserve life.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed Emma Donoghue's new novel called "The Pull Of The Stars."

Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, my guest will be Jim McCloskey, a lay minister who's devoted the past 40 years of his life to seeking justice, freedom and exoneration for men and women on death row or serving life sentences for crimes they did not commit. John Grisham calls McCloskey the dean of all innocence advocates. McCloskey is the founder of Centurion Ministries and author of the new memoir "When Truth Is All You Have." I hope you'll join us.

(SOUNDBITE OF DAVE ANDERSON'S "IMMIGRANT SUITE: JUROR NUMBER ONE")

GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Joel Wolfram. Our associate producer of digital media as Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF DAVE ANDERSON'S "IMMIGRANT SUITE: JUROR NUMBER ONE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.