Reading Canada Reads: The Pull of the Stars

Welcome to Reading Canada Reads! A series of book reviews I am aiming to do as I make my yearly attempt to read everything on the Canada Reads longlist.

What is Canada Reads? Well, it’s a yearly program on CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) in which five famous Canadians debate five books based around a certain theme. The debates are broadcast over several days in March and one book is eliminated each day until one is left standing. This year’s theme is “one book to change the narrative” and you can see the entire longlist here.

For the past several years, I have attempted to read at least all of the five books that make it onto the shortlist and as many of the longlist books as I possibly can. And this year, I’m going to try to bring you all along on this journey with me!

So, without any further preamble, here is my review for the first longlist book that I read: The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue.

“In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over 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 once again finds the light in the darkness in this new classic of hope and survival against all odds.”

From the moment I picked this book up, I couldn’t seem to put it down. I was hooked very quickly and sneaking ten-page chunks between my tasks at work. Ultimately, I managed to read the whole thing in about three days.

The book centers on three main characters: Julia Power (our protagonist and a nurse in a makeshift Women’s Fever ward amidst the influenza epidemic of 1918), Birdie Sweeny (a ward of the catholic church that is sent to volunteer under Julia’s supervision), and Dr. Kathleen Lynn (a doctor and rumoured rebel advocating for Irish independence). While Julia and Birdie are fictional characters, Dr. Lynn is a real and fascinating historical figure. These three women are supported by a cast of hospital staff and patients as they attempt to fight the deadly influenza in the expecting mothers under their care. Throughout the novel, you watch as the characters struggle through the grueling days in the hospital, their worldviews being challenged and sometimes changed altogether as the flu, the war, and the tense political climate in Ireland push on. Donoghue does a great job building the relationships between the characters, even in such a condensed timeframe, which makes their moments of triumph exciting and their moments of tragedy heartbreaking. As you might expect from the subject matter, there are many sad moments in this book. But there are many joyful ones as well, showing that life continues to go on and find a way to thrive even amidst so much horror.

The novel is primarily set within the Women’s Fever ward of the hospital where Julia works, with a brief visit to the home she shares with her veteran brother in the middle. You can feel the tightness of this space and the rush of how quickly things can change for both better and worse come through in Donoghue’s writing, You can also feel the exhaustion as Nurse Power, Birdie Sweeny, and Doctor Lynn try to keep themselves and their patients in good health despite the sense of futility it sometimes seems to come with.

I can’t talk about this book without addressing the pandemic-shaped elephant in the room. While Donoghue finished this novel before the beginning of Covid lockdowns, it is impossible not to draw comparisons between the state of the world during the influenza pandemic and the one we are all too familiar with having been living for the past several years. The overworked and understaffed hospital teams, the discussion around the effectiveness of masking, government propaganda trying to tell everyone a bunch of questionably true methods of curing or preventing the flu with the aim of ‘getting back to normal’, the lockdowns, Dr. Lynn’s hope of finding a vaccine…so much of this novel felt like it could have been happening in 2020 as easily as 1918/1919.

Sometimes the adage that “those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it” sure feels accurate. In many ways, the world we live in today mirrors parts of the world 100 years ago. We have to look at how things happened and how we handled them in the past so that we can continue and improve on what worked then, not repeat the same mistakes. This is something that has always stood out to me as a student of history, and this book only helped to drive it further home. If the Canada Reads theme for this year is “one book to change the narrative”, I think this book succeeds by reminding us of narratives we seem to have forgotten.

Overall, I loved this book. The characters, the atmosphere, the writing, and the topical historical elements resonated with me strongly. If I had to give any critique, it would be that I felt the last 100 pages or so felt like they moved a bit too fast compared to the rest of the book, but that’s a pretty minor issue.

The Pull of the Stars was a great start to my 2025 Canada Reads reading and I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars.