The Pull of the Stars

The Sunday Times Bestseller and Richard & Judy Book Club Pick

Unforgettable and deeply moving, The Pull of the Stars is a story of love and loss set across three days in a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu. From the acclaimed author of Room, Emma Donoghue.

‘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 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.

‘This novel is stunning’ – Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

‘An immersive, unforgettable fever-dream’ – The Times

Selected as a Book of the Year by The Guardian, Cosmopolitan and The Telegraph