Advice

Emma Donoghue latest novel, The Pull of the Stars, is a book evoking the Spanish flu of 1918

By Frank O'Shea
August 8 2020 - 12:00am
  • The Pull of the Stars, by Emma Donoghue. Picador. $32.99.

When a widespread illness characterised by fever, aches and hacking coughs struck medieval Italy, they blamed it on the stars. Influenza delle tesse they called it, the influence of the stars, or as Emma Donoghue calls it in this wonderful novel, The Pull of the Stars. In a note at the end, she tells us that she began the book in 2018, intending it to be an evocation of the Spanish flu of 100 years earlier: the publishers fast-tracked its release at a time when the world is getting to re-learn the meaning of the word "pandemic".

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