Emma Donoghue’s The Pull of the Stars must be the most accidentally timely novel of the year. Although completed before the current pandemic, it is set in a Dublin maternity ward in 1918 during the Great Flu. Fear and camaraderie combine in a story narrated by a nurse whose experiences mirror those of our current front-line workers. Best known for her international best-seller Room, she discusses her novel with Bill Goldstein, editor of the New York Times books website and book critic for the weekend edition of WNBC’s Today in New York.
