"The Pull of the Stars," "The Women on Platform Two," "Northern Spy": Ireland in 1918, 1970, 2023 скачать в хорошем качестве

"The Pull of the Stars," "The Women on Platform Two," "Northern Spy": Ireland in 1918, 1970, 2023

Hi! Welcome to Episode 117 of Pink’s Picks Book Recs: commentary from a retired high school English teacher. Today, we continue our vicarious summer “travel” with three novels set in Ireland. Chronologically, the titles are: “The Pull of the Stars” by Pink’s Picks “three-peat” Emma Donoghue (see Episode 62); “The Women on Platform Two” by Laura Anthony (a pseudonym); and “Northern Spy” by Flynn Berry. “The Pull of the Stars” is set over the course of three days in the three-bed flu maternity ward of a Dublin hospital at the tail end of WW1 from the first-person perspective of Nurse Julia Power. Short staffed due to the war and the pandemic, Julia finds herself in charge of the tiny ward with the help of only two others: Bridie Sweeney, an orphaned who has no medical experience whatsoever, but was sent by the local nuns; and, Dr. Kathleen Lynn (based on an actual physician from that era) who was hired to offset the deficit, but is also wanted by the authorities for her participation in Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, a revolt against British rule. During the “darkness and intensity” of those 72 hours, these three “women change one another’s lives in unexpected ways” (front flap). I love Donoghue’s structure of this book. Rather than organizing by chapters, she separates the narrative into four parts: Red, Brown, Blue, Black which symbolize the changing colors of the skin in the stages of cyanosis – “not getting quite enough oxygen into [the] blood” (48), a condition seen far too often due to the plague that killed “an estimated 3 to 6 percent of the human race” (Author’s Note). Donoghue’s depiction of Ireland’s poor, handicapped, orphaned, and illegitimate is sadly similar to what we see in Frank McCourt’s memoir, “Angela’s Ashes.” Donoghue adds in her Author’s Note that the actual Dr. Kathleen Lynn “campaign[ed] for nutrition, housing, and sanitation” (294) for the underserved. In her Preface to “The Women on Platform Two,” Laura Anthony writes: “The story that follows is based on a real-life event which occurred in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland in the early 1970s. While the characters are entirely fictional, the story is loosely based on the fortitude and determination of real Irish women and their actions in bringing safe and legal contraception to the women of Ireland.” The story begins in Dublin on May 22, 2023 with Saoirse who surreptitiously attempts to take a pregnancy test only to be discovered by her fiancé. While she is relieved by the negative result, Miles is saddened. With both in their mid-30s, he’s ready to start a family; Saoirse isn’t certain she’ll “ever be” (7). A fight ensues, so Saoirse flees on foot. Near the train station, she picks up a dropped photo with “a date hand-written in blue pen…exactly fifty-two years” (9) ago. With no plan other than finding the own, Saoirse boards the nearest train where she ultimately meets Maura who had just lost the artifact. Grateful to have it back, Maura regales Saoirse with the propulsive back story that led to her friends’ -featured in the pic – history-making pilgrimage to Belfast to purchase birth control still contraband in Dublin. “Platform Two” is a frame or framework tale with Saoirse’s story bordering the main narrative which is half a century before. I was shocked to learn that regarding women’s rights and contraceptives, little had changed in the Republic between “Stars’” 1918 setting and “Platform Two’s” five decades later. Unlike these titles inspired by historical events that transpired in Dublin, “Northern Spy” is a mystery set in contemporary Northern Ireland. There is a link, however, between “Stars” and “Spy”: Dr. Lynn’s affiliation with the terrorist group later known as the IRA. Though a peace agreement was signed in 1998, in “Spy” the IRA “never really went away” (front flap) and there’s been a recent uptick in “bomb threats, security checkpoints, and helicopters floating ominously over the city” (front flap). Protagonist Tessa Daly , mother to six-month-old Finn is back at work as a producer for the BBC in Belfast when “the news of another raid comes on the air” (front flap). “Security footage reveals Tessa’s sister, Marian, at the scene, pulling a balck ski mask over her face” (front flap). “The police believe that Marian has joined the IRA, but Tessa [and her mother] believe she must have been abducted” (front flap). “Spy” is a page-turner about espionage, counter-terrorism, and the power of familial bonds. I give “The Pull of the Stars” and “The Women on Platform Two” both A’s and “Northern Spy” a solid “B.”