Before babies are even born people are judging whether or not a women will make a good mother, especially unwed mothers. Motherhood and how we treat pregnant women is also a major theme. The societal pressures of religion, gender, and class are all brought up as Julia moves through her days. She is a nurse at the local hospital that is run by the nuns of the local convent, and she watches over the Fever/Maternity ward where pregnant women exhibiting symptoms of the flu have to go instead of regular maternity. Her brother Tim has returned from the war and the trauma has turned him mute along with other PTSD symptoms (loud noises, crowds). The story takes place in Ireland in the middle of WWI and the 19-teens flu pandemic, just after the Easter Rising of 1916. While she would have had no way of knowing how absolutely timely this story would be, she has produced something that mirrors our current reality to the letter and makes it very, very personal. In the Afterword of this novel Emma Donoghue explains that she turned in her final edits for this novel just before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.
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