Jennifer Worth
Paperback | Pages: 340 pages Rating: 4.19 | 52900 Users | 6245 Reviews
List Out Of Books The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)
| Title | : | The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1) |
| Author | : | Jennifer Worth |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Special Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 340 pages |
| Published | : | April 7th 2009 by Penguin Books (first published 2002) |
| Categories | : | Nonfiction. Autobiography. Memoir. History. Biography. Historical |
Commentary As Books The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)
Having given birth with the support of a midwife three times, when I heard about this one, I knew I had to make time to read it. The Midwife is the memoir of Jennifer Worth (“Jenny”) and her experiences in the East End Slums of post-war London. I think three things come together to make this a very interesting book. First, the voice of Jenny. She is candid and real - her storytelling doesn't sugar-coat her experiences or her mistakes. She never pretends that the East End was anything other than what it was: a hard place to live where people still found things worth living for. She shares her prejudices with us and shows us how they crumbled as she became more intimate with the people she cared for, both as a midwife and as a nurse. Life in the convent, its routines and relationships - Jenny relates these things with an unaffected and honest candor. Every once and a while the narrative felt a bit jumpy (moving between time periods, etc.), but because I was interested wherever she took me, it didn't bother me. The second thing is that the time and place is so narrow - we get such an intimate slice of a group of people, their trappings and failures and the things that make them tick. Some of their vices are described in uncomfortable detail and you can imagine how hopeless and degrading life could be. She teaches us to appreciate "Cockneys" and there is even an appendix so we can read Cockney and understand what they are saying :) As much as this book is about being a midwife, I also think it stands well as a cultural study of a group of people that no longer exist in the same sense. The third thing is the art of midwifery itself and her journey as a midwife. I caught myself smiling while reading some chapters, there is so much joy - and other chapters brought me to tears and had me biting my lip with worry. She was in the thick of the struggle between life and death that all mothers experience as they bring a new one into the world. And I think there is a nice balance between medical information and the more extensive personal stories that make Jenny's neighborhood vibrant, full of characters and their histories. She never pretends that it was easy or glamorous work, and sometimes the conditions she worked in were downright disgusting. I kept having the thought: this was REAL. It was her LIFE. Women gave BIRTH this way, lived this way - medical science was so different and I think this memoir gives a fascinating perspective of a way of life that is no longer, as well as a flavor for the satisfaction that comes from working with pregnant women. It's not lyrical or dreamy - it's a down-in-the-gutters look at an ages old profession. I loved it.Define Books Conducive To The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)
| Original Title: | Call the midwife : a true story of the East End in the 1950s |
| ISBN: | 0143116231 (ISBN13: 9780143116233) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | The Midwife Trilogy #1 |
| Characters: | Jenny Lee, Chummy Browne, Cynthia Miller, Trixie Franklin, Sister Julienne, Sister Evangelina, Sister Monica Joan, Sister Bernadette, Patrick Turner, Peter Noakes |
Rating Out Of Books The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)
Ratings: 4.19 From 52900 Users | 6245 ReviewsRate Out Of Books The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)
Having given birth with the support of a midwife three times, when I heard about this one, I knew I had to make time to read it. The Midwife is the memoir of Jennifer Worth (Jenny) and her experiences in the East End Slums of post-war London. I think three things come together to make this a very interesting book.First, the voice of Jenny. She is candid and real - her storytelling doesn't sugar-coat her experiences or her mistakes. She never pretends that the East End was anything other thanA fascinating read, probably more for women. I learned so much about the conditions at that time in general, and for women having children in particular in that area of the country.
Ive binged each season and it almost made the book even better since I got to relive each episode. So good. So fascinating. So much information. I was sad when I was done.
I read the companion book to this last year and hadn't been able to get this in the US, but now I am in the UK with my terminally-ill mother I took the opportunity to find it. You wouldn't think that the world of the 50s was so different as it is now, but this depiction of the 50s, of bombed-out London, health care where antibiotics were the new miracle drug and children played safely in the streets because there were no cars is truly another world. This, though, is also the story of a young
I see now that this is the first book of a series: http://www.goodreads.com/series/77112...This book is fun. You are told astounding stories about the author's years working as a midwife at the Nonnatus House Convent in the Docklands during the 1950s. You meet the wonderful Sister Monica Joan, a somewhat "crazy" ninety year-old nun, Conchita Warren who will give birth to both her twenty-forth and twenty-fifth child, the latter premature of only 28 weeks gestation, weighing less than two pounds,
3.5 stars. I'm a sucker for babies, birth stories, and midwives tales, so I was all set to love this. I found it kind of lacking in coherence, though. It's a collection of loosely linked vignettes and I think it would have benefitted from a better editor. Some of the stories kind of stood alone, some connected, and there was not much arc connecting the whole book. I found it interesting -- certainly I learned things about London that I had never known before, and much of it was shocking -- but I
by Andrea Renee CoxWhile I enjoyed the insight into the lives of several midwives during the 1950s, I was disappointed that there were so many inappropriate things in this book. Nudity, expletives, crude talk, graphic sexual content, alcohol, tobacco usage, etc. really dampened my enjoyment of this book. I also didn't appreciate that the author believed older women should be allowed to be crass and rude simply because they'd lived a long life. Since when does longevity grant anyone the right to
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