When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead.In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth s population killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power … remains is power and the strong who possess it.
A few women like her survived, though they are scarce. Even fewer are safe from the clans of men, who, driven by fear, seek to control those remaining. To preserve her freedom, she dons men s clothing, goes by false names, and avoids as many people as possible. But as the world continues to grapple with its terrible circumstances, she ll discover a role greater than chasing a pale imitation of independence.
After all, if humanity is to be reborn, someone must be its guide.
Philip K. Dick Award Winner for Distinguished Science Fiction
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Enjoyed immensely, a dystopian novel about what comes after a mysterious illness starts taking lives, of men but mostly women and children. I thought it was an interesting look at what could happen when society breaks down, and lawlessness becomes the norm. This is book 1 of a 2 book series ( The road to nowhere. Second book available 2/21/17. I personally can’t wait to read the 2nd book.
4.5 stars. Absolutely brutal tale of the travels of a delivery-room nurse after a plague wipes out almost all of the women on the planet. Disguised as a man, she must survive slavers, sex hives, and betrayals in order just to live. There is nowhere to go and no one to see; just survive.
Ellison delves into gender roles, sexuality, prostitution, and homosexuality in her post-apocalyptic world. In a world without women, sex becomes the ultimate currency. Some of the few remaining women create sex “hives” to control the men around them. Ellison holds nothing back. Pain, suffering, violent sex and rape are all prevalent, but none of it is indulgent or for shock value. She maintains the humanity of the characters and refrains from moralizing. Almost all of the book in dialogue, both internal and external. This structure works so well to keep the story humanized and personal. The dialogue writing is incredible and nuanced with unique voices for each character.
If you can stomach a dreary and violent world but choose to see the hope in it, Ellison’s novel is one of the best and unapologetic post-apocalyptic novels out there. Highly recommend!
I love reading books about midwives, and this book is quite original, with its post apocalyptic world-building in which females are children have nearly all perished due to a deadly fever. The book focuses on the survival of an unnamed midwife who dresses like a man as she searches for food and shelter and navigates her way into a nearly empty society, except for a few remaining men who are starved for the company of a woman – and not necessarily in a good way. I love the read and listen feature, the narrator is excellent, but the font chosen to set apart the journal entries is nearly illegible.
An apocalyptic story that mixes tragedy with hope, and considers if humankind will remain humane if society breaks down.
Really good story and such a surprise.
A nurse slowly watches the Earth’s population almost be wiped out and women are dying at a rate of 10 to 1 to the men which makes a horrible situation for a woman. This is the story of her survival and the story of mankind starting over.
When I sated this book I thought it was a crime /thriller. Then as I read I saw it was predominantly about 0one woman in a post-apocalyptic world. I keep planning to stop reading every few chapters. Before I knew it I was 70% through and had to know the ending.
What a great book. You do get many perspectives as you see other people writing short versions of their own experience.
I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone. I really don’t see how anyone could not like it.
A lot of insight into what could be. Highly recommend.
A disturbing dystopian novel. A different take on what happens when everything ends and we humans have to start to rebuild civilization. The fate of women as free humans is once again jeopardy.
Violent
I loved this book. It was dystopian but hopeful.
A disease takes out most of the world population, including 95% of the women. For the few women left, life is horrific, but the midwife finds a way to get through it. I’m ready for book two.
Unique dystopian future. Rather frightening but beautifully handled.
This post apocalyptic novel is immerses the reader totally in a world where most of he human population are gone due to a mysterious virus. Women are particularly vulnerable, so there’s some social commentary too. It’s all about survival, and the midwife of the title makes a great hero.
I couldn’t finish it.
I enjoyed the little different twist this books gives to the post-apocalyptic world. Good characters in a world gone mad. If women are scarce – would they be hunted or be revered?
I really enjoyed the innovative take of this post apocalyptic journey. Enough so that I continued on to the following books in the series. The only thing that gave me difficulty to the point that I had to consciously excuse it as the artistic licence of fiction was the alleged difficulty in finding guns in a U.S. after so much of the population died. That was a distraction in an otherwise interesting “what if” that kept me from giving all five stars. The main character and her journey, both mental and physical, is well worth the read.
Interesting perspective from a woman’s point of the end times.
A brutal, unsparing take on a post-apocalyptic future where most women have died of a worldwide plague, largely from the viewpoint of a surviving woman.
I’m on my second read of this book (and the 2nd book in the series) as a lead up to reading The Book of Flora (which is the 3rd book in the series) and I love it so much even the second time. The story is centered on a woman finding her way in the world after a plague epidemic hits the world and wipes out most of the population. It’s the only apocalypse type story I’ve ever related to, the whole thing is brilliantly told.
I had bought this one from Amazon UK back in December 2017 so it had been sat waiting on my kindle for me to get around to reading it for a while. I think it was one of those books I had bought and then forgot about! I had just finished reading a couple of books that had pregnancy as a major subject within them and I fancied reading something similar and whilst aimlessly searching by kindle for reading inspiration I came across The Unnamed Midwife and decided it was about time I read that!
The genres I have seen listed for this book are Sci-Fi and Literary Fiction, which I do agree with, though upon finishing reading the book I would also add Dystopian, Post-apocalyptic and maybe even a little futuristic.
At the beginning of the book we seem to be set in some sort of “future time” the prologue introduces us to Mother Ina who is wearing a false wooden nine months gestation pregnant belly even though she is clearly too old to really be pregnant. This detail sort of confused me a little and to a point I still don’t really know why Mother Ina was wearing a wooden pregnancy belly. Mother Ina is instructing the boys who are the latest chosen scribes to copy The Book Of The Unnamed Midwife. Mother Ina explains that it is not just one book but a collection of nineteen journals. She explains that the boys have already been taught the book of Canon which holds the story of dying and that it is a hard thing to read, it may make them feel sick, or upset. They have also learnt the book of Honus, which contains information about the hives. Mother Ina continues instructing them, that they will finish up with The Book of the Dreamless Ones then their training will be complete. Mother Ina drills into them that these books are very special and important. They are also very fragile and sensitive to light. It is the utmost importance that the information in them is kept and is to be handed down over the generations to come.
Then the actual book itself begins, the world in a state of widespread illness and panic. The main character of the book is the “Unnamed Midwife” whose real name we never really learn This strong female chooses a different name for every different person or group of people she meets. At the beginning of the book she is referred to “she” but the first time she uses a name it is “Karen” so I will refer to her as Karen now as it is easier to explain the book having a name for the character. It is her diary entries that form an important part of this book. Karen is a nurse and can’t remember the last time she had been at home, or even rested. Karen had been so busy with the constant influx of patients. Karen notices that the fever and illness seems, to be affecting women more. More and more of them are dying. Women that are pregnant are giving having stillbirths and then also dying themselves. Karen has hardly seen her partner Jack either. Jack is working non stop in the hospital labs to try and identify the infection and come up with a vaccine to prevent others succumbing to it or even to find a cure of some sort. The last time she saw Jack he had revealed to her that he still had a long way to go though he did think that this infection was autoimmune illness.
It’s not long until she herself falls ill and literally just finds a place to lie down and die. When she does reawaken, she doesn’t know how much time has passed or why she now seems to be fever free. She searches the hospital looking for Jack and in doing so finds lots of dead bodies, again she notices the greater percentage consists of women. She ventures outside of the hospital and is shocked by what she discovers. There are no buses, no cars moving, streetlights and no people. She makes her way to her apartment hoping Jack could be there as she hadn’t found his body in the hospital when she had searched. She is so tired she literally falls onto her bed and sleeps. Suddenly she is aware of the mattress moving as another body lies next to her. In her sleepy state at first, she thinks it is Jack and then realises it is some other man who is intent on raping her. She fights for her life and survives.
The first people she meets is a gay couple who give their names as Joe and Chicken, she gives her name as Karen. Karen is invited to eat a meal with them and spend the night. Later when Chicken goes out in search of water, he comes across other people and has to flee and ends up injuring himself quite badly. Karen treats Chicken’s leg and probably saves his life. They stick together for a while, going into office buildings to look for water, they survive a gas explosion and are almost caught by a gang of men. It’s then that Chicken bluntly tells Karen she is no longer welcome to travel with them as she will be putting them in more danger.
“Karen” soon decides she needs to hide the fact that she is a woman, as she meets different groups or lone survivors, she is all the more wary of trusting anyone with the fact she is a woman. So, she always gives a male name and says she was a field medic in Afghanistan and just leaves the fact that she is female out of her story. It is not until much later in the book that she reveals she is a qualified midwife. Her skills are certainly needed as some settlers are actively becoming pregnant thinking, they will be okay now the plague/fever seems to have died out. It is also towards the latter part of the book that, the then named Dusty comes across a settlement of what she calls Mormons though they prefer to be referred to as LDS. They believe they are doing Gods work in Huntsville, and they are going to repopulate the world. There are 59 settlers in total, 52 men of varying ages, 3 women consisting of an old woman (too old to have more children), a middle-aged woman and a young newly married woman. There are also 4 children comprising of 2 girls and 2 boys all under the age of 10. Dusty agrees to spending some time with the group as they try to convince her to stay with them. Dusty feels there is something odd and not right about the group and decides she would rather be on her own, though she does agree they can call on her for medical emergencies if needed.
The main character is female, what is turning out to be in scarce supply, making it hazardous to be a woman, especially a woman of child bearing age. She is hurt when Joe and Chicken turn their backs on her and I think she would have probably happily stayed with them. The fact they more or less abandon her gives her a harsh reality check, she has no one to rely on but herself. She cuts off her long hair, kits herself out in a vest to bind her chest and wears men’s clothing to disguise that she is female. She learns not to trust anyone. As she meets different people, she gives them all a different name. I wonder if it is meant to be that she no longer remembers her name as she was so ill. Or is it as she no longer identifies with the person she once was, and the world she now lives in that she gives different names. Or perhaps she simply doesn’t trust anyone to tell them the one thing she can keep to herself and that’s her real name. I really liked the “unnamed midwife” as a character, she is a tough woman determined not only to make it on her own but to help any women she comes across on her journey. She provides them with birth control, and any medical help she can give them without revealing herself as a mother.
I loved the part of the book where “the unnamed midwife” ends up in a settlement literally called “Nowhere” and hears news of her partner Jack. It certainly makes both her and the reader go through a lot of “What if’s”. Things could have been so different if they had remained together, but then the realist part of her brain and the readers brain kicks in and thinks that the ending she has at the end of the book may never have happened. Had she been travelling with Jack maybe they both would be dead, or Jack dead and her a slave to the meant that would have killed him to get her.
I would say this book is an 18+ read with the content and subject matter of rape, and sexuality. I would say that the section concerning the LDS and how they were choosing to live in Huntsville may be uncomfortable reading for some too. I enjoyed the sections that were in diary form initially by the Unnamed Midwife using the various names she came up with, then the section that “Dusty” copied into her journal from the diary Honus had kept during his time on her mission from the LDS. Then there are the diary entries of the people who have come together to live in “Nowhere” too. There is, also the sections where the narrator is telling the story which kept my interest going when some of the diary entries were a bit too slowly paced or a little too drawn out. This is the first book in a series and though at times the book felt a little slow in pace, I still want to read more of this series. I am definitely glad that I finally got around to reading this book. It reminded me a tiny bit of Sophie Littlefield’s, Aftertime Series, Post-Apocalyptic for adult readers. I would say that it’s a decent start to a potentially great series.
It was a difficult decision to award stars for this book, on one hand I initially wanted to give the book 4/5 but then taking into account the sometimes slow pace and drawn out diary entries I finally decided on 3/5. It is still certainly worth reading at 3/5 stars.
Well written and frighteningly plausible. Kept my attention to the end. Not as despairingly bleak as other dystopian novels I’ve read. A good read!
As a Doula (not quite a midwife, but participating at hundreds of births by supporting the mother), I really looked forward this book and all I felt it could of been.
It’s OK that my ideas seriously varied from the authors because she told “her story”…:. Like most apocalyptic novels the thousands of unanswered questions and complexities can either make or break the story. I liked the journey Meg Elison took us on, apart from the *SPOILERS * the ongoing Rapists and Kidnapping/Sex Slavery. The Dichotomy of the virus/plague annihilating women and children during pregnancy and childbirth while juxtaposing every species desire to procreate is mind bendy. Throw in some sexuality isues like being a lesbian or gay man in post apocalyptic times and it makes for a great read.