The highest-rated drama in BBC history, Call the Midwife will delight fans of Downton Abbey Viewers everywhere have fallen in love with this candid look at post-war London. In the 1950s, twenty-two-year-old Jenny Lee leaves her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in London’s East End slums. While delivering babies all over the city, Jenny encounters a colorful cast of … encounters a colorful cast of women—from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lives, to the woman with twenty-four children who can’t speak English, to the prostitutes of the city’s seedier side.
An unfortgettable story of motherhood, the bravery of a community, and the strength of remarkable and inspiring women, Call the Midwife is the true story behind the beloved PBS series, which will soon return for its sixth season.
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I adore this book. Like the British TV show, it shows us the often grim, often uplifting world of midwives in London’s East End. The Second World War is over, the National Health Service has started, but the pill and the epidural have yet to be invented. Most women give birth multiple times, do so at home, and have a midwife overseeing their care. The stories Jennifer Worth tells of her early nursing career are a priceless time capsule into a world modern women can scarcely imagine.
There are places we can’t go because they don’t exist any more. Call the Midwife takes you to a part of London that doesn’t exist anymore, the Docklands, the East End, right after World War II. It’s a wonderful memoir of a life and a place that are different now. Easy to read fascinating subject with wonderful characters. Most of the characters are real people that Jennifer Worth knew, which makes it even more delightful. Highly recommended.
Charming. Absolutely charming. This book awakened long-buried feelings of hope and inspiration, made me tear up on more than one occasion, and showed me that empowered women existed decades before our modern age. The progression of child bearing, from discovery to the event itself, is a process that draws in women, lets them bond over shared experiences, and often creates generations of lifelong friends. I found myself a bit sad that the kind of camaraderie found between women united in the common goal of raisng the next generation is not valued or encouraged much today. While the ability to plan pregnancy is a great step forward for both science and women’s lib, it often seems to me we sacrificed something sacred for this right. This is a book every woman should read, if only to get a glimpse of what life was like for their mothers and grandmothers. Sometimes, the good old days were actually good, even if they were different from today.
The Midwife (which I also saw in a bookstore this past weekend with the title Call the Midwife), is the basis for my latest British television obsession, Call the Midwife. It’s a seriously good show, and I was impressed how closely a great number of the plot lines hewed to the original book by Jennifer Worth, nee Lee. Although I admit to skimming some of the most, uh, detailed chapters on the art and science of midwifery (and nursing, generally), I found this book absolutely fascinating. Worth does a bang-up job of capturing life in London’s East End, not only during the 1950s, when she lived there as a nurse and midwife, but – through her own research and the stories she learns from patients – of life there through the end of the 19th century and entire first half of the 20th.
It is this history that really sets the book apart from the television show. The show cannot capture the scope of the War World II destruction that still litters the landscape: entire city blocks that have been fenced off, the jagged remains of war – and the stench of a decade of filth therein deposited – filling the senses of all who live there. She takes a hard look at workhouses (the description of the workhouse howl is one of the most haunting passages I have read in a very long time), prostitution (often involuntary), and absolute, grinding poverty. As in the television show, most of the individuals who give this book life have dignity and humor that belies their circumstances.
Throughout the book, Worth captures not only the spirit of her patients, but their speech: the Cockney accents seem to leap off the pages and into the reader’s ears with ease. Her appendix on the dialect is fascinating, and well worth reading.
The book, like the show, is absolutely fantastic, and I can recommend both without reservations
(This review was originally published at http://www.thisyearinbooks.com/2012/12/the-midwife.html)
It was such an easy read and so enjoyable
Like the television series this is an excellent story. Very true to life in the time after World War Two.
Accurate and well written to keep me involved. Even having viewed the series on BBC I was not bored. I intend to read again in about a year to glean more historical information on the history of nursing. I am a retired RN and give this book a ‘high five’.
Love love love them
First introduced to this through the PBS series, and loved it, so when I saw the book it was a priority read for me. While I recognized many of the stories that were made into episodes for television, the book (as in most cases) is just miles ahead when it comes to depth and information. Stories will grab you and hang on – it’s just too interesting to put down. Absolutely blows the mind to understand what life was really like for people living in post-war London. So much history, and so easily told that you feel like you are reading the diary of a friend. Absolutely worth the time to read!
I am addicted to the show and wanted to read the books that the show was adapted from. The book is well written and really gives insight to the conditions during that time. I recommend reading the information in the back few pages (I believe that is where they were, as I no longer have the book) that talks about how they spoke as the dialect is a bit different. I plan on reading the next few books in the series.
Non-fiction that reads like fiction!
Well written!
Really enjoyed reading this piece of literature. It would be helpful it is were available to more people, such as nurses today.
There are several of these books, and I love them all!
A slice of history that’s not often discussed. The midwives played an essential role during a critical time. Not an easy job!
A wonderful and engaging memoir!
I love the series and I loved this book!
Loved the series, love the book
Love social history!!
For once, I preferred the series to the book