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 love the program of “Call the Midwife” enough that I asked for the entire series for Christmas, and I got it! Santa was good to me! Well, I decided to try the book and it did not disappoint. I knew the stories from the series but though the series is faithful to the book there is just enough difference to keep the book entertaining and very readable. To say I loved the book is just that ! I did! This is a peek into a world that otherwise we would never have known about and how lucky we are that we could have that little view!
I loved this heart-warming of women caring for people in tough circumstances.
If you haven’t yet embraced this stirring PBS offering, there’s one more TV season to go . . . and it’s hugely worth your time to binge-watch all previous seasons and catch up. It’s easily the finest thing on television: telling weekly stories of midwives in the 1950s, serving pregnant moms in London’s poorest neighborhoods. There’s humor and pathos and wonderfully dramatic tales; the delivery scenes are astonishingly graphic. Trust me; you will often dab at your eyes.
The source books by Jennifer Worth are equally good. She writes in the first person about her experience as a secular and cynical young nurse drafted to work at Nonnatus House with the nuns. She arrives to the story as an agnostic, and admits to often rolling her eyes at the piety of the sisters. But let me share just a few paragraphs close to the book’s end. As a Christian, I am deeply touched by this.
“I had never met nuns before,” she confesses, “and regarded them at first as a bit of a joke; later, with astonishment bordering on incredulity. Finally this was replaced by respect, and then love. What had impelled Sister Monica Joan to abandon a privileged life for one of hardship, working in the slums of London’s Docklands? ‘Was it love of people?’ I asked her.
“‘Of course not,’ she snapped sharply. (That’s her character, a brittle eccentric.) ‘How can you love ignorant, brutish people whom you don’t even know? Can anyone love filth and squalor? Or lice and rats? Who can love aching weariness, and carry on working in spite of it? One cannot love these things. One can only love God, and through His grace come to love His people.’”
The closing line of the book: “That evening I started to read the Gospels.”
As good as the TV series, if not better. Powerful!
Interesting read about life in England from the perspective of a midwife; pointed out some differences between the past and present. The characters were realistic and sometimes entertaining. Each chapter told about a new person or family.
As a retired RN and with a paternal grandmother who supported her family while a young widow as a midwife in the primitive far western Minnesota, I was quite interested in this story. It is quite remarkable and full of interesting historical information. Even as an RN, however, I think one of these books is enough.
Very informative and interesting while at the same time very entertaining
I have watched several seasons of Call The Midwife and wanted to try the book on which it was based. It brought back many of the stories from the series. Some are heart warming, others are wrenching – that people had to live through these experiences in England. Certainly worth reading to get a sense of East London in the 1950s. These are true stories after all.
Wow, what an incredible time, and inspirational people. So human, yet so much more
This book has several chapters that reflect the TV series. Well-done! Great characters and insight into living in those times in that location.
It’s easy to see why it became a popular TV series. I don’t recommend it for bedtime reading as the images are quite horrific even though they are factual.
I read this book because I have watched the television series from the beginning and loved it. It was very enjoyable getting to know the characters better.
A wonderful picture of midwifery in the late 19th century.
Loved this book. Very interesting and informative. Liked the characters and seting. Thourably enjoyable.
Enjoyed reading about the progress that women giving birth have experienced in the early and mid 1900’s. Good and believable characters. Fascinating times and beliefs, and well written.
I absolutely fell in love with this book! I learned so much about this very real person’s life as a young midwife working with the nuns in such mean streets of London during the 50’s. The conditions of the slums where the author, Jennifer Worth, worked were appalling, but she and the people she worked with kept such a cheerful demeanor, I felt she always kept going about her work as though it was almost normal. There is a most informative section at the end of the book on the Cockney dialect and “writing” it. I think the author does a bang-up job of getting it into the book’s dialog. I’ve decided to skip the second book in the series because it promises to be a real downer. I have the third book “Farewell to the East End” already on my Kindle and am eagerly looking forward to starting it.
Tells the truth of a time when health care was not controlled by people who expected multi-million annual salaries for their efforts but really cared about the people they served.
Beautiful stories of kindness & life for the working poor in East London in the early 1960’s. James Harriett meets midwife.
Wonderful book! Added character depth to the TV series.
Loved it!