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The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)

Jennifer Worth

Paperback | Pages: 340 pages

Rating: 4.19 | 52900 Users | 6245 Reviews

List Based On 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	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 340 pages
Published	:	April 7th 2009 by Penguin Books (first published 2002)
Categories	:	Nonfiction. Autobiography. Memoir. History. Biography. Historical

Description Conducive To 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 Toward 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 Based On Books The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)

Ratings: 4.19 From 52900 Users | 6245 Reviews

Judgment Based On Books The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times (The Midwife Trilogy #1)

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

A 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.

I love the the PBS/Netflix series so I thought I would read the book. The book did not disappoint! It was fantastic and so well written. The stories in this book were very similar to the series. I look forward to reading Jennifer's next two books in the series.

4.5 stars - SpoilersI absolutely love the tv show, it's brilliant. I'm so obsessed with it that I decided to check out the book even though I never read non-fiction. I'm really glad I picked it up because it turned out to be a fascinating, heartbreaking, and lovely read.Random thoughts:-Summary: Jennifer Worth's memoirs of her time as a midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s. There's stories of herself, her patients, and the nuns she lives and works with And they're all great.-I really

This memoir of a midwife during the '50s in a very low income area of England is the basis for the series Call the Midwife. There are several really hard to read stories, but also several that did the heart good to read. One of my favorites involved a family with 25 kids, which I know, sounds appalling, but they were all so loving that I wished that all families could be like theirs. The only drawback was that with many of the chapters, you only hear about that family for that one chapter with

I watched the BBC series Call the Midwife before I read this, and knew I would not be able to be objective about it. I already knew all the beautiful people in the book before I started. I wouldn't know where to start if I were to enumerate all of them. Some are nuns, some are young midwives, some are courageous mothers doing their best in impossible situations, some amazing fathers providing and caring for their family in horrendous circumstances, and some piteous brave children surviving the

What a good book! Call The Midwife was funny, tender, and shocking by turns. Set in the 1950s in London, this is the debut of Jennifer Worth's series. A memoir of the beginning of Jennifer's career, this book is a series of anecdotes about all that is midwifery. However, it is also a glimpse of what the poor went through during that time frame. Mostly living in tenements or council housing, huge families lived in just a couple of rooms. Many of the women gave birth to more than TEN childrenof