The Midwife REVIEW (my first ever book review!)

 Today is a book review; something I plan on doing more often, but have not done at all in the past. So, this is my first ever written book review, as I am sure I have talked people's ears off about which books I love and which ones I hate. I guess this is just the transcribed version of what I would say to you if you asked what I have been reading recently. It may not be very good yet, but it is my hope to get better at articulating what I read and what I thought about it. So, let's begin!

INCLUDES SPOILERS... but just read it anyway... because you probably won't read this book...

Have you heard of the forever-ongoing TV drama Call the Midwife? Did you ever notice that, at the bottom of the screen during the rather dramatic black-and-white theme played each episode, it says: BASED ON THE BOOK BY JENNIFER WORTH? Well, I did.

I would say that, around ages 15–17, I was a Call the Midwife fan. Every night (even school nights!) I had to brew myself peppermint tea and watch at least one episode of this franchise on Netflix. The show completely immersed me in what life was like in England in the 1950s, and that setting eventually made its way into my creative writing. Now, most of my short stories (and the NEW novel I am working on) are set in post-war England.

Naturally, when I realised that Call the Midwife was based on a book, I had to read it eventually. The first few seasons are the best, when Jenny (the protagonist) was still in it, but I stopped watching after the BEST CHARACTER, Barbara, died a tragic death after she had just got married in like season eight? If you know how much I grieve over the deaths of fictional characters, you can imagine why I stopped watching it.

The Midwife by Jennifer Worth, written and published in 2002, has been on my TBR for a looooooooooooooong time, and I finished it just about a week ago. The memoir follows a young woman, Jennifer "Jenny" Worth, and her work as a midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s. Jenny was trained as a nurse in a well-to-do hospital, and she knew everything by the book. Boy, was she in for a surprise when she made her way to Nonnatus House for her first midwifery job.

Nonnatus House is a convent in one of London's poorest areas. Jenny moves in with nurses Cynthia, Trixie, and later Chummy, and others but I can't remember their names, along with five or six nuns who are also district nurses or retired nurses. She is shocked to see large families of eight, ten, or twelve living in two rooms, probably with more babies on the way. She admires the friendliness of the East-Enders and their tight-knit community, but at first she is judgemental of the filth and some of the stranger folks.

One character who particularly stood out to me was Mrs. Jenkins. She is an old woman who is, quite frankly, crazy! Jenny sees her now and then, rummaging through muck and muttering to herself, thinks she is GROSS, and leaves it at that. That is, until Jenny is assigned to visit her and become her nurse.

She reluctantly visits Mrs. Jenkins in a decaying flat, legally uninhabitable for humans, and slowly begins to learn her story. And... NO WONDER WHY SHE IS CRAZY! When you hear the horrors of this woman's backstory, which involves, though I won't go into detail, the death of her husband, extreme poverty, a workhouse, and the death of her children... yeah, who wouldn't go crazy after that?

There are various stories like that of Mrs. Jenkins throughout the book, and I think this is where Worth's writing really shines. She writes these stories in such a way that you experience them alongside Jenny. I completely judged Mrs. Jenkins at first and thought much the same as Jenny, but as you begin to hear the stories of these people, you learn alongside her.

Honestly, I was not ready for some of these stories. Mary's story kept me up at night! Sometimes I would think, "Phew! I'm glad it's just a book," and then remember that it is a memoir and these things actually did happen. I would not recommend this book for the faint-hearted. Somehow, I could watch the TV series, which is very similar to the memoir, at age 15 without flinching (much), but reading it feels way more intense.

That being said, it is not all intense or scary stories. There are some funny ones in there too, although I've forgotten them all as I am editing this post weeks after I initiated it AHHHH.

One thing I particularly enjoyed was the way Worth occasionally reflects on the differences between the 1950s and the present. I don't know how to expand on this. Next paragraph.

Imagine if the midwife who assisted in your entry into this world wrote a book that included you and the details of your birth, and then it got turned into a TV series where the actual event and circumstances surrounding your birth were performed by actors... and you had no idea or no say in the matter. LOL! I sometimes think about this, as the babies delivered by Jennifer Worth probably would have been in their 50s when she published her memoir, and in their 60s when the TV series came out!

Overall, I would give this book 4.2 stars out of 5. That is 82 percent, or a solid B+ with "Nice job!" written on the paper if I were Jennifer Worth's professor. It was a page-turner... in some parts. It was nicely narrated, and the characters came to life wonderfully, especially in the funny parts.

Though I am of a sensitive nature, and some parts frightened me, I do believe it benefited me to know some of the more grueling parts of human history. More than anything, I think the book reminded me that behind every person, no matter how strange or difficult or smelly or loud or quiet or silly or opinionated or proud or wishy-washy or dishy-poshy or Yankee Doodle or fancy-pants or stranger-danger or rude or crude or even nude they may seem at first, there is a story that we probably know nothing about (maybe for the better). JOKE.

I think that is what I will take away from The Midwife. Beneath all the poverty, illness, mess, strange behaviour, and difficult circumstances are just people with complicated lives. I would know about those sorts of things, as unfortunately, I live near Yeovil. 

So, for a first book review, I suppose that will do! I am hoping to write many more of these as I work my way through my ever-growing TBR. Hopefully, I will get better at putting all my thoughts into words along the way.