The Midwife

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. Four stars.