My Notorious Life

I must confess: I read closely for 300 pages, then skimmed about 100 before reading the last 30-40 closely again. I don't feel like I missed anything. I liked Kate Manning's My Notorious Life, but it was simply too long. More than once I had to flip back through hundreds of pages to refresh myself on some person or event - and it's not like it took me six months to read!

My Notorious Life opens with a suicide - whose and for what reasons will not be revealed until the closing pages of this drama. In between, we are treated to the life and times of Axie Muldoon aka Mrs. Ann Jones aka Madame DeBeausacq aka Madame X. Axie-Ann-Madame is the orphan daughter of Irish immigrants. The defining events of her early life are riding the orphan train west from New York City to Rockford, Illinois, where she alone among her siblings is not adopted, and watching her mother die in childbirth. Both will mark her, of course, and set her on the path to becoming Madame X, the city's most sought midwife who delivers her patients safely of their babies, though often "prematurely."

Madame is on a collision course with Anthony Comstock, he of the famous Comstock laws, though and it is this battle that leads to the events of the opening pages - and the closing ones.

Written in the style of a memoir, Manning does a nice job of capturing the voice of a poor immigrant girl in nineteenth century. The language is pitch-perfect, non only Axie-Ann-Madame's, but especially that of her German friend, Greta, whose own history is so intertwined with that of the protagonist.

Returning to my opening comments, the (undue) length is the only knock I have against My Notorious Life. Certainly there were times I wanted to reach through the pages and shake one or more of the characters, but that is the hallmark of good writing. The twists and turns are mostly unpredictable, the language rich, and the work of the midwife deftly handled.