Book 75: Call the Midwife

I've been watching the PBS series of the same name and enjoying it immensely, so when I realized Jennifer Worth had actually written and published her memoir upon which the series is based, I immediately requested it from the library.




Jennifer Worth was a midwife and nurse in the 1950s in the East End of London in the 1950s. In the preface, Jennifer mentions an article in Midwives Journal which said that midwives almost never appear in literature. Nurses and doctors appear, but midwives are invisible. Jennifer took this as a challenge and began writing.

What I liked best about the book is the way it shows all kinds of people in such an empathic light, even if Jenny finds them or their situations repulsive at first. As she learns more about certain characters she encounters, she unfailingly sees the good in them, and why they might behave in the ways they do.