Loading ...“Call the midwife” by Jennifer Worth
| I both loved this book and felt let down by the last page.
This is a true story of a young midwife working in London’s East End in the 1950s. Back then, midwifery was still a relatively new discipline and of course, it was still unusual for women to work, even though the second world war had helped the cause a lot. The book is an account of her experience, interlacing general observations about the living conditions in the East End with details of specific families and births. Jennifer Worth is very good at giving a sense of the times, mixing up descriptions with dialogue, narration with action. |
London’s East End was a tough place to live in the 1950s, striken with poverty, slums, prostitution, overcrowded dwellings, limited future for children and basically, it was seen as a condemned place, yet the authorities were slow at acting when it came to actually demolishing all the condemned houses and tenements.
Jennifer gives a vivid picture of what it was like to live there back then, and if you have any curiosity regarding London’s recent history, this is worth reading.
So why I didn’t like the last page? Well, the last page made it all sound as if what she got from the experience was solely more love for God, as opposed to more love for the human race, or more understanding of the human race, or more tolerance for her fellow human contemporaries.
Jennifer shows great strength of character throughout the book, which made the ending even more disappointing. I was hoping this experience would give her the desire to do something a bit more useful for others (finding God is a personal experience and not really useful for other human beings). Because of the evangelical ending, I cannot recommend it.
Links:
Jennifer Worth recounts to Danuta Kean how her memoirs were born
Jennifer Worth writes about Mike Leigh’s film Vera Drake, The Guardian - Vera Drake, Mike Leigh’s film about backstreet abortions, may be well acted and directed. Just a shame it’s so implausible, says former midwife Jennifer Worth.
Tags: london, strong women