Good, quick read. I've watched the series, so most of the stories were already familiar, just filled in with more detail. Pretty frank discussion of childbirth, etc. so heads up to anyone who is squeamish about ladyparts. ( )

Jennifer Worth reflects back on her time, 50 years prior to writing, working as a nurse and midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s. In mostly episodic chapters (a few stories carry over a little longer), she describes the poverty and challenges but rich life to be found among the people she served.

Though the stories can be a bit uneven, Worth bring an immediacy to the time and place, particularly the docks in Poplar, where many families lived in condemned housing and the community was still deeply impacted by the second World War and the evil of the workhouses. It was, perhaps, a little unfair to the book that I'd watched the show based on it first and recently, because I couldn't help but compare and contrast in my head. Many of her stories stay the same or are only slightly more dramatized, though the order she writes them in is not followed, nor is it necessarily chronological in the book, either. Worth sometimes jumps around from one type of birth to another, and puts three times when a mother was concerned the baby might be Black when her husband was not in a row. And while Worth generally treats people with respect, attitude of the time about various ethnic backgrounds do come through in her writing. Some characters, such as Mary, Sister Evangelina, and Sister Monica Joan, get a lot of attention, while fellow midwife Trixie is barely mentioned and Cynthia only a little more so. Still, midwifery in general interests me, and Worth writes about the experience in loving and sometimes dramatic detail, as well as contrasting current and past practices in medicine, making for a fascinating memoir. ( )

This kind of feels like the behind-the-scenes for a film. And it's a lot better than the sequel. Although any book that's been adapted into something like a film or TV series probably feels like a behind-the-scenes because they tend to fill in gaps and make things in the shortened adaptation version make sense, this is especially true in the case of "Call the Midwife" and I think the book suffers a bit for it. In my opinion, unless you've watched the TV series beforehand, you're getting a lesser experience. I think the book has some great additions when it develops side-characters who don't even get named in the series get stories, and characters you know get more development. But the writing is a bit clunky, and some characters are completely absent but for a name drop or, at worst, in the case of Chummy, ridicule by the author. I get it, the author wasn't a saint. But it's still disappointing to see that she felt the need to include what is at best a number of insults in regard to Chummy. Chummy isn't perfect either, but really? Really? The other nurses, outside of some vocal quirks and lines of dialogue, are largely absent. Maybe the show isn't the most originally written thing in the world, but it at least fleshed out the world around the protagonist outside Sister Monica Joan. And I could do without the internalized sexism. For all that the author clearly has an interest in analyzing the world around her and how it connects, and a deep sympathy for the marginalized and vulnerable, a large number of whom are women, and given that she realizes that she has some growing up and learning to do over the course of this journey, she has some deep-seated internalized sexism she never seems to deal with. And it's annoying at best.

I'm also really curious where she got all of her information. Some of it she explains, but some seem to come out of nowhere. I'm assuming she took meticulous notes and spent days or more with some of these people.

Overall, it's a nice addition if you like the show, and far more enjoyable than the sequel. ( )

Kept my interest though topics I had no former interest in. Very enjoyable, easy read. More to follow ... ( )

This is actually a re-read. Read this book first last year but had to rush it as there were quite a lot of reserves on it at the library.It is being turned into a drama series by the BBC so I wanted to refamiliarise myself with the characters. This is a very interesting book about midwifery in the 1950's and set in the East End of London. Some aspects of it are quite harrowing, particularly the chapters on Mary the Irish girl who gets drawn into prostituition. I really adored the Nuns in the book there were quite some characters. The East End characters are also very interesting. Makes me very glad that I had my children in the 1990's as some of the births seemed a bit scary. ( )