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Always remember you are part of the most wonderful, the most important, and the most privileged calling in the world. Nursing and midwifery are a vocation, not just a job. This book is special. It is informative, keeps you attention every second of the way and draws you in emotionally. It mixes sadness and happiness. It has a touch of philosophizing, theorizing about life and death, but this is not overdone. It makes you stop and think about how you want to die. Both the prose and the layout are excellent. Working side–by–side among the sisters, Worth soon learns that they, too, possess compelling histories. Sister Monica Joan is a mischievous and slightly dotty octogenarian when Worth meets her at Nonnatus House but in her youth, the sister defied her aristocratic family to become a nun and midwife, eventually delivering thousands of babies in London through the worst bombings of the Blitz. However, it is Sister Evangelina who most surprises Worth. After accompanying the abrupt and seemingly humorless nun on her rounds, Worth discovers that the sister is a war heroine who is beloved by her patients for her scatological tales and ability to emit a fart of Chaucerian proportions. Wise and saintly Sister Julienne is the stability of the convent, and clever Sister Bernadette is the perfect midwife.
Similarly, the varying roles of the nurses of Nonnatus House—including home visits for the elderly and infirm as well as prenatal care—would have been representative of the kind of work nurses during the time period would have done as part of the National Health Service or NHS. The NHS was instituted after the end of WWII as part of the UK's welfare state in an effort to ensure that all Britains had access to medical care. Follows on a brother and sister who escape from the workhouse and become a couple living together, with a tragic end. We knew that whatever had occurred had to be serious. What we didn’t know was that our childhood as we had known it was over,” Christine writes in her memoir. Sister Monica Joan was meaner than I expected, she was actually kind of a bully to Sister Evangeline. In the tv show she's far more lovable and everything she says and does seems harmless, in this she was horrible. The second part of the book tells the story of Sister Monica Joan, a 90-year-old nun who is accused of shoplifting. The third part is about the friendship that Jennifer develops for an elderly blind man who loses his home due to urban development.I love this author - she writes so redemptively. The author chronicles a lot of sadness of the poor in this book and it will take a few days for some of it to sink in, and parts of the book really affected me emotionally. Really enjoyed it. The stories were engrossing, the people were fascinating, and the 1950s East End setting was easy to imagine and immerse into. The children in poor families were working to help support their families. From an early age, they worked in the home, helping their mothers who were dressmakers or laundresses. Ten year olds were taking care of all of the younger children for women who went out to work. Frequently ten year olds were working full time themselves in factories, or sewing, or cleaning. I loved Trixie, she had such a strong and endearing personality. I especially loved her no nonsense attitude and her refusal to pander or listen to anyone else's rubbish… She made a change from the usual doormats in literature. In the early seasons of the show, St. Joseph's Missionary College in London was used as a filming location for Nonnatus House, but the building was sold, leading the cast and crew to move to a new Nonnatus—a set built at Long Cross Film Studios in Surrey. In addition to the exterior of the house itself, the set also includes the famous arch leading up to Nonnatus, Fred's garden allotment, Violet's shop, and some of the adjacent streets and buildings to create an authentic feel. Was Poplar really like it's shown on the show?
Shadows of the Workhouse (Second book in the Midwife trilogy) Worth, Jennifer (2008). Shadows of the Workhouse. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0297853268. (2005)
After learning their respective histories, Worth radically changes her opinion of both Sister Evangelina and Mrs. Jenkins. Share an episode in your own life when your initial dislike for a person was transformed once you got to know him or her better. Not exactly. The show was inspired by a series of memoirs written by Jennifer Worth— Call the Midwife, Shadows of the Workhouse, and Farewell to the East End. Though many of the characters and situations, particularly in the early seasons, are borrowed from Worth's books, the show is nonetheless a work of fiction. Are any of the characters inspired by real people?
For the working class, life was nasty, brutish and short. Hunger and hardship were expected. Men were old at forty, women worn out at thirty-five. The death of children was taken for granted. Written in response to an article in The Midwives Journal lamenting the notable absence of midwives in literature, Call the Midwife offers a riveting look behind the scenes at one of the world’s earliest and most little–known professions. Worth’s memoir of her early years at Nonnatus House is alternately heartwarming and heart–wrenching and the stories she shares will fascinate anyone who enjoys a good yarn—but especially anyone who has ever had or plans to have a child. As such, this book might usefully be required educational reading for every budding social worker, nurse, and care worker. It did get a bit preachy and religious towards the very end, but I should have expected that since Jenny lived in a convent with a bunch of nuns. The chapters were Jenny described her own personal experience or those of patients she grew very close to were the most interesting. Whereas the stories about the people she knew second hand from other people read more like fiction than fact and weren't quite as engrossing.
In God's mercy, I met an allergy specialist, a man of eighty-four, who took pity on me and guided me through an elimination diet. Within three months the eczema had cleared.
Within about six months these two little patches had spread to cover my entire body, from my forehead to my feet. My skin was sloughing off all over, water poured out of my body, my legs were swollen up to look like elephant legs.
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She adds: “When Jennifer was alive, I wanted to cry out to her to talk to me. Perhaps she felt the same. Or perhaps she understood – as I do now – that it was what was unsaid, rather than any words that passed between us, that mattered the most. A deep and enduring love.” While St. Raymond Nonnatus, for whom the show's house is named, is indeed the saint of midwives and pregnant women, the building the midwives of Poplar call home doesn't actually exist. This book is unfortunately problematic. I read Worth's first memoir several years ago and I enjoyed it far more, and the reason is simple: while in Call the Midwife you largely follow her personal experiences, here you rarely focus on Worth herself. It is split into three sections, each focusing on a different person (or group of people) that she knew. Ted became a loving and wonderful father to Edward without actually being his biological father. How important is biology in the parent–child relationship?
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