38. 
Title: [The Midwife]
Author: Jennifer Worth
Pages: 352
Genre: Memoir
Medium: Paperback
Acquisition: Library Book
Date Completed: May 5, 2013
Rating: *****

Jennifer Worth's memoir of her midwifery training in London in the 1950s is fascinating and entertaining.  The narrative device of childbirth and midwifery is used as a great equalizer that allows Worth to examine and describe not just the obstetric practices of post-war England, but housing and class, education, personal relationships, and evolving culture.  The personalities Worth describes are both bigger than life and entirely natural, and more than once I found a character either strangely familiar, or wishing they were.  The conditions of life in the not-too-distant past seem to be from another world, and yet completely sympathetic to a contemporary American reader, as I viewed it through the lens of a mother and supporter of modern midwifery.  The Midwife (also titled Call the Midwife) is a joy, and I am very grateful I found Megan's original review.