The Complete Call the Midwife Stories Jennifer Worth 4 Books Collection Collector's Gift-Edition (Shadows of the Workhouse, Farewell to the East End, Call the Midwife, Letters to the Midwife)

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Jennifer was in her 60s when she began drawing on her experiences and wrote Call the Midwife, the first in the trilogy that spawned the TV series. “Although I knew she was writing, I did not know precisely what the book would be about until it was published in 2002,” says Christine in her book.

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. There was a particularly fascinating (and disturbing) section on prostitution in the area, which Worth had to deal with when she befriended a young girl who had been lured into a brothel. Worth also mentions the horrible workhouses in London, which she learned about while caring for a traumatized patient who had lived there for decades. When Worth asked an older nun about the workhouses, she was told: "Humph. You young girls know nothing of recent history. You've had it too easy, that's your trouble." I think Worth's later memoirs talk more about this, so I expect to hear many more horror stories. As much as I believe her general representation of the era, I admit that her writing style here made me raise a cynical eyebrow far too often for me to rate the book higher. Why? Well, because there are too many occasions where she recounts actual conversations that we know she did not witness and it is highly improbable she would have ever heard about in such detail. This is particularly prevalent in section one where she quotes employees at the workhouses talking to one another. These are exchanges that even the people the conversations concerned weren't involved in. Of course memoirs are always going to be subjective, but it made me question the truthfulness of what I was reading- how much of it was truth and how much was her filling in the blanks with how she imagined it could have gone? She fares somewhat better in sections two and three where either she was involved (section two) or explains when the story was told to her (section three). Summary: Jennifer Worth's memoirs of her time as a midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s. There's stories of herself, her patients, and the nuns she lives and works with… And they're all great.You learn of a brother and sister and another who becomes a close friend. They met and lived together in a workhouse as young kids—one was only two, one four and one six at the start. We meet them first as adults and wonder what has shaped them into who they are. The layout is good. You are curious; you want to know more. Their individual but also interconnected stories are grippingly told. Mary, Mrs Jenkins, Conchita's, and Ted/Winnie's story were the most moving and impactful for me. Conchita was amazing to cope with so many pregnancies, and Ted was the best husband and father ever — their stories put a huge smile on my face. But reading about Mary and Mrs Jenkins was so sad and upsetting, they had such terrible hardships and it was clear that they never got a happy ending in life… They deserved much more than what they got. Shadows of the Workhouse (Second book in the Midwife trilogy) Worth, Jennifer (2008). Shadows of the Workhouse. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 978-0297853268. (2005)

Christine’s book, The Midwife’s Sister, charts the years, including her mother’s second marriage – which brought more unhappiness for her daughters – her father’s new wife and the arrival of two half-sisters. I'm writing this as I'm just about halfway through so I may revise this later. For now, oh man. I have some issues with this book. I started reading it after I watched all of the first season of Call the Midwife on Netflix. I loved the show and got excited to see they were based on actual books. The East End in Call the Midwife looks a lot like the real neighborhood of the time. Sophie Mutevelian

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If you liked the series be prepared for something different. If you don't like fluffy memoirs and so avoided the Midwife books, this one is worth reading as a well-written sociological memoir of the brutal lives of those who have so little they live on the fringes of society and no one much cares. Jennifer Worth did though, and thought their lives worth documenting. She is survived by her beloved husband Philip, their daughters, and three grandchildren, Dan, Lydia and Eleanor. First, the voice of Jenny. She is candid and real - her storytelling doesn't sugar-coat her experiences or her mistakes. She never pretends that the East End was anything other than what it was: a hard place to live where people still found things worth living for. She shares her prejudices with us and shows us how they crumbled as she became more intimate with the people she cared for, both as a midwife and as a nurse. Life in the convent, its routines and relationships - Jenny relates these things with an unaffected and honest candor. Every once and a while the narrative felt a bit jumpy (moving between time periods, etc.), but because I was interested wherever she took me, it didn't bother me. Mr Collett's story was the most heartbreaking and moving, I couldn't stop thinking about it afterwards. He had such a hard life filled with so much tragedy, he was all alone and had no friends or family left. 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?

Jenny" Lee was hired as a staff nurse at the London Hospital in Whitechapel in the 1950s. With the Sisters of St John the Divine, an Anglican community of nuns, she worked to aid the poor. [2] She was then a ward sister at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital in Bloomsbury. She left midwifery to work in palliative care at the Marie Curie Hospice in Hampstead. [4] My only criticism of the book would be that parts of it had a little bit too much detail, but then when I write myself I include lots of detail so I can understand the pleasure in recording minute details. 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.a very powerful and moving account of life in Britain from the early 20th century to the late 1950s This last book was filmed in very much the same manner but was not faithful to the book. It was quite a surprise to see that Worth had departed from her rose-tinted glasses stye of writing to author a hard-hitting, horrific picture of the dreadful time those early post-war years for the very poor in a very deprived area of London.