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Call the Midwife
- A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Series: Call the Midwife, Book 1
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged Audiobook
- Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Social Sciences
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Publisher's Summary
Audie Award Nominee, Solo Narration - Female, 2013
At the age of 22, Jennifer Worth left her comfortable home to move into a convent and become a midwife in postwar London’s East End slums. The colorful characters she met while delivering babies all over London - from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lived to the woman with 24 children who couldn't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city’s seedier side - illuminate a fascinating time in history. Beautifully written and utterly moving, Call the Midwife will touch the hearts of anyone who is, and everyone who has, a mother.
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Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- E.Runnalls
- 2019-11-16
Excellent
Amazing story. So well read with authentic accents. Watched the tv series and loved it and loved the reading of this book even more.
3 people found this helpful
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- JGer
- 2018-09-20
Fascinating memoir
I binge watched several seasons of the tv show then listened to the book. The characters feel like family now. :) #Audible1
3 people found this helpful
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- Rebecca
- 2022-05-06
Great listen
Well told and fascinating story of midwifery in the East End of London the 1950's.
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- Norman
- 2021-12-16
A Fascinating Insight
I started watching "Call the Midwife" only a few years ago, and when they started airing the series from the beginning, I thought I should read the book.
Now I am bombarded with spoilers from both directions, and have the strongest urge to read the rest of Jennifer Worth's memoirs.
It's really excellent, and offers a powerful insight into the living conditions which persisted in developed cities within my own lifetime, and which continue to exist.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2021-11-10
Heartwarming stories
Great narration, stories of love, loss, courage and spirituality. A very good read. As good as the televison series.
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- Jardinpetitbasin
- 2021-06-29
Incredibly well read and written!
Very good book and the characters came to life with Nicola’s absolute talent for narration.
Highly recommended!
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- Vera
- 2021-05-28
Interesting stories
I did enjoy this book. At times I could not wait for it to end. It just depended on which story was being told. The narrator is definitely an acquired taste. Her spoken voice is clear. I found it too prim with a tendency to whisper on the important parts.
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- Kathy Adams
- 2021-05-21
Perfect narration and enjoyable book.
loved it! The narrator was excellent, her inflection and portrayal of additional characters in the story really added to the enjoyment of this book.
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- Nicola
- 2021-05-12
Not what I expected
This is not at all what I was expecting. I thought it was be more of a story than a history, and I found it a bit tough to get in to. However by the end, I was enthralled!
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- Kindness Ambassador
- 2021-05-05
A memoir that centers midwifery and so much more
Highly recommend for anyone who likes memoirs. I enjoyed listening to the incredible range of the accents & characters voices by the narrator. Such an interesting memoir that centered midwifery and the authors experiences of the profession including the people/patients on whom the memoir focuses.
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- Richard
- 2013-06-12
The best book I've listened to this year
So far this year, I've listened to about 50 books, and this has been the best of them. I don't read much non-fiction, I'm a guy, I'm an American, and I don't have any children, so a book of memoirs from a midwife in 1950's London shouldn't logically resonate with me at all. I can't explain it, but I thought this book was wonderful.
I read a few other reviews that disliked the narrator, but I thought she did a great job. She subtly captures different voices without making it into a big deal. The recording mix was a little strange, though, so if you have headphones that really accentuate bass tones, you might have a little trouble with the sound.
The book is a series of stories about different people that the author interacts with during her time studying nursing at a convent in London. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad, most of them incorporate interesting historical points about women's health, and all of them are amazing.
I wish I was a better reviewer so I could give a better picture of how great this book is. I'd feel a little silly just writing "this book is awesome" until I hit Audible's character limit, but that would about sum it up.
209 people found this helpful
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- Kathy
- 2012-11-20
This is one I didn't want to put down!
Call the Midwife was a truly gripping book for me. I am interested in birth and so reading about how births were conducted 60 years ago was so fascinating.
Yet, Jennifer Worth's story went far beyond that of the stories of the births she attended. It was the story of her maturing as a nurse and midwife, and of her strongly held notions about what was right and acceptable being challenged. She began her midwifery training at an Anglican convent in the dockland area of London's East End with not much more than disdain for people who were strongly motivated by love of God and called to service because of it. She grew to understand the women who mentored her, and to respect the ones whom she wrote off as just nasty or odd in the beginning. Seeing her dawning understanding of faith was lovely.
She also learned so much from the families of the poor and down trodden of an area so different from what she knew before.
Some of the stories she tells in this book are hilariously funny, and others are completely heartbreaking and painful to read. Worth certainly was a gifted storyteller, reminiscent of James Herriott. I hope the other books she wrote will be released on Audible soon.
Nicola Barber is a competent narrator, and not one who will put me off a book, so I was okay at first. But, I was very surprised; she seemed to really enjoy doing this book, and the characters came alive through her excellent narration. I was very pleased!
I don't think guys should be put of by a book about birthing babies, just as Herriott's books are more about the people than the animals. Give it a go.
136 people found this helpful
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- Jan
- 2013-06-12
My favorite this year... but not for all...
Slices of life as experienced by a young midwife in postwar London slums. Similar to James Herriot books, with feel of Potato Peel Pie Literary Society. However, "real life" is shared and it isn't always pretty. It includes several step by step delivery of babies, the story of how a young girl is drawn into prostitution, ups and downs of married life and child raising, a few babies born with "unexpected" color, some heartbreaking abuse, poverty, adoption and horrors of poor house relief. The only portion which is lewd is during the "entertainment" at the brothel, you know it is coming and a 3 minute fast forward would remove it easily without messing with the plot. Language is clean and although some of the experiences are heartbreaking the whole feeling of the book is the beauty of the cycle of life - aptly named birth, joy and hard times. You will smile a lot!
128 people found this helpful
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- Patricia
- 2013-06-09
A delightful read!
This is a delightful book and just wonderful to listen to. It is the memoir of a midwife in London of the 1950s. It is hard to believe that before the National Health Service came into being in the late 1940s and made free healthcare available to all, maternity care for the poor was practically non-existent in Britain. But by the mid 1950s nurse midwives were bicycling around the projects of London giving prenatal (the Brits call it antenatal) care and handling home deliveries, or even hospital deliveries for complications. Each story is more delightful or amazing than the others. My only complaint is that I never wanted it to end. The author, an experienced nurse, signs up for midwife training and thinks she is being sent to a hospital but instead it is a community of nuns who lovingly care for their patients and train other nurses to become experienced midwives. Britain was still recovering from the privations of WWII and there was an immense shortage of housing. Poor families lived in incredibly crowded and primitive conditions. Many of the old condemned buildings did not have running water for each flat but were still full of families because there was nowhere to move them. Into this comes all the drama of birth and death and family and money issues and even racial issues (Britian was just beginning to get immigrants of different racial backgrounds). It is just beautifully written, beautifully narrated (the Cockney voices will haunt me) and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
32 people found this helpful
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- M J Sweet
- 2013-03-24
What a lovely story
If you could sum up Call the Midwife in three words, what would they be?
entertaining, sweet, educational
What was one of the most memorable moments of Call the Midwife?
The breech birth scene was so intense and exactingly told I could not put this down. In fact the entire book went by too fast. I think people of all ages would enjoy these stories all from the 1950's East End of London
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
all of it
41 people found this helpful
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- Debbie
- 2014-06-01
True Story of Exact Era I Was Born In
I'm a child of the '50s, but here in the US, not in London, post WWII, a time of great uncertainty for many people. I'm usually drawn to historical fiction, but this audio book with true stories of the convent and midwives who served the poor and impoverished citizens is excellent. It's funny, touching, sad, and gives us a glimpse into a profession and lifestyle that most of us would never have the opportunity to know or understand otherwise. The faith of the catholic nuns, which Jennifer at first found to be strange and meaningless, was one of the sweetest and most profound parts of the story, as Jennifer learned first hand the power of a God that heals . . . a God that HEARS. This book is not preachy, it's very understated on the subject of religion, yet very real. Midwives riding bikes through snow and storms to deliver babies, give insulin shots, care for the elderly. Nuns who are as tough as nails, and as kind as Jesus. I purposely have not yet watched the tv series. I'm ready to see it now. I'm sure it won't hold a candle to the book.
36 people found this helpful
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- Jean
- 2015-10-04
Masterful
A friend of mine from Sunderland England sent me the trilogy a number of years ago saying she grew up in the East End of London during WWII. I read the books a long time ago but decided to listen to the audiobook just to hear the accents because I could never do them.
The book is Jennifer Worth’s memoirs of her time as a nurse/midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s. I remember the fifties quite well and it was easy to slip back into that time frame in the book. It is amazing how far medicine and society has come since the fifties; we now have Ultrasound, antibiotics, birth control, and an array of other medications. The fifties don’t seem like all that long ago to me, guess that is what happens as one ages.
Worth paints a colorful scene as she describes her training as a midwife while living in an Anglican Nunnery. The nuns were all nurse/midwifes and ran a school to teach nurses to be midwives while they cared for the people in the East End. Worth weaves lots of interesting stories of people and also about the nuns. I found the stories about the work houses most interesting including the fact that after they closed them in the 1930s they were converted into hospitals. It is no wonder the poor people did not want to go to the hospital. The book has little of Worth’s personal life but is mostly about patients and fellow midwifes. In many ways the book is a work history and anthropology of the Docklands of the East End.
I understand there was a T.V. series called “Call the Midwife” based on Worth’s memoirs that was very popular in Britain. Overall I enjoyed the book and the trip down memory lane. Nicola Barber did an excellent job narrating the book.
21 people found this helpful
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- Alexandria
- 2016-05-04
Disappointing narration ruins the book
I recommend reading this book in print rather than listening to the audio. I bought this book two years ago and found the narrator extremely irritating. I've just given it another go, and I cannot focus on the narration for the failings of the narrator. The narration is done in a whisper (for no apparent reason), so it's necessary to turn the volume up all the way. She does a good job with dialects, but so do a thousand other narrators who would have been a better choice. The sound quality is also inconsistent, as if the recording was done by an amateur. The narration ruins this book and detracts from the story.
19 people found this helpful
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- Marian H. Whitcomb
- 2013-02-25
Fantastic Book...
If you could sum up Call the Midwife in three words, what would they be?
The PBS series was fascinating, the book was better.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Call the Midwife?
To find out one of the boys became one of Lady Di's drivers. Not only ar there wonderful stories of birth, but so much history after WW 2.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
It made me smile, with so many stories it told.
Any additional comments?
Think this book is for all.
34 people found this helpful
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- Beth A. Benoit
- 2013-12-11
1950's, London Dockyards, Family, Faith
I enjoyed this book far more than I expected. This is a memoir of a nurse early in her career learning to be a Midwife in the London Dockyards in the 1950's. Her observations of convent and family living conditions are vivid, and the stories are funny, sad, and sometimes downright inspirational. I looked forward to my next chance to listen from the first chapter, with the introduction to Sister Monica Jones.
16 people found this helpful