Bibliofreakblog

Midwives by Chris Bohjalian

You know how it’s popular right now to name books, the so-and-so’s family member?  Like The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, The Bonesetter’s Daughter, The Zoo Keeper’s Wife, The Time Traveler’s Wife?  I don’t know if those books really need such titles, but this one should have been called something like “The Midwife’s Daughter”.  Or at least “Midwife”.  Singular.

This is the story of one birth gone wrong.  A midwife is helping a young woman give birth in her home, and has to make a gutsy decision to save the child.  There’s a blizzard going on, so going to the hospital or getting help are out of the question.  

The traumatized father sues the midwife for allegedly botching the job.  But really, the story that’s most interesting is not the stress that night and the law suit had on the midwife, but on the daughter, and the lengths she will go to to protect her mother.

However, the moral of the story, to me, is give birth at a hospital or birthing center.  NOT that I think that there’s anything wrong with having a midwife.  My sister had a midwife and liked it.  I myself was delivered into this world by a charming African-American resident (as in, someone still in their residency, called a doctor, but can’t practice on their own).  It was the 80’s (just like the book) and more than once have I heard this guy likened to a young Bill Cosby (funny, not Bill Huxtable).  The umbilical chord was wrapped around my neck and he told my mom to stop pushing, slipped it off my head, and delivered me unto the world.

So, not to get down on anyone who doesn’t have a proper doctor in the delivery room.  In fact, I refuse to give birth lying down, but that’s an entirely different rant, and I really should get back to the book.  

Each chapter starts out with a passage from the midwife’s journal, which will become pivotal as the plot progresses.  Sometimes its banal, sometimes illuminating–sometimes both.  The text of the story is narrated by the midwife’s daughter.  I liked having the mix of first person without switching back and forth, wondering who was narrating.  Italics mean Mom, regular print means daughter.  Easy while still keeping an element of post-modern form.

There’s a few details that stand out in my mind, and I don’t know why.  I actually read this book some years ago when it first came out.  I remember that the midwife’s journals were blue three-ring spirals with lined paper.  I remember the descriptions of the blood when the midwife cuts into the mother, and I can picture the whole scene now just as I imagined it when I first read it without opening up the book.

Curious how some things just stay with you, huh?

If you like this author/book, you might like:

The Birth House (F) by Ami McKay
The Midwife’s Tale (F) by Gretchen Moran Laskas
I Know This Much Is True (F) by Wally Lamb
Midnight’s Children (F) by Salman Rushdie
The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (F) by Kim Edwards
The Book of Ruth (F) by Jane Hamilton
The Red Tent (F) by Anita Diamant
We Were the Mulvaneys (F) by Joyce Carol Oats
Baby Catcher: Chronicles of a Modern Midwife (CNF) by Peggy Vincent 
To Kill a Mockingbird (F) by Harper Lee
A Time to Kill (F) by John Grisham
The Client (F) by John Grisham
The Stranger (F) by Albert Camus
The Fountainhead (F) by Ayn Rand 

Other works by Chris Bohjalian:

The Double Bind (F)
Skeletons at the Feast (F)
Before You Know Kindness (F)
The Buffalo Soldier (F)
Trans-Sister Radio (F)
The Law of Similars (F)
Idyll Banter (CNF) 
Water Witches (F)