Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse

Last fall, I got hooked on the BBC/PBS series Call the Midwife, which is based on a series of memoirs by Jennifer Worth (formerly Jenny Lee) of the same name. In December, I reviewed the first book (titled simply Call the Midwife). A few weeks ago, after discovering I would be something like number 57 or 58 on the library's waitlist, I broke down and bought a copy of volume two, Call the Midwife: Shadows of the Workhouse. This volume, which is written in the same clear prose that manages to be both lively and nostalgic as the first book, focuses on Jenny's work as a district nurse, as opposed to focusing on her work as a midwife.

In this volume, the reader encounters siblings Peggy and Frank as well as the old soldier Joe and the painfully shy Jane, a nursing assistant-type character introduced in season two. The story of Sister Monica Joan's light fingers and inheritance of jewels is also revealed. Since Jennifer makes clear in book one that she did not see Jimmy for decades after they parted, it's not surprising that he had nothing to do with helping prove she had not stolen the jewelry, but otherwise I was impressed with how closely the show hewed to the book (and I should say this is the case for almost all episodes and characters, with the notable exception of Jimmy).

As the title implies, the common theme running through the lives of the characters in volume two is the scars left by the workhouse, whether having spent time in one or simply harboring the fear of ending up in one. As in the first volume, Worth captures the speech patterns of her patients perfectly; their Cockney accents dance across the chapters and into the readers ears with an ease that belies the difficulty Worth described of trying to put the dialect into writing.

In addition to the next episodes of Call the Midwife, I'm also looking forward to reading the third (and final) volume of memoirs, Farewell to the East End.

P.S. Given that the three books were originally published in England in a single volume, I think anyone doing, say, a 400+ page challenge this year could read all three together, if she were interested, and not be cheating on the challenge. Individually each book runs to about 300 pages.