I should start getting a commission from Amazon. Because right now, I say to you, if you have Christmas gifts left to buy for anyone who can read and has a heart beating in his or her chest, go buy this book. Ohmygosh.
Set in 1950's London, specifically the East End or Docklands, it's the story of an upper middle class young woman who becomes a midwife at a convent. She's not a nun, which is interesting, but a nurse and midwife who assists the nuns as they serve the impoverished women of the area. Nurse Jenny Lee, as she's known at the time of her memoir, is surprised to find herself in a convent when she arrives at the door of her new job, and even more surprised by the variety of life in Docklands. She tells her story with both a sense of history and immediacy, from looking back on the changes in health care and midwifery, to generalizing about the way of the world at the present time, to telling with compassion the circumstances of the individuals right in front of her, which are so amazing you almost wouldn't believe them to be true. Her voice has a combination of naivete and world weariness that gives a sense of what life as a young woman and the world was like just after World War II.
If you haven't heard and can't read the tiny print on the cover image, this story has become a series on BBC/PBS. I actually began watching the show before I started the book, but was told that the book is pretty much covered in the first season. I immediately stopped watching because I hate to spoil a good book, but I'm not sure if I did spoil it or not. I had the actors' voices and faces in my head instead of my own imaginings. On the other hand, I now can look forward to reliving the parts I already read and seeing new stories as I watch the rest of the show. It's like getting an unexpected sequel.
Also speaking of tiny print, the subtitle is "A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times." I think the reason this book so struck me is that this is life right now. It's the holidays, Christmas, the time of Christ's birth and families and supposedly joy joy joy. Yet it's so dark sometimes. Just reading any segment of news shows that the world is completely torn between darkness and light, desperately evil events like school shootings and heart-growing acts of love like football players befriending disabled students or people helping strangers buy their Christmas gifts. My life seems full of smaller versions of these ups and downs, too, with a beautiful but teething baby and the pleasure and loneliness of staying home with my children. It's comforting somehow to see this universal phenomenon mirrored in Jenny Lee's experiences with good people, bad people, poor people, generous people, birth, and death. Through the late nights and early mornings, the women she serves, and especially the nuns she serves alongside, she finds herself changing from scoffing at the faith of the nuns to yearning for their peace and love and eventually coming to her own faith. It's a good subtitle, and as nuanced as the story and its telling.
See? It's not just a story for women or BBC eggheads or whatever you might have thought. It's for all of us who need an excuse to smile and to cry and to gasp. Merry Christmas.
