This book is unfortunately problematic. I read Worth's first memoir several years ago and I enjoyed it far more, and the reason is simple: while in Call the Midwife you largely follow her personal experiences, here you rarely focus on Worth herself. It is split into three sections, each focusing on a different person (or group of people) that she knew. 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...

I thoroughly enjoyed "Call the Midwife" and started this follow up to it with great expectations. The problem was I'd also seen the BBC mini-series based on these books and found too much of the book familiar. But that's not the author's fault, except that her prose this time just didn't seem to grab me as it did in the first book. While I read her first book in a day or so, it took me weeks to get around to finishing this one. And as another reviewer pointed out, this one just didn't feel as tr...

Early last year (2016), I discovered the first book in 'The Midwife Trilogy' called 'The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy and Hard Times' written by Jennifer Worth. Now that I have finished listening to the audiobook of the second book in this trilogy, I very much regret that I did not take the time to write a review of the first book in the series. This trilogy, a memoir of sorts, describes Jennifer Worth's experiences as a midwife in London's East End in the 1950s. The first book in the series

I included this book on my British Charm shelf, even though some of the stories were not charming at all -- they were gut-wrenching.Jennifer Worth was a midwife in London's East End in the 1950s. This is the second book in her "Call the Midwife" series, and while the first one focused on stories of pregnant mothers, this one had hardly any childbirth scenes and instead revolved around the memories of those who spent time or grew up in the workhouses. I had heard of London's workhouses, but had n...

There is pretty much nothing about delivering babies in this second Call the Midwife book! It's a series of stories, first about a related set of characters all linked to the workhouse. Then we get into the wonderful story about Sister Monica Joan (deservedly a favorite character in the TV series, and even better on the page) and then about an old soldier Jennifer Worth befriended after meeting him through her district nursing duties.Others have noticed that the tales of people Worth couldn't po...

The English workhouses first saved their lives then proceeded to break them, separating families, chipping at the little pride that remained, whipping the dreams out of their inmates. Many were strong and brave enough to leave and live, their souls tainted by the shadows cast upon them by the fear, and the shame of the workhouse. And these shadows pervaded society as a whole, decades after the formal abolition of workhouses in 1930. In this easy to read sequel to “Call the Midwife”, Jennifer Wor...

This sequel to Call The Midwife was just as fascinating and touching as the 1st book.I highly recommend these books to all history lovers.

Choosing whether to give this four or five stars is difficult. Liking it more than the first in the series, which I gave four, five seems the way to go! Very many will enjoy this book. I highly recommend it. Don’t put this book off; you will kick yourself if you do! Life of the poor in the East End of London during the 1950s and 1960s is drawn. The author worked as a midwife and nurse here during at this time. While the first book focused on midwifery, the second focuses on nursing and life

Continuing the popular “Call the midwife” trilogy, this second book contains many more stories of hardship, resilience, heartbreak, strength and courage featuring memorable characters from Poplar tenements (in London) in the ‘50s.I loved the use of humor to lighten the tone of otherwise depressing stories, the chatter of the housewives and wordplay of street peddlers, the banter of the young nurses and the grace of the nuns was charming. I am glad that I had the audio version too, because some o...

Yet another gorgeously written and utterly captivating book in the “Call the Midwife” series. The characters are truly memorable. Once again, I experienced an entire gamut of emotions – sobbing in some parts and laughing in others.

I could kick myself for not having written a review for the first book in Worth’s trilogy (Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times), about her life as an East End London midwife in the 1950s. I guess I could technically write one now, but my memory is so shoddy, and I don’t even have my highlighted and flagged hard copy to reference. What I can tell you about the first book is that I bawled!This book didn’t make me bawl, but it was an amazing sociological read, and the tears ran...

This is the weakest of the three books written by Jennifer Worth about her experiences in the East End. I read the other two first. The stories she tells are interesting and sobering in light of the cruel and ignorant statements I see today about those who, for a variety of reasons, cannot make the transition to the economy of the 21st century. The harshness of the work house seems only a step away today. I think we are still dealing with the dislocation of lifestyle and vocation that began in t...

A deeply eye-opening and very emotionally moving book. Laid out in three parts, this volume essentially contains six true stories: Jane’s life at Nonnatus Convent; the upbringing in the workhouse of Jane, Frank and Peggy; the deaths of Frank and Peggy; the marriage of the Revd. Mr Applebee-Thornton; the court trial of Sister Monica Joan; and the life and death of the old soldier, Mr Joseph Collett. The third, fifth, and sixth of those are covered in the first series (2012) of the BBC television

This is a charming book. It is the memories of a woman who was a young midwife in the 50s in the post-war, poverty-stricken East End of London where little had moved on since Edwardian and even Victorian times. She worked and lived in a convent of nursing nuns and writes both of her patients in the community and their colourful, if difficult lives, and the nuns she lives with. Generally speaking, memoirs of the religious life show nuns in a somewhat dour, if respectful, light. Jennifer Worth rat...

I love this author - she writes so redemptively. The author chronicles a lot of sadness of the poor in this book and it will take a few days for some of it to sink in, and parts of the book really affected me emotionally. Interestingly my own mother-in-law, who died in 1997 aged 82, was petrified of going into hospital because she associated with the Workhouse. Eventually she did go into hospital, but she was so terrified and distraught - even though the hospital was very nice - that in the end

SpoilersThis wasn't quite good as Call the Midwife… I still really liked it but it was missing some of the charm and honesty of the first book. The last section (Mr Collett's) though was absolutely wonderful in a deeply depressing sort of way.-The first book read more like a memoir whereas this one at times read like a fiction book, especially Jane/Frank/Peggy's part. Even though their story was true, I wasn't convinced by Jenny writing from their perspective as if she herself had lived through

Finished this book an hour ago. It was hard to read but don't be misled by that comment. I was gripped from start to finish bu as many other readers have commented, I found myself in tears time and again. It is different in content to 'Call the Midwife' but equally absorbing. Anyone having their children way back in the fifties in other areas of this country must never have realised how horrific the conditions were where Jennifer Worth practised her profession. Truly wonderful and heartbreaking

Television dramas cannot compare with the suffering and terrible grief occurring in the East End of London for close to two hundred years. Programs like Downton Abbey and Mr. Selfridge disguise but only allude to real conditions of ordinary working class people. Ms. Worth tells the actual story of East London Cockneys: horrific, dark, sadistic workhouses where the poor were imprisoned and made to do forced labor, not to mention the all-consuming later grief of survivors from WWII Nazi bombing. T...

a very powerful and moving account of life in Britain from the early 20th century to the late 1950sJennifer Worth talks about the experiences of the people she worked with as a nurse, some such as Jane who is an extremely neurotic woman , who lived though the horrors and cruelty of the workhouse as a child. the workhouse system was a truly cruel one.Jane was put in a dark small torture room at eight for thinking a gentleman who visited the workhouse was her father and was whipped severely by the...

Jennifer Worth worked as a midwife and nurse with an order of nuns in the 1950s. I loved her previous book, The Midwife. In this book, she revisits the setting and many of the same people. It is not all about the workhouse, as I expected from the title, but about the times and culture in which the workhouse existed up into the 1950s. It tells the stories of several people whom the author met while doing her work: Three people who spent their childhoods in the workhouse and were close to each oth...