Midwives: A Novel

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Summary: Superb Story Teller at work!
Review: I was spell-bound - couldn't wait to get back to reading the book. Really gives you alot to think about. He is a superb story teller. I am looking forward to reading his other books!

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Summary: A Wonderfully Literary Thriller--Holds You to the Last Page!
Review: If you like a mystery, well-developed characters, and an absorbing plot-line, then MIDWIVES is for you. This reminds me of old New England gothic tales a bit. It's the perfect book to lay on the beach with or save for an icy winter night. Readers unfamiliar with the art of midwifery will love the author's careful and respectful treatment of this ancient and time-honored profession. Not only was I entertained, I learned something! Perhaps the best thing about MIDWIVES is that the author keeps you in suspense until the very last page. I was up all night finishing it!

Rating:
Summary: Really Gripping Tale
Review: I read this book while my wife was pregnant with our first child, making the story all the more poignant. Midwives raises complex issues that all parents need consider. The simpler ones, strange as it may seem, are the medical issues surrounding childbirth and the tradeoffs we make between natural and more "scientific" options. The more complex questions raised by Midwives force us to look at how almost any part of a parent's life can have a profound impact on the children. Indeed, what makes Midwives such a compelling read isn't the courtroom drama, but the internal drama of a child forced to deal with the consequences of her mothers actions.

Rating:
Summary: good idea; poorly executed
Review: This guy had an original idea for a story, and in the hands of a better writer, this could have been a great book. However, Bohjalian's characters are flat. His prose is metiocre- the dialogue is awkward and forced, and the narrative is in love with its own gravity. What surprises me most is how poorly plotted this book is. We know exactly what happened during the central birth/death before the trial even starts, and we are fed the crucial testimony within the book's first hundred pages. I'm sticking with Harper Lee's "TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD"

Rating:
Summary: Good plot, poor character development
Review: So many "popular" yet well-written books are like this one. They have well thought out plots that carry me along and are well-written and thoughtful, but they seem more like non-fiction than fiction. Except for the narrator, the characters are flat. I had absolutely no idea what Sybil was really like, and, despite the fact that a man wrote the book, the male characters were even flatter. The narrator was more believable because she could tell us about herself, but compare her to the girl in "Crooked Little Heart" by Anne Lamott or the believable characters in "The Last Resort" by Alison Lurie! I just never felt really involved with her and her boyfriend Tom was a joke. He spoke and acted like a grown up, was way too old for her and was totally contrived. However, the plot did keep me reading. And, until the end, I was convinced the author was a woman. I didn't see his picture until I'd finished and I was impressed with how he handled the narrator's voice.

Rating:
Summary: If you liked A Civil Action or Our Guys, you'll like it.
Review: Midwives was a surprise for me. I'm usually pretty snotty about men writing from the female POV, but I think Bohjalian did an admirable job, certainly better than Wally Lamb in She's Come Undone. Bohjalian's characters were richly drawn -- not tremendously multi-dimensional, but not paper airplanes either. I truly could not guess the outcome of the trial until the jury rendered the verdict. It was difficult to remember that this book was fiction. It brought to mind two other "trial" books I've read recently Our Guys and A Civil Action. Of course, if you read those books you'll find out the difference bewteen the fictional world and real life. Midwives is definitely worth reading and passing along. Don't hand it to a midwife though; my guess is it will get thumbs down by those health care professionals and other proponents of home birth, even though it is, afterall, a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Some questions left...
Review: I am SO into homebirth, this was an easy read. As a mother, not a midwife, I found myself actually getting scared at the prospect of having another homebirth! Those scary thoughts passed and the book ended leaving me with a slight sense that an injustice was done. Sibyl should have owned up to the death.

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Summary: Good story and teen age girl's perspective of "BIG EVENT"
Review: You can tell that this is the same author as Water Witches --- a female oriented environment in small town New England, written by a man (not quite as much as a stretch as Memoirs of a Geisha --- but better than Dirty Dozen). It is a teen-ager saying "Something big happened to our family, and let me tell you about it, but before I do, here is some background on our family". There is a back and forth between the past, present and future which is well handled. Well written and edited. It made me want to reach for the next book by this author.

Rating:
Summary: Buy this book
Review: Bojhalian's latest novel Midwives is a triumph-- a thoughtful and compelling read, combining the page-turning plot pull of a courtroom thriller with the layered textures and 3 dimensional characterization of literary domestic Realism. I'm aware of the controversy surrounding the novel, and have spoken to a number of direct entry midwives about it. Their essential criticism, that the novel is insufficiently supportive of home birth, is I think a basic misreading of the text, its characters, and the nature of novel. I emphasize the last point in particular; Midwives isn't a home birth guide. It's a *story*, and a story needs a dramatic, five-act structure; the stakes for the characters must be must be high for the book to work. Only the most unsophisticated reader would allow the story of Sybil Danforth to dissuade them from choosing home birth; everything about the novel insists that the death of Charlotte Bedford is an accident unrelated to her choice to give birth at home (the real culprit is bad weather), and that the state's effort to prosecute Sybil Danforth is a witch hunt in the classic, New England sense. The state is the antagonist of the novel, and Sybil Danforth is the book's moral center. Stucturally and thematically, the book broadcasts a sensibility that is in every way pro-woman, pro-midwife, and pro-child. It is also a serious page turner, beautifully built and written with a degree of supple, literary grace one almost never finds in courtroom novels. A wonderful book, by a smart, smart writer.

Rating:
Summary: Hated it
Review: I hated it, and so did every other midwife I know who's read this book. I happen to be a Certified Nurse-Midwife, but unlike the snotty CNM-in-a-suit portrayed briefly in Midwives, I have been a homebirth midwife and am very comfortable with it. I was offended by the tone of Sibyl's journal entries (flaky), which I found did not match the character as portrayed. And the ending was cheap and gratuitous.