The Birth House
by Ami McKay
Finished: March 21, 2015
My Goodreads rating: 4 stars ****
This book was very different from my usual selections. When reading historical fiction, I tend to gravitate toward southern U.S. or World War II novels, but this one was set during World War I. It also took place in Nova Scotia, which isn’t my typical setting of choice, either.
The main character, Dora Rare, is an apprentice to an Acadian midwife, whose typical remedies involve a lot of praying and a lot of herbs. The conflict of the novel revolved around the idea that the practice of midwifery and home births was going out of style with the new, “improved” methods of scientific hospital birthing centers with doctors, who use things like forceps, chloroform, and promises of painless childbirth to entice townsfolk to have their children at these birthing centers instead of at home with a midwife.
To me, the idea of midwifery is fascinating, and something that I haven’t really read much about, even in fiction, which is why I picked up this book and decided to give it a shot. While it wasn’t particularly action-packed, it did move the story along at a pace that kept me interested, if only to learn what the midwife’s next miraculous method would be to “catch” a baby.
There were a lot of good stylistic quirks that I appreciated in the book, including some correspondence letters and newspaper articles that helped tell the story in different, unconventional ways. There was also the theme of “women-taking-control-of-their-own-bodies” during a time when men were the breadwinners and main providers for the family, which, while a bit in-your-face at times, was still strong enough to keep me interested.
Overall, I enjoyed this book and it was a rather light read for me. Probably not a book that I will want to re-read in the future, but enjoyable nonetheless.
An Infinite Library 