Book Review - Midwife on Call by Agnes Light

Plot Summary

The book starts off with a young Agnes Light (pseudonym) fainting at her first birth. What is particularly mortifying for her is that she has two children of her own.

Agnes started training as a nurse some years previously, only to discover she had become pregnant. She gave up her post as a student nurse, quickly married her boyfriend and had two baby boys in quick sucession. She and her husband split up. She later remarried and had two more children.

She worked as an Auxillary Nurse (HCA) for some time when her boys were young, and then commenced her midwifery training as a direct enterant. And fainted during her first birth.

Throughout the course of her book, Agnes describes some of her more memorable episodes, working in the hospital, in clinic, in the community and as an indepenent midwife, and the difficulty she faced in the profession due to poor hearing.

Book Review

Unlike many books of this type, Agnes is still a practising midwife, approaching retirement and dreading it. Also, uinlike many midwives of her generation, Agnes did not train as a nurse first. These make this book unique in this popular and expanding genre of health care professionals memoirs.

This book is funny and sad and is definitely well worth a read.

Book Review - The Truth About Melody Browne by Lisa Jewell

Plot Summary

The novel starts off when Melody Browne is 9 years old. She wakes up with her mum and dad outside her house shortly after her ninth birthday. Her house is on fire.

Melody has only a couple of memories of her childhood before the fire, and grows up, estranged, from her parents, with her son, whom she had aged fifteen. This is part of the reason they are estranged.

The book moves from nine year old Melody to 33 year old Melody, weeks before her son's 18th birthday. She is unhappy with her life. She is a single mother, living in a council flat and working as a dinner lady. And then, on the bus one night, she meets a man. He admires her shoulders. She thinks he is a freak. And yet, she agrees to a date with this man.

He takes her to a hypnotism show, and Melody is chosen to go up on stage and act out the part of a five year old. Afterwards, Melody faints and slowly, over the next few weeks, Melody's memory starts to come back. It happens slowly. Sometimes, she just recognises a house or a hairy mole on a lady's face, and knows she knows it. Other times, she actually has to be told about it.

By the end of the book, Melody actually knows what has happened to her and has met some of the people who, during the first nine years of her life, were important to her.

Book Review

The book starts off a bit slow, and to be honest, after reading the first few pages, I was almost tempted to give up. However, I persevered and it was worth it. As you learn more, along with Melody, through her fleeting flashbacks, or her feeling that she knows something, you are eager to learn how she got from there to here.

The book flips back and to, between now and 1979-1981, not always in order, so if you like a book that is chronological, it may not be for you.

I'm being deliberately vague, not wanting to give away the plot, but it is so surreal. It is a very exaggerated book, and if things like that happen in real life, then I must have lead even more of a sheltered life than I thought I had.

By the end of the book, I was in tears about Melody's life.

Except the disappointing start, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.