Customer Reviews

The Birth House

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I bought this book on a whim. I'd never heard of it before, but the cover just...caught my eye. And the charming binding made me pick it up. I wasn't dissappointed. It took me...a day to read it, 12 hours maybe, of solid reading, because try as I might, I couldn't bear to set it down for long. The story just...completely drew me in, and the characters make you fall in love with them from the very first chapter. This book made me laugh and cry and rage all in a single chapter...and provoking such an emotional response...is one of the hardest jobs an author has. Also, the additions of a glossary, recipe and other little fun tidbits in the back of the book were delightful. The perfect book for the summer.

Here's to tea with mitts!

When I bought this book in the Toronto airport, I was looking forward to having an interesting read to Vancouver. Little did I know that this book would consume my every thought. I couldn't put it down! I stayed awake the entire flight reading it and couldn't wait to read more. I must say that when I finished this book, I was quite upset, and still am, that it was done. A really excellent read!

I've read both Ami McKay's books and both are just amazing! She is just a wonderful writer and really brings you into the time peroid and lives of these characters. I love the fact that the underlying current in both books is women and their rights and women banding together and taking control of their bodies. In this one, it's about a woman's right to decide how and where she will have her baby. Not the doctors decision or her husbands. As well it's about women choosing when to have babies. So empowering. Dora Rare is an unwilling midwife to begin with and then finds her power and place in the village as a savour to the women there. Truely a great read for any woman.

The story of Dora Rare's Life, Love, Profession, and Compassion is not only Compelling, It's Inspiring. Amy McKay Paints a picture of life in an isolated village in Nova Scotia during WWII. Dora is drawn into the world of the holistic midwife, helping to bring new life into the world. Yet with the sweet comes the sour, Dora often learns to ease fragile souls onto their next journey. As an Obstetrical Nurse, I found the details of Dora's work both fascinating and true to life. But beyond my personal connection with this book, it is truly a great novel.
A must read, can't put it down, page turner!!

In 2003 my daughter was born with the aid of midwives in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. They were godsends (and have become lifelong friends in the process). It was my first education into the world of midwifery and my wife and I are fully in support of the resurgence. It would stand to reason that I'd be drawn to Ami McKay's the birth house, which tells the story of a fictional midwife in early 1900s Nova Scotia.

What a colossal disappointment. Lately it seems that I've been drawn to a lot of stories that reveal the underside and complexities of small town life (in particular To Kill a Mockingbird and Dogville). At the beginning of the birth house it appeared that I'd be treated to another one of these tales:

"Men wagered their lives with the sea for the honour of these vessels."

"As the men bargained with the elements, the women tended to matters at
home."

"When husbands, fathers and sons were kept out in the fog longer than was safe, the women stood at their windows, holding their lamps..."

The problem was McKay never really got beyond this stereotypical view of maritime life, whereas the aforementioned stories excelled by stripping away the layers. In a lot of ways the birth house reminded me of E. Annie Proulx's faulted presentation of Newfoundland.

One exception was protagonist, Dora Rare. Another annoyance: McKay's ridiculous names. Had this read like a fable perhaps she could have gotten away with such silliness, but anchoring the story in such real-life events as the Halifax explosion and the 1st World War prevented any surreal experience she may have been going for. The Rares haven't had a male born in 5 generations, which makes Dora even more rare- wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Then there's Experience Ketch who had to put up with a drunken, abusive husband for years- imagine all that she's experienced- you get it? Oh and let's not forget the name of the ship that captain Bigelow sailed to the West Indies, never again to return to his wife... the Fidelity. Where's a rim-shot when you really need one?

Such intrusions of McKay trying desperately to be funny merely distracted from the story. Another prime example: the vibrator incident. After a doctor prescribes...ahem...vibration therapy, Dora mail-orders a vibrator of her very own to avoid him. In her diary she writes, "With the arrival of this 'medical marvel,' I feel hopeful..." My issue- petty as it might seem- is those tiny little quotation marks around medical marvel. Sure, it could be argued that Dora was simply quoting from the magazine ad, but doesn't it seem like McKay is throwing it in to joke with us, the modern readers? As in, "Can you believe how silly things were back then?" Yechh. The rest of the novel just got more and more obvious that it was a 21st century author casting modern knowledge and values backwards and expecting me to believe it.

I could go on (predictable, sexist, etc), but I'm just so exhausted with it all.

While I am normally a huge fan of historical fiction, I was not that impressed by this novel. I found the characters to be underdeveloped and the plot stilted. I found myself skipping over a lot of superfluous information that did nothing to further the story or enhance the characters. Before I get yelled at by those who love the book, I would like to say that I very much enjoyed the glimpse into the history of midwives/birth and woman's rights as well as the subtle yet clever parallels between the two. (IE the "birth" of women's rights and freedoms). However, I still felt it could have benefited from a good editor and the fleshing out of the plot.

One of my favorite books ever and I've recommended it to so many women. My daughter also loved it and included it in her monthly book club in Qatar. Women from all over the world read it and all agreed they loved it as well. Great historical fiction!

This is story is beautifully written and very engaging. I was immediately drawn into the story and could not put the book down. I ended up finishing the story in just a few days. I highly recommend this book.

A lovely story of a country girl who befriends a local woman who is a midwife. The community in Nova Scotia, Canada,finds the midwife to be odd. When a medical doctor moves to town he tries to convince women to give birh in a modern facility rather than at home using the midwife. I loved this story and it serves to demonstrate just how unnatural our birth process has become.

It is easy to see why this charming book has become a Canadian best-seller. It takes readers back to a time and place where life was simpler, though more elemental, and introduces a most attractive heroine in young Dora Rare, who becomes the midwife to her small community. The place -- a real one -- is Scots Bay, Nova Scotia, a small fishing and shipbuilding village at the tip of a rocky peninsula in the Bay of Fundy, isolated from the larger town of Canning by an intervening mountain. The time is roughly that of the First World War, and though the munitions explosion in Halifax and the Spanish Flu epidemic in Boston both play a part in the story, its focus is mainly on the women remaining in the village after the men have left.

Among these is Dora, reputedly the only girl child ever born to a Rare man. As a girl, she strikes up a friendship with Marie Babineau, an old Acadian woman who subsists on the charity of the local women in return for her services as a herbalist, healer, and midwife, "catching" babies as they come into the world, or occasionally undoing their conception; her only aim is to help. Dora becomes her apprentice while still in her early teens, and eventually takes over, although she also keeps a foot in the more normal social life of the village. The contrast between old half-superstitious wisdom and modern science is one of the few plot tensions in the book, especially with the arrival of Dr. Gilbert Thomas, a practitioner of obstetrics and an early form of for-profit managed care. McKay tilts the playing-field, however, by making Thomas all too ready to bring out the chloroform, forceps, and scalpel, and showing him totally blind to the emotional needs of his patients. While she paints a valuable picture of the early feminist struggle for autonomy in women's health, it is hard not to read this as a polemic for her own day also.

McKay, who lives in a former birth house herself, has done an impressive amount of research into social, medical, and maritime history, herbalism, and folklore. There is even a beautifully-illustrated herbiary at the end of the novel. Her book is a treasure-trove of tidbits of knowledge. The problem with this, however, is less her few inaccuracies (such as mentioning transistor radios three decades before their time) than the difficulty of maintaining narrative tension while writing essentially in scrapbook form, with vignettes, journal entries, letters, and newspaper clippings intercutting the mainly first-person account. This is especially true at the end, where the novel settles down gracefully into a series of glimpses. Though similar in subject and setting, it has none of the wildness or tension of Michael Crummey's GALORE. It is not a book I shall want to keep on my own shelves, but I shall certainly send it to my pregnant daughter, in some confidence that she will like it.