What's in a Name Challenge: Midwives

For my first book for the "What's in a Name Challenge" (see my original post HERE) I choose Midwives by Chris Bohjalian for my "Profession" category.  I wrapped it up this evening and it actually took me a bit longer to finish than I anticipated.

As you can see from the picture it's one of Oprah's book club books.  My mother was the one that bought this and she could never get into it, so I swiped it in my "I want to read adult books that look cultured and deep" phase.  I was probably 18 or so.  It was published in 1998.

The book is about a midwife (duh) named Sybil Danforth who is delivering a baby on a really stormy night in Vermont and the mother dies in labor.  Sybil attempts CPR and the phones are down and the roads are covered in ice and they can't get to the ER, so she does an emergency C-section to save the child.

The following day, questions arise about what killed the mother, and Sybil is later charged with involuntary manslaughter, as the coroner believes that the C-section killed the patient.

The story is told from the point of view of Sybil's daughter, who was 14 at the time but is now 30.  So it's all past tense.  And in an effort to create suspense, Bohjalian tells us mysterious cryptic things over and over and over again.  And it gets tiresome.  In truth I think the last chapter is the first chapter repeated.  It felt like de ja vu reading it.

The book was slow and tried to put this big show of home birth versus doctor's on display but it was kind of flat.  He never made a very good case for either and I'm left feeling sort of as if he found a controversial subject that he thought would sell novels and attempted to exploit it.  The book contained all of the appropriate body part references and procedural things, but it sort of was missing emotion.  I just couldn't be bothered to care.

I wouldn't say it was a bad book, I'm not sorry I read it, but it's not my typical cup of tea.  It was dark and moody and sad.  Even when it was happy it was sad.  If I were rating this on a scale, I would give it like a 3 out of 5.  Somewhere in the middle.  It wasn't bad ... but to say I enjoyed it would be overstepping.

I read lots of reviews on amazon and they kept saying how graphic it was.  Eh.  I find I can skim through "graphic" parts and get the jist and not be offended.  But the real issue in this book was (like I mentioned earlier) I just didn't care that much.  And it didn't seem (and this may be because birth and babies and labor aren't anything I've experienced myself) wholly realistic.

But others loved it and raved.  So maybe it just didn't speak to me.