Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Today is my 4-year-old’s first day of preschool (her second year of preschool, to be precise), and since I didn’t manage double blog posts on the 31st/1st like I’d planned, I’m using my first couple of hours of child-free time to force myself to write a review I’m been putting off since June.  Patricia Harman’s The Midwife of Hope River was actually a hand-me-down from my friend Britt, who decided she wasn’t likely to get around to reading it herself; I love historical fiction, and so I took it off of her hands to read myself before either passing it on or deciding to keep it.

It’s getting passed on.

The short version is that while it kept me reading, I didn’t love it.  Harman practiced as a lay midwife and then a nurse-midwife for years and published two memoirs before tackling a novel; my guess is that I’d enjoy her memoirs, because (with one small exception that I hope exists ONLY in the ARE) I didn’t have a problem with her writing.  Her debut novel, however, suffers from historical anachronisms, character inconsistencies, and an optimistic view of midwifing and childbirth in a time before antibiotics.  (It also has a bit more soap opera drama than a true novel of a strong female character should, in my opinion.)  If you’re a fan of midwives and not picky about historical inaccuracies, however, you might really enjoy The Midwife of Hope River.  (Midwifery isn’t my thing, while historical fiction is my favorite genre, which makes me a particularly unforgiving audience for it.)  Patience delivers babies, forms friendships, and learns more and more about her small Appalachian community as she does so.  Her story kept me interested, and that’s never a bad thing.

BUT.

The long version of my review is going to be a bit of a rant, I’m afraid.  If that’s not your thing, you can call this blog post done and move on.  Otherwise…

1.  THIS SENTENCE.  I’m desperately hoping it was fixed in the final edition, but how did it get written in the first place?  “It’s one of those crisp, clear, cloudless days of autumn, with little boats of white clouds sailing across the blue sky…”  Ummm…
2.   As a narrator, you can either be 30-ish and “too old” for drama, first love, fill-in-the-blank-with-whatever, or you can be constantly mentally dithering about your capability to be a midwife in a 19-year-old kind of way.  You can’t–believably–be both.
3.  IF you’re going to constantly question your current life choices in a “what made me think I could be a midwife?!” kind of way, you can’t then know exactly what to do in every birthing situation, saving every woman and child you attend (unless one or both were already well past saving before your arrival).  Also, the number of times that Patience’s mothers experience “no tearing” made me want to hit something.
4.  IF you are making your living as a midwife, you ought to want to be called to attend births, instead of frequently feeling a little put out.
5.  IF you are living in Appalachia at the start of the Great Depression, and you have no electricity, gas, telephone, or car, AND you “only have a few dollars to your name” and “not enough wood or coal to last the winter,” you should not mention MORE THAN ONCE that you may as well go out to do something because “what else are you going to do with your afternoon?”.  People with barely any cash who have toast for breakfast have to make their bread first.  People who do farm chores have to wash things by hand, heating the water over the fire to do so.  If you are living alone with your animals on a farm, even a small one, there is never going to be an afternoon when you don’t have something pressing to do.
6.  And while we’re on that subject, who lives on a farm for a year and FORGETS to feed the livestock just because she’s been out all night attending a birth?  I’m not talking about just being held up; I’m talking about coming in after being out all night, sitting down with tea, and then FINALLY noticing the sound of the animals in the barn and thinking oh!  I forgot about the animals!  I don’t actually think this is a thing.
7.  And if you only have a few dollars to your name, and you only mention getting paid in food and labor, how are you actually surviving?  There is no mention of financial desperation, and yet even farm owners have to pay TAXES.  In CASH.
8.  Linguistic anachronisms.  They bug me.  Moving on.
9.  Who lives in Pennsylvania for years, moves to West Virginia and lives THERE for at least a year, and is THEN surprised multiple times at the racism she sees around her?  It’s 1929, for Pete’s sake.  Have you been living under a rock?
10.  No, she hasn’t, because Patience has apparently been impressively present for multiple mining events and catastrophes.  I’m pretty sure that reviewers commenting on how “well-researched” this book seemed confused the occasional history-lesson segments about coal miner disputes, complete with dates and statistics, with actual extensive research into the lives and culture of the peoples involved.
11.  And again with the she-can’t-have-been-living-under-a-rock, because she’s apparently known several lesbians and isn’t shocked when she finds out the midwife and friend who took her in when she was destitute are lovers.  Again with the 1929.  She seemed more shocked when a married employer tried to rape her, and I’m pretty sure it should have been the other way around.
12.  For a woman who insists that the idea of being waited on “makes her skin crawl,” her attitude toward her black roommate/friend/assistant is all over the map.
13.  Why does the nurse in town fall apart in any and all birth-related emergencies?  This doesn’t ring true for an experienced nurse in a rural community.
14.  Also, if you got pregnant out of wedlock in the early 20s but lost the baby, you’re not likely to bring that up in a first social event with someone, because 1929!

Okay, okay, it’s probably time to stop (especially since I have to do preschool pickup in less than half an hour).  I will say that reading Goodreads reviews of the book before I was finished likely influenced the degree to which I noticed some of these issues, but still.  The Midwife of Hope River drove me bonkers in SO MANY WAYS–and yet I’m annoyingly curious about the sequels, so do with that what you will.