A review by pikusonali
Shadows of the Workhouse by Jennifer Worth

4.0

Last year when my best friend gifted me 'Call the midwife', the first book this memoir trilogy, I didn't know what to expect. He had not read the books but he found the BBC adaptation of this series very compelling. And what a fantastic story this has been so far. I loved this second book in the series as much as the first one. It is tender and emotional, heart-rending but addictive. Jennifer Worth was a young East London midwife in the 1950s and the poverty stricken London post-war was a brutal place to survive. In the first book, Worth tells stories of pregnant women and stories about childbirths. In the second book, she talks about the people around her, especially the ones she was surrounded with - the ones at the Nonnatus House, the convent of the nursing nuns. As the title suggests, the memories of the people involved in the book revolve around the infamous 'Workhouses', places where the unemployed poor were sent to. The book made me cry a bit yet it was so gripping, I found it hard to put down. For people who love memoirs, this is an excellent excellent piece of story-telling that I wholeheartedly recommend.
There is a quote in the book that goes like this - "Nothing binds people more strongly than the same sense of humour, and the ability to laugh together."
It is this bond that I share with my best friend that has helped to discover some of most fantastic things in the world and I consider this book series as one of them!