2007 50 Book Challenge: Book Three - The Birth House by Ami Mckay

I'm going to start off by saying how thrilling it is for me that I've finished 2 books in 2 weeks!
I know it sounds kind of sad. I mean it's just 2 books. And they weren't any great literary works that will change the world. But for me, I've been so distracted by life in the past few years that I've missed the joy I get from just reading. I used to immerse myself so completely in a book that my hubby knew not to bring up any casual conversation while I had a book in hand because I just wouldn't register anything. I miss that feeling of being so utterly caught up in a story and its characters to the point of shutting out whatever is going on around me. It's definitely an inexpensive escape that I've ignored for far too long. I do hope that I can keep up my reading from now on. I just enjoy it so much.

So onto the review...

The Birth House by Ami Mckay was a highly pleasant read. This is a story of a woman in the early 1900's just before the First World War broke out and through its duration. It's not a war story. It's a story about life in a small village in Nova Scotia in those times from a woman's perspective. This is by no means a chick lit book, but it is a woman's book. I don't really recommend it as a great read for the men that I know, unless they want to get a sense of the conditions that women lived in at that time. It was a time when women didn't have the right to vote, marriages didn't happen for love, and women (in this rural village anyway) were expected to keep house, have babies and were looked down upon for having any independent or intelligent thought. It was a bit of a rub for women back then because they really held so much power in their hands, they took care of everything, from house to home, cooking, cleaning, shopping, children, husbands. And yet, none of this power could be used to gain some independence for themselves because there was no such thing as feminism. Men ruled the households, they ruled their wives. And women lived like that willingly because that's what women did. I don't want to make it out like this is a problem. That was just the way of the world back then. We get a glimpse of the suffragette movement going on down in Boston but it was the lot of women in tiny Scots Bay, Nova Scotia to marry and have children. Reading this book gave me a sense of what it was like to live as a woman in those times. It reminded me that the rights and privileges we have now as women are taken for granted. That it wasn't so very long ago that women had a very different way of life.

Particularly I enjoyed the way in which the book was written. Mckay writes her story with letters, journal entries and newspaper clippings. It's like sitting down with her main character, Dora, over a cup of tea at the kitchen table as she goes through her scrapbook. There's almost a comfort in the simple way of life, tea and brown bread, the bliss of ignorance through the belief of just following tradition. I loved the anecdotes and quotes passed down and between the women in the book. There's such a history and sense of community surrounding that way of life, where recipes and stories were shared so personally.
However, the author doesn't pull punches either when relating the negative aspects of life as a woman back then. Marital abuse, child bearing and birthing problems, the pushing of new medical practices over practiced traditional midwife procedures, as well as the quickness to diagnosis independent thought and unwanted intelligent behaviour in women as hysteria. I did enjoy that the practices of midwifery were portrayed as sound compared to the almost barbaric way obstetrics medicine was practiced on the poor women of that day.
It's almost a fantastical tale because it's difficult to think of living that kind of life in this day and age and culture, where women have as many rights and ability to express free thought as any man, where we have the ability to choose how we live our lives.

It was a very enjoyable read and I would recommend it to any woman. Mckay's writing style was very easy to read and I liked that it had a distinct Canadian flavour to it.

Next up: City of Bones - Book One of the Mortal Instruments trilogy by Cassandra Clare