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    The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
    The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
    The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
    Audiobook9 hours

    The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

    Written by Meg Elison

    Narrated by Angela Dawe

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2016 and Philip K. Dick Award Winner

    When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead.

    In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth’s population—killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant—the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power—and the strong who possess it.

    A few women like her survived, though they are scarce. Even fewer are safe from the clans of men, who, driven by fear, seek to control those remaining. To preserve her freedom, she dons men’s clothing, goes by false names, and avoids as many people as possible. But as the world continues to grapple with its terrible circumstances, she’ll discover a role greater than chasing a pale imitation of independence.

    After all, if humanity is to be reborn, someone must be its guide.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateOct 11, 2016
    ISBN9781531830892
    The Book of the Unnamed Midwife
    Author

    Meg Elison

    Meg Elison is an author and feminist essayist. Her debut, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick award. She is a Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Sturgeon, and Otherwise awards finalist. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and an ancient, irascible cat.

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    Reviews for The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

    4.5/5

    576 ratings52 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I normally don't read post-apocalyptic fiction. You know the ones where almost everyone dies and the rest are fighting and killing and suffering, where everything is like Mad Max? I don't really see the point, they are always the same - most everyone dies, then a whole bunch of people you start to care about suffer and then end up dying anyway. This is one of those books. So why did I read it? I have no idea. To be honest, I don't even remember buying it so I really had no idea what it was about when I started reading it very late the other night. Am I glad I read it? Yes, I am. It's the same sad story about everyone for themselves but this one had a really great main character that was able to hold her own, had all the right instincts and played the game smart. I am so surprised to have really enjoyed this.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A little bit of a slow start but I was hooked after it got going. Super interesting plot line and I enjoyed the perspective the story was told from. Would highly recommend.
    • 4/5
      Very decent read! Was surprised by how well the narrator jumped from characters.
    • 5/5
      I stumbled upon this book and am sooooo glad that I did. Unique to this genre and thoroughly enjoyed it.
    • 5/5
      Well paced and totally realistic. One day this could happen...
    • 5/5
      This was a great story. Nice to have a female lead - not enough of that. I really enjoyed the book - made me feel like I was there!
    • 5/5
      I’m not sure if men would be so dreadful l hope not. Definitely a page turner ?
    • 5/5
      Wow!! Disturbing and amazing! Great style.
      Loved it.
      Sam S.





    • 5/5
      I was doubtful but WOW! Very good & definitely recommend!
    • 5/5
      Incredible. Haven’t read a book like this ever. Handmaids tale wasn’t for me, but somehow this book shows the importance of women’s healthcare
    • 4/5
      I loved the book up until the end. The story was great! I loved following the main character, the story is amazing. But the end was so sudden and rushed and a bit confusing
    • 5/5
      Fabulous book well narrated. Absolutely loved it. The world created by the author feels real and the characters full, rounded and believable. Can't wait to start the next in the series
    • 5/5
      My absolute favorite dystopian book! So well written. Don't skip
    • 5/5
      Absolutely brilliant! This is the best dystopian novel I've come across so far.
    • 5/5
      Audio straight from CD's so there are interruptions of "this is the end of disc one" etc., but other than that an amazing dystopian novel with great narration.
    • 4/5
      Actual Rating 3.5 stars, it dragged in places I wished it didn't, but the ending has me looking forward to continuing the series
    • 4/5
      lots of characters to keep up with but it works
    • 5/5
      This is a dark and gritty post-apocalyptic tale. The protagonist is a nurse working in a bay area hospital when a world-wide pandemic breaks out. Seemingly everyone gets sick and few people survive. Like Captain Trips in The Stand or The Georgia Flu in Station Eleven, the fast-moving virus in this book decimates nearly the entire population of the planet. Hardest hit are women. Not only does the disease leave few females alive, the ones that do survive can no longer bear children. The human species is seemingly doomed. To make matters even worse, most of the remaining men form enclaves and enslave any women they can catch. Written as a series of journal entries, with several omniscient-view asides to fill in a few blanks, the book tells how our female protagonist navigates this scary new world.Get this book. While it is likely to keep you up at night, it's short so it should only be for a couple of nights. If you are 16 or under, do not get this book. It is not for you. It's probably better that you re-read The Hunger Games or Divergent instead.
    • 5/5
      A great book about what the world might be like if a super virusreally hit us hard. And as someone who does not live in the US, or have any affiliation with America, I appreciate that at least glancing reference was made to the rest of the world. All in all a very good read, or listen in this case - the narrator was also good.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant narration. Loved this story of survival. Looking forward to the next in the series.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book brings a stark reminder to how valuable we are and how bleak humanity can be without hope or true desire to keep going. This is a dystopian and end of the world novel about women who survive through hell and who come out as something else. Well worth the read. Well spoken narrator that voices the characters. She was so believable and hypnotizing, it made you feel as if you were there. I would say this tops most dystopian literature.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      It was ok. Not great. I finished it only to find out what happened to certain characters. Way too much foul language.
    • 2/5
      Really liked the topic but the repeated use of = drove me away from it.
    • 5/5
      This review also includes the other two books in the series: The Book of Etta and The Book of Flora.
      I am a huge science fiction/fantasy fan. The Stand by Stephen King was my favorite apocalyptic novel. This series rates among the best in the genre. It has the good vs evil and end time nightmares. What makes this so great stand out above the usual in that genre is that the author addresses issues that have been hidden since time immemorial. The idea of gender identity and intimacy details that "normal" heterosexuals have no clue about and are usually unwilling to even discuss are explored and presented in details that made me love the characters and I felt I was truly invested in their lives. This author took me places that I had never explored in my imagination. It does have triggering events, rape and violence against women and children but that doesn't detract from the story and it helps underline the existence of those horrors in real life.

      I will be reading more from this author and am sure her other works will be eye opening as well.
    • 5/5
      I put off reading this for quite a while because I wasn't ready for yet another post-apocalypse novel. I was wrong. This is character-driven and gripping. I was lucky enough to have a long plane flight so I could finish the last 2/3 in one shot.

      Kindle version warning: the font used for handwritten journal entries is really hard to read. I had to blow up the text beyond "large print" for ease of reading. I kept blowing it up for that font, then shrinking it back down for the regular font. It sounds super-annoying, but it didn't really bounce me out of the book. It's that good.
    • 4/5
      I bought the audio of this a long time ago and just kept not getting to it until this week. I saw that this book had become a series and book 3 was on a list of books with themes I was interested in, so I decided to give this one a push up in my tbr and that was a good call.

      The midwife survives an apocalyptic pandemic that unevenly effects women and children. She discovers a world where different skills are needed, and a world in which she's safer as a man. I like how the journal aspect was dealt with and how sometimes she was definitely sinking into mentally ill spells due to the isolation and hardness of the world she was adjusting to. I like that she wrote her journal, and got others to add to it in raw, open ways. Pretty cool. I wonder how the rest of the series goes? I'm a bit excited to see.
    • 4/5
      The main protagonist is a women dressed as man for self protection in a post apocalyptic world. Same old destroyed world gone to the dogs but this time a women in the central role. Rapists instead of zombies.

      What was it about this book? I could sum it up by saying that all the men are rapists and all the women are stupid bitches. All the men really are rapists and not until the end do we get women as other than hog tied shag whores. That sounds real harsh but that's really how most of the land lies here. And even at the end we read of the post-post apocalyptic where women ride out, hunt down and kill the bands of men.

      In any other book it would be the pits and the end of any chance of redemption but in this book it is carried partly by the excellent writing and partly by the main character. There is something better in all this.

      Reminding me a lot of Station Eleven in that the post apocalyptic background has become almost a pastiched game background with "monsters" pooping out of cars, houses, trees etc.

      I did grow tired of all the cliches but enjoyed it just the same.
    • 5/5
      Really dark, but good.
    • 5/5
      Lots of violence, but none that I can remember was explicit. A really fascinating and thoughtful take on how the apocalypse might go. Also an intriguing meditation on how a new culture might shape its mythos in that context. Moving, sometimes disturbing, ultimately hopeful.
    • 5/5
      4.5/5 stars!

      Just like in the novel REBECCA, we never learn the main character's name in this book. Hence the title!

      I discovered Meg Elison through a few short stories she's written for horror anthologies and magazines and I decided that I wanted to try one of her novels. This one was recently on sale and to add the audio to the Kindle version didn't break the bank, and here we are.

      THE BOOK of the UNNAMED MIDWIFE was a bleak post-apocalyptic tale wherein a disease wipes out nearly every woman on the planet. The scarcity of women soon becomes a problem for those that did survive the disease. Will they also be able to survive the wandering groups of men, many of whom haven't seen a woman in over a year? You'll have to read this to find out.

      I loved the main character in this novel. Yeah, she swore a lot, was bisexual and independent. (These are a few aspects other reviews have pointed out as being negative; I actually enjoyed them.) I liked how her previous work as a nurse and midwife helped her to try to save other women she came across in her travels. I also respected her intelligence-dressing as a man to disguise her gender and doing whatever else needed to be done.

      I enjoyed the way the story was presented with one exception. This tale was introduced as being the main character's diary, and a woman is having some young boys transcribe it decades later. As such, this is mostly a first person narrative; except that in a few spots the tale slipped into a third person narrative and that did not quite make sense to me, as there was no way our heroine could know these things. (Though I was happy to learn the facts related during those portions, to be sure.) That is the only gripe I had with the book.

      Post apocalyptic fiction doesn't capture my attention as much as it once did, but this book rose above the normal PA tale. I was engrossed and invested and I wanted our unnamed hero to win, though "winning" was hard to classify-other than just surviving.

      I should also mention that the narrator was most excellent and managed to believably deliver a number of different characters and accents. Kudos to Angela Dawe!

      To wrap up here, I highly recommend this book and/or the audiobook if that's your thing, most especially to fans of post apocalyptic fiction and strong female characters!

      *I bought this book & the audiobook with my hard earned money and this is my honest opinion.*