Bedside Books Number 7

This has taken a bit of getting through. It's a Canadian novel which I bought when we were over there last summer and I thought I would love it but I didn't.

One of the review quotes in the early pages refers to the book ar 'a stirring sage of midwifery in Nova Scotia'  and if you took out 'stirring saga' and replaced it with 'quite dull story' then I'd go along with it. 

The protagonist of the book, Dora,  becomes an unofficial apprentice to a traditional midwife in the early years of the twentieth century. A doctor comes to the nearby town, pooh-poohs their methods and ideas, and tries to take over obstetric care in the area where they live. 

That's about it. The author seems to have no other novels to her name, just journalism and possibly some sort stories,  and was inspired to write the book because she and her family moved to Nova Scotia and she discovered the house she lived in had been a traditional birthing house for women of the area. She did a lot of research, much of which is shoehorned into the novel in a less than subtle way. You can't help feeling that the reason Dora takes refuge at some point in the book in Boston is juts so that eventually a friend she makes there can write to her later about the Great Molasses Flood of  1919. 

Much is made by the author, book jacket designer and in reviews, of the 'scrapbook style' of the book, meaning it includes  (fictional) newspaper reports and advertisements, letters, facsimile invitations etc  alongside the narrative. Anyone would think McKay had invented intertextuality all on her own when this was written in 2006. She didn't.  

I don't know why the book didn't resonate more with me, as on paper it should have done. Maybe it's because I didn't like Dora much. Maybe it's because the topic of 'stupid science led doctor wants to take away traditional female wisdom' has been done to death  Maybe it is the clumsy attempts to incorporate research that has been done and so then has to be put on display. As I say, I don't know. I do know the book is  off to the charity shop.