As the title suggests this story is told predominately through the book, or diary, of an unnamed midwife. After a deadly virus kills off nearly the entire population an unnamed nurse-midwife wakes from her sickbed to a sparsely populated, apocalyptic world with male survivors outnumbering females ten to one; chaos and violence is rampant and survival is precarious, especially for females. Pregnancy and childbirth under these circumstances is inherently risky, further complicated as post-pandemic females are able to conceive and gestate, but their pregnancies do not result in live births.
The Book of the Unnamed Midwife reads like classic dystopic/apocalyptic literature. The structure of the story being framed through a historical document referenced by future survivors is reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale as is the limited point of view. I found this to be a strong offering to the genre and appreciated the feminist lens. Not eveything is clearly explained and not all questions answered (again, reminiscent of Handmaid), but to me, Unnamed Midwife feels like a complete, stand alone novel; I like the ambiguity. For readers who want more a second and third book have since published forming the Road to Nowhere trilogy.
That Bookish Life 