The Birth of Love

by Joanna Kavenna

Dr Ignaz Semmelweis has been hounded into a lunatic asylum, ridiculed for his claim that doctors' unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. The deaths of thousands of mothers are on his conscience and his dreams are filled with blood. 2153: humans are birthed and raised in breeding centres, nurtured by strangers and deprived of familial love. Miraculously, a woman conceives, and Prisoner 730004 stands trial for concealing it.London in 2009: Michael Stone's novel about Semmelweis has been published, after years of rejection. But while Michael absorbs his disconcerting success, his estranged mother is dying and asks to see him again. As Michael vacillates, Brigid Hayes, exhausted and uncertain whether she can endure the trials ahead, begins the labour of her second child.A beautifully constructed and immensely powerful work about motherhood that is also a story of rebellion, isolation and the damage done by rigid ideologies.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Dystopia, Science Fiction, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Novels

318 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Joanna Kavenna is a prize-winning British novelist and travel writer.

Kavenna spent her childhood in Suffolk and the Midlands as well as various other parts of Britain. She has also lived in the United States, France, Germany, Scandinavia and the Baltic States.

These travels led to her first book, The Ice Museum, which was published in 2005. It was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award in that year, and the Ondaatje Prize, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2006. Described by the The New York Review of Books as "illuminating and consequential," it combines history, travel, literary criticism and first-person narrative, as the author journeys through Scotland, Norway, Iceland, the Baltic and Greenland. Along the way, Kavenna investigates various myths and travellers' yarns about the northerly regions, focusing particularly on the ancient Greek story of Thule, the last land in the North. Before The Ice Museum she had written several novels that remain unpublished.

Kavenna has held writing fellowships at St Antony's College, Oxford and St John's College, Cambridge. She is currently the writer-in-residence at St Peter's College, Oxford. Themes of the country versus the city, the relationship between self and place, and the plight of the individual in hyper-capitalist society recur through Kavenna's novels and in some of her journalism.

She has written for The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, The London Review of Books, The Guardian, The Observer, The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, among other publications.

Kavenna is now based in the Duddon Valley, Cumbria and has a partner and two young children.

Reviews

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing and original novel of ideas, with childbirth at its centre. There are four strands to this story, and the first two thirds of the book tells them in alternate long chapters.

The first is based on the true story of Ignaz Semmelweis, a nineteenth century Hungarian doctor who discovered that the deadly epidemics of puerperal sepsis ("childbed fever") in the maternity wards of the day were transmitted by doctors' hands, and could be prevented by handwashing. His ideas were rejected by colleagues and he eventually died in a lunatic asylum. This part of the story is narrated by a benevolent visitor to the asylum.

The second focuses on the birth of a modern child and specifically the mother's experiences in labour, as she attempts a home birth while looking after her first child.

The third is the story of the writer of the Semmelweis story, a failing single novelist in his fifties who is suddenly confronted with the media after his book is recognised - this section is initially more comic in tone, but becomes darker once it starts focusing on his relationship with his ailing mother.

The fourth is set in a dystopian authoritarian future with echoes of Huxley's Brave New World in which natural childbirth is forbidden, and tells the story of a group of escapees who recolonise the Lofoten islands to escape from a strictly regulated city after one of the sterilised women mysteriously becomes pregnant.

The final third of the book mixes these strands and to some extent brings them together, though I'm not sure this is entirely successful.

The novel's central themes are the way modern society conflicts with primal human instincts and natural processes, and also the way in which visionary thinkers are rejected by the cultures they challenge.

A flawed book perhaps, but a very readable one, which I found very stimulating.

[Arie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really was not a fan of this. Though I thought the physical writing was not bad, the actual stories completely failed to grasp me, aside from the futuristic one which was not developed nearly enough. If the entire book had been about the prisoners, with only a few mentions of how the other stories may have related, then I may actually have enjoyed reading The Birth of Love.

It really didn't help that the meticulously described account of an incredibly painful and distressing labour not only took up a good third of the book, but also completely freaked me out - I only hope I can forget it in the next decade or so before I face labour myself. Terrifying.

[Misha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, a huge congrats to the author, Joanna Kavenna. The Birth of Love is on the 2011 Orange Prize Longlist. You can view the entire list HERE

The Birth of Love involves four stories entwined into one stunner of a novel. One of the most original novels I have read recently, it's scary, thought-provoking and powerful. Part dystopia, part historical fiction and overall, a celebration of motherhood through the centuries. Despite some flaws, it's a very memorable book.

In 1865 Vienna, Professor Semmelweis is forced into a lunatic asylum for suggesting that lack of hygiene among doctors is the cause of women's deaths during childbirth . He is tortured by guilt of having been responsible for "killing" so many mothers.

In 2153, the author creates a terrifying scenario. Humans can no longer give birth. Instead, babies are "grown" in special centers. A woman miraculously conceives and the people who are trying to protect her are arrested by the "authorities".

In 2009, a social recluse and an author, Michael Stone releases his new book on Professor Semmelweis. In the midst of unexpected and unwanted success, he comes to know that his estranged mother is dying. Should he go and meet her for one last time?

In the same year, Brigid Hayes is about to give birth to her second child. She's tired and completely drained out; she doesn't think she can take another childbirth.

The Birth of Love beautifully captures the various emotions of motherhood. It's awe-inspiring on one hand , hard hitting on the other. The book explores some relevant themes and provokes many questions. Despite the four storylines, it's not hard to keep track. Each character's voice is distinct and unique. The descriptions, narratives and imagery used by the author is powerful and disturbing.

Out of the four storylines, I think the one set in 2153 is my favorite. It presents a scary depiction of what might lie in the future. Most of all, it compels you to think of what is coming ahead. Can you imagine a future where women can't give birth and childbirth is controlled by some kind of "authorities"?

The only problem I had with the book was that I couldn't form a very deep attachment to the characters. I sympathized with them but they weren't memorable. None of the characters stood out for me.

The Birth of Love is strangely captivating. When I first started the book, I thought it was a bit weird, but it soon drew me in. Joanna Kavenna successfully mixes genres. The only other author who is able to do that perfectly, I believe, is Margaret Atwood.

The Birth of Love is a compelling depiction of child birth in the past, present and future. This power-packed novel is worthy of the Orange Prize!

Quotes:

At that his eyes fixed on me. I must confess that I was briefly unnerved by his gaze. It expressed such hopelessness, such a terrible absence of joy. It was horribly eloquent, though all it invoked was macabre and evil. There was a chaos to his limbs which dismayed me too. It was as if his bones had been broken and had mended strangely. Everything about his posture was ugly and awkward; everything about his gaze was desperate and beseeching.

"You have no power to upset me at all. Your voice is very faint, very distant. There is a roaring in my head, I can barely hear you beneath the roaring. I am adrift on a....poisonous....boiling ocean. I cannot see the shore. I have been cast off, sent to drift until I drown...."

Though she felt spiky and savage within, she never doubted that she loved her son. Her love was infinite; she sensed there was a deep infinite core of love, and then a lesser love, her surface emotion, where everything got sullied by quotidian demands, and mingled with guilt.



Overall:
Gripping, imaginative and powerful!

Recommended?
Yes, for people who enjoy books that take a step away from the ordinary.

[Celeste Noelani McLean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm giving this book a generous rating of two stars as an average. Broken into two pairs of loosely related stories, the book in its entirety deals with the processes of birth. Three of the stories deal specifically with childbirth and one of them with the birthing process of artistic creation, as an author struggles with the aftermath of having published one of the other stories in the book. Incidentally, the "book" that the fictional writer had just published was my favorite of the four stories and almost made my bump my entire rating up the three stars, and so while I thought his presence in the book was pretty darn boring (and it wasn't mentioned on the back of the book either) I still had a soft spot for his character.

I have to say that I really liked the themes in here, and the connectivity between the stories, and I wanted so much to come away from this reading with a positive feeling. Instead, each of the pieces ended exactly where the stories became the most intriguing and I was left feeling disappointed. I was trying to be analytical and hypothesize that the stories ended like that on purpose just as pregnancy's natural culmination of birth is both an end and an exciting beginning, but if that was the author's intent, then I felt like I had to reach to get to it. It felt as if this book was just a revision of a later, more powerful and refined final draft that would have pulled all of these ideas together more profoundly.

The stories themselves were mostly interesting in their own way as well, but in the end I found each one of them lacking. I thought the characters were only halfway interesting and so I only halfway cared about anything that happened to them. I was, however, very impressed with the author's ability to move between the various voices effectively and give each piece a distinctly different voice. For the most part I thought that the writing displayed was very skilled. The imagery used was very impressive. But it just wasn't enough.

The greatest disappointment, even above the homebirthing character's complete lack of understanding of homebirths or perhaps even birth in general, was the manner in which the futuristic birth story was presented. Written as a series of interviews, it wasn't long before the story that I had been anticipating most became my least favorite to read. I wanted to know more about the society the prisoners had fled and the illegal, wild village that they had briefly held together, but the author chose otherwise. The repetition of the questioning and the insistent changes in language could have been interesting in a longer novel, but as the stand alone representation of the author's world, it was actually kind of annoying. Even finding out at the end how this story was connected to another one in the book was totally uninteresting, though the revelation could have been sublime.

I'll definitely seek out other works by this author, as I think she's very talented. But I just hope that her stories and executions are better refined in other publications.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't recall how I came across this book but I'm glad I did. 4 stories all involving childbirth and/or love loss. The story of a Dr. in 19th century Vienna that goes insane while trying to convince doctors to wash their hands before examining women during child birth; the modern day reclusive author who is writing the story of this Viennese doctor; the modern day woman in London giving birth at home and finally the future story, where there are only egg and sperm donors. the stories only intersect on a very delicate level at most but they do fine independently. All the stories are very strong.

[Elaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

While each of the voices and narratives was interesting at the beginning, nothing actually happened in any of them, and the predominant note of each one was repetition and mood more than narrative. The book's ideas were more schematic than woven into the plot. In particular, the sci fi plot seemed totally half-hearted as narrative yet polemical and also annoyingly written (we get the point -- family is a bad word in 2153!!). Disappointing.

[Ally Atherton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book takes the reader into the lives of four main characters in different places and at different times. In Vienna in 1865 a doctor is locked up in a mental asylum after discovering that women are dying in childbirth due to inadequate handwashing techniques. In the present day Michael has written the story of this same Doctor, Ignaz Semmelweis, and it has become his first published book. But he is struggling to come to terms with how this has affected his life and he is forced to re-examine where his life has taken him. Brigit Hayes is going into labour with her second child and is determined to have a homebirth this time and in a future world women are locked in tall towers and normal childbirth has been outlawed. But something has gone wrong.


This book is a fantastic read and all four stories are told intelligently and with an unusual freshness. At one point in the book one of the characters states that a book about childbirth wasn't really the kind of book that a man would read, thankfully this is not true and I absolutely loved it! I loved the fact that at one moment I was in Vienna in 1865 with horses trotting down a cobbled square and the next I was in a sterile interrogation room in 2153.

But most of all I loved Joanna Kavenna's style of writing that was both interesting and fresh. Yesterday was actually a major day of celebration in Hungary where the life of Ignaz Semmelweis is honoured, I actually work with a Hungarian Consultant in my local hospital and he was amazed that I knew about it thanks to this book ! Some books rely heavily on a good ending but some books just take you on a fantasic journey, regardless of the ending, this is one of those books.


I will definitely have to read more from this talented Author.


10/10

[Mills · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Birth of Love is not one story, but a series of interwoven stories - one more than the synopsis would seem to suggest. They are interwoven in such a way as to make it hard to discern which is intended to be truly happening and which to be fabrication.

A novelist, estranged from his family, produces a -fictional?- book on Ignaz Semmelweis. The release of this book is intertwined with his strained relationship with his ageing mother.

An amateur psychologist(?) visits Semmelweis - the "savior of mothers" - in his asylum and writes a letter about what he witnesses. It would appear that this part of the quartet is an excerpt from the novelist's book.

A heavily pregnant woman named Brigid listens to the radio as her second labour begins. In the background? Talk about the novelist's book.

In a futuristic society where reproduction (and life in general) are heavily controlled, a rebellion and almost religious awakening centres around a woman who conceives and gives birth to a child naturally. This woman had an ancestor called Brigid.

It's almost as if each story has given life to the next.

These stories are linked in other ways/themes - dreams or actual experiences of blood, nourishing and frightening at the same time; writing or storytelling; insanity/confused mental states; and, perhaps most importantly, birth as both traumatic and beautiful.

I can't decide whether Kavenna fully realises the level of profundity that it feels like she was aiming for but she's definitely one to watch.

[Allyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved her first book- The Ice Museum and while not having read Inglorious, saw this @ the library, so brought it home.
I liked her writing style, and the ideas of portraying the changes in thought surrounding childbirth were interestingly depicted, yet it did not grip me. It felt too disengaged or flat, not warmly inviting which sounds weird but I would not necessarily recommend it to my friends. Also the birthing process was vividly but distressingly presented.
On the whole, disappointing despite my lofty expectations.

[Stephanie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up off the "Hot New Titles" shelf at the library. This is a book I definitely judged by the cover. A silhouette of a pregnant woman and the word "birth" in the title? Totally up my alley, right? Wrong. This was a strange story with four different plots weakly woven together by poorly developed characters. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is that I actually did make it through the entire thing, which is worth a star all its own.

[Beth (bibliobeth) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a really interesting book to review. Its a few stories that are all inter-linked by the subject of mothers and birth. I did enjoy two stories more than the others, hence the three star rating. Also, as someone without children at the moment, some parts were incredibly scary - hope I'm not put off for life!(joke)

[Ashley Marilynne Wong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deep, beautiful and complex, this literary gem was simply a treat for me. I really loved it.

[Martha.O.S · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was quite an ambitious and creative novel that told four linked stories on the theme of birth, a theme seldom explored in literature.

Each of the stories in their own was interesting. My favourite was the contemporary one of Brigid, opting for a home birth. It describes nearly all birthing options in detail as she proceeds from natural labour at home, to epidural in the hospital and finally to emergency C-section. The accounts of each, while detailed are not too graphic either which I would not have liked. Her story takes place in just one day, and even with all the drama unfolding, we still are presented with a picture of her quotidian life, her relationship with her mother, son and husband, and even a friend, also in the very early stages of motherhood. The domestic scenes in her story were funny to read, yet realistic too.

My least favourite story was that set in the future, presented as a series of interviews with nameless characters belonging to a group trying to restore some elements of creation and recreation into a sterilised and controlled environment. While the premise was quite good and imaginative, I found it difficult to engage or identify with any of the characters, and found the atmosphere quite depressing. I know this was the intention but I found myself reading as quickly as I could through these sections, (incidentally in a different font type), so that I could get onto the next.

The other two stories were quite engaging, but appeared more linked to each other than to either of the other stories. I found the character of Michael Stone interesting, but was confused by his development which seemed to be building and building towards something only to end seemingly with his own persistent sense of failure and anticlimax.

At times I thought this novel might be like "The Hours", by Michael Cunningham, in its structure but was disappointed at how Kavenna executed her idea. The link between the stories, though aimed at being subtle, for me ended up tenuous at best. The writing was good, as were the ideas, but I found it lacking in terms of development, characterisation and plot. However there was more good than bad certainly, and the writing style and overall vision sustained this book.

[Chiara Gambardella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quattro storie che si intersecano, qualche buona idea anche se con echi che mi hanno ricordato “Il manuale dell’ancella”, e un’ottima descrizione di un travaglio.
Avrei sicuramente evitato l’intero filo narrativo dell’autore che finalmente riesce a pubblicare perché mi è sembrato ridondante e faticoso nella lettura.
La storia ambientata a fine ‘800 è interessante di per se’, a mo’ di nozione storica, ma anche piuttosto lunga. La parte distopica mi è piaciuta, avrebbe potuto essere un romanzo di per se’ se sviluppata maggiormente. Indubbiamente la gemma del romanzo è la descrizione del travaglio di Birgit.

[Rebekah Zhao · Rating 2 out of 5]

I get what this book was trying to do, but it didn’t quite get there. It felt a bit like the outline for a larger story.

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyable read

A good book nicely written. Worth your time. Will be looking for more from her. Must say the title was what hooked me in

[Susan Woodward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly longer than it should be because of unnecessarily wordy passages. But well written as far as use of language. Customary lazy ending though.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite the fact that it is surely one of the most important events in a person’s life, as far as I know there aren’t very many novels written about the actual experience of giving birth. Often it’s a thing that happens in a book for plot reasons, or it is portrayed as a momentous occasion that’s soon over and rarely dwelled upon in detail. This book is quite different to all that, and for that reason alone I think it’s worth reading. It’s ambitious, unusual, sad, affecting, occasionally quite funny and sometimes very dark. But its ambition is also a problem; despite its relatively short length, it feels over-long, inconsistent, somewhat muddled. The whole thing never quite coheres.

The structure is loosely reminiscent of David Mitchell’s ‘Cloud Atlas’, though without the somewhat obsessive formalism and attention to detail that I found so interesting in that novel. The narrative jumps across time and space between four settings which at first seem isolated but are later revealed to be interrelated: first we encounter Ignaz Semmelweis, incarcerated in a mental hospital in the nineteenth century for daring to suggest that unwashed hands are causing the deaths of young mothers in hospital wards; then we’re in the present day with Brigid, a nice middle-class lady who is about to give birth to her second child; also in the present day is Michael Stone, a nervy writer who has stumbled into success with a novel about Semmelweis; and then in the year 2153 we read (through transcribed interviews) about a dystopian future where biological parentage is forbidden and humans are effectively bred by strangers.

Some of these sections are stronger than others. The encounters with Semmelweis are instantly compelling, and elegantly balance an almost gothic sensibility while also making the reader feel for all the senseless death and the impossible situation that the doctor found himself in. And the descriptions of Brigid and the pain of her contractions and struggle of her labour are well written too, as are the lives of her husband and her other young son on the sidelines. I found myself wanting desperately for things to turn out okay for them.

But Michael Stone is a problem. Essentially, he’s a bit dull, and I had the worrying sense throughout his sections that he’d been introduced as a kind of author-surrogate in order to introduce a series of moderately amusing conversations that amount to a gentle satire of the culture industry. And those conversations are perfectly fine, as examples of their type. But they don’t amount to anything, and they seem oddly disconnected from the novel as a whole.

The dystopian sections are a little more interesting at first. But they encounter a different problem: they simply aren’t particularly convincing. Margaret Atwood said she wrote ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by taking the kind of political feelings that were present at the time it was written and bringing them to their natural conclusion — and it was convincing and terrifying and brilliant writing. But in comparison, nobody today is suggesting the abolition of the nuclear family in favour of some kind of genetics-driven materialist utilitarian fantasy. As a way of putting your characters in a situation that makes ordinary acts look heroic, it’s perfectly fine, but it doesn’t work as dystopia because it doesn’t say anything meaningful or interesting about contemporary society.

[нявчик (❁´◡`❁) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Цікавенька робота (а ще мій експеримент із переходом у новий жанр), ключова тема якої — пологи. Я спочатку гадала, що це суцільний роман, але виявилося — це збірка з чотирьох окремих історій, які потім зливаються в єдиний розділ.

Одна з історій — про лікаря у Відні XIX століття, який божеволіє, намагаючись переконати інших мити руки перед пологами. Друга — про сучасну матір, яка намагається народити вдома, доглядаючи за с��аршою дитиною. Третя — про невдалого письменника, чию стару новелу раптово помітили, і він несподівано потрапляє в поле зору ЗМІ. Четверта — футуристична, з донорками яйцеклітин у стерильному, контрольованому майбутньому (ого як повіяло від неї "який чудесний світ новий").

Історії майже не перетинаються, лише на рівні образів і тем, але кожна працює окремо — крім третьої. Вона здалася мені відірваною й найменш влучною в принципі, хоча й не псує загальне враження. Похіхікаю що, авторка це усвідомлювала — і в фіналі приділила їй найменше уваги.

[Ryandake · Rating 1 out of 5]

urk. what a missed opportunity.

this book is all about birth past, present, and future. it's a vastly underexplored part of the human experience in literature--in most books babies appear off-stage, as it were. there's some literature about the aftermath--new mom & baby experiences--but these tend either toward the overly-sunny (isn't baby great!) to the grisly (baby is a horror of time-suck). still, not much out there about birth itself.

the first of three parts of this book examines the madness of a doctor (male) who belatedly figured out that clean hands made a big diff in maternal mortality. the second, a woman in labor. the third, a future in which parturition is a crime. only the second of these is worth reading.

the nice-guy interviewing the mad doc thing is utterly ruined by having read the back cover--33+ pages in, and we know why the guy is there, but the book won't tell us. not that it's telling us anything gripping instead. skim skim skim.

the third part is a very lame sci-fi interview with a criminal. honestly, i probably shouldn't say much about this part, because two pages in my eyes would not stop rolling and i therefore had to skip back to the story of Bridget, who was interrupted in the midst of giving birth.

so this second part, Bridget's labor, is really the only part that kept my attention. and it's a pretty accurate description of being in labor. it's harrowing--Kavenna conveys the effects of unremitting pain and its many varieties quite well. how one's mind disassociates, how full consciousness is a thing one might well wish really really hard to avoid.

still, i think Toi Derricotte put it much more succinctly in Natural Birth:

the meat rolls up and moans on the damp table.
my body is a piece of cotton over another
woman's body. some other woman, all muscle and nerve, is
tearing apart and opening under me.

i applaud Kavenna for writing on this subject, truly, but i wish she'd done it better.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Considering the fact that birth is kind of significant to this little thing we call human existence, there is a surprisingly small number of novels on the subject. When birth has been included as a major plot point in fiction, it usually means one of two things: the woman in question either got knocked up by someone unfortunate or she is about to die. And sometimes it's a combination of the two. This dearth of literature about maternity is probably related to the fact that most novels published throughout history were written by men or women who didn't have children--because being a writer and being a mother have historically been mutually exclusive.

Joanna Kavenna's novel not only makes birth the central issue at stake in her novel, but she also takes on the never-ending natural vs. technological debate that surrounds current discussions of pregnancy. Although the "Tower" section appears to follow in the long line of dystopian novels (e.g., Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984) that view controlled reproduction a sign of the end of civilization, Kavenna's novel has more in common with Sarah Hall's novel Sisters of the North in that it suggests that reproductive control is not the problem. The male or state control of women's bodies is the problem. The more traditional dystopian novels all equated female control over their own bodies as unnatural, but Kavenna uses the "Empress" section to imply that "natural" is not necessarily better.

I was initially worried that the "Empress" section was going to devolve into a simplified celebration of the "natural" birth, but, thankfully, Kavenna complicates this narrative by highlighting the very real pain of childbirth--a pain that is so often romanticized or viewed as necessary. Kavenna suggests that we celebrate not the means by which women give birth but the act of birth itself and the wonder of the maternal body--to which I say, it's about time.

[Isabel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Woah. This is a weird one. It is well written and the urgency of tone forced me to power through, even though the characters weren't that gripping. I'm not sure what to make of the fact that the jacket write-up talks about 3 perspectives, when there are actually 4. There are lots of complicated details I'd have to reread the book in order to work out. Several mother characters; authority issues; alienation; lack of mental control due to drugs, drink or exhaustion... Each of the characters seemed so alienated and alone in their personal reality. I found that the relationship between mother and child was more of a primal need than a personal one. For all that the book title talks about the birth of love, I'll be dogged if I can find a single compelling example of it in the book. Husband wife, mother child, daughter/son to mother, toddler to father, friends... they all fell short. In my opinion, the most sincere connection was between the novelist and the guest at the party, and that conversation was abruptly interrupted and abandoned. Wha...?

It's a neat trick to combine past, present and future in different chapters. It makes even the familiar seem strange and then the strange seem ordinary. Very effective technique and very well written. Though, to be honest, I'm not sure I'm convinced that I just read about the Birth of Love. It felt awfully bleak for that. I guess we are left with glimmerings of hope that the book ended on the cusp of change, but after the beginning, that seemed kinda unlikely...

[Jessi · Rating 4 out of 5]

First Line: "The year is 1865 and Ignaz Semmelweis is dragged along the corridor though he struggles violently, kicks and shouts."

I read this in conjunction with a biography of Semmelweis, the man who first discovered that the disease called Childbed Fever was contagious and that epidemics of the diease in hospitals were caused by doctors dissecting corpses and then examining women in labor and that it could be stopped by washing hands, although his discovery was completely disregarded for several more decades. These two books are part of the Book Menege (two books, one reader) hosted by Citizen Reader on her blog. I did enjoy this book very much. It was hard to rate because it is three stories interwoven and I enjoyed some sections more than others. The Semmelweis portion is three stars, and the other two sections - a woman in 2009 attempting a home birth and several prisoners being interrogated in a future society that creates all progeny of the species in a laboratory - were definite four stars though. The three stories created an interesting dynamic and provided a wide-ranging view of the medical, emotional, and spiritual elements of childbirth. Would recommend this book to fans of literary fiction and to anyone who enjoys Margaret Atwood.

[Jason Furman · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the characters in The Birth of Love says, "'Men are unlikely to read a book about childbirth. It's unfortunate, but there's not much to be done.'" And by the time I had finished the book I wondered if that sentence shouldn't also apply to women.

This novel contains four interrelated and alternating stories: one set in Vienna in 1865, two set in the present (one about a pregnant woman giving birth and one about the writer of the first story), and finally a story set in 2153, which we learn is about a decedent of the mother in the second story. All of them are about birth in various forms, three about giving birth to a baby and one about the labor that goes into writing a book.

The different threads are reasonably well tied together, each interesting in its own right, but none enough to sustain an entire novel or even novella by itself.

Some of the psychological perspectives, mostly from the mother's perspective but also from the father's, seemed strikingly accurate.

Main complaint is that some of it is a bit hokey or obvious or bludgeoning of the same theme. But that doesn't detract from the good writing and originality.

[Shahad Abdullah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really loved this book although it was not what I expected it to be at all. The vivid emotions described in it really moved me, especially since I have never read anything that portrayed maternity, and this was a whole novel that is dedicated for that sole purpose.

It is set on 3 time periods, the past, the present and the future. It had some real facts when the narrative was in the past, which is something I quite enjoyed, but I disliked the present; the plot was a bit weak since it was only a descriptive scene of a birth.

Other than that, I thought the writing style of Kavenna was excellent. Thus, the book is qualified to be a favorite!

[gwen g · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really cool concept, with three separate strands of stories -- one over 100 years ago, about a doctor in a lunatic asylum; one in present day, about a mother giving birth to her second child; one far in the future, about escapees from a society that controls childbirth. I loved the way the stories connected, but they all felt a little flat and disengaged. The concept was better than the writing. Still, a quick read, good for a long airplane ride.

[Christine Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

four stories in one, but the best is the account of Ignaz Semmelweis after he is institutionalized for daring to promote his views that fellow physicians were the cause of childbed fever by not washing their hands between cadaver and laboring women checks. the chapter on the modern London woman anticipating labor is also very good. the book's other two stories are less compelling and weakly connected to the core.

[Buried In Print]

This review was deleted following Amazon's purchase of GoodReads.

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[Jade Lopert · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, I really wanted to like this. The concept of the three faces of Brigid as the basis for past, present and future is fantastic. The tie in between the four stories is interesting.
At the end of the day though, I just couldn't get into it. Just not my cup of tea on the writing style. I couldn't get into the flow of the story for some reason. I very much think this could be an amazing read for someone else though.

[Carly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued that this book was set 100 years ago, today, and years into the future. However, I found the number of characters confusing and I struggled to connect with one specific. I didn't feel as though the resolution was satisfactory either. On a positive note, I enjoyed analyzing it later... though I would have enjoyed it more with an English teacher.