Notably written before the appearance of Covid 19, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife recounts the story of a global pandemic through the eyes of a nurse working in the maternity ward of a hospital in San Francisco when it first appeared.

The virus was deadly, but particularly so to pregnant women and their unborn children. Suddenly, on her ward, every newborn died and many of the mothers. As the pandemic reached a global scale, the female population takes a nosedive.

After awaking in the hospital morgue, our narrator stumbles home amidst the dead, only to be awaken by a rapist who breaks into her apartment. She is able to kill the rapist but realizes it is no longer safe to be a woman. She chops her hair, gets a girdle to flatten her chest, and sneaks out of SF to find safer havens.

This book shares many elements with Station Eleven except for its focus on women and the effect of their scarcity. In the world of men, the few remaining women seem to be reduced to either sex slave or queen bee. In both cases this occurs in extreme form- either they are forced to crawling around in their underwear with a chain around their neck, or they are calling the shots for massive orgies with 20 men meeting their every need.

It is well past the halfway point when we meet some secluded communities who seem to have maintained their value system. Perhaps I’m naive but it was a little hard to believe. Believability aside, it still made a good read, so I give this book 3.5👍 out of 5👍.