Farewell to the East End: Midwifery Memoirs

The excellent BBC series Call the Midwife is based on a trilogy of memoirs by Jennifer Worth, who worked as a midwife in 1950s England. She wrote about her time at Nonnatus House, a convent of nurse-midwife nuns who had been serving the poor and needy in the East End of London since the 1870s. The first memoir was titled Call the Midwife and detailed Jenny's foray into this poverty-stricken world that was so different from her middle-class upbringing. The sequel, Shadows of the Workhouse, continued in that vein, focusing on three remarkable stories about some of the people she encountered during that time.

However, the third and final book, Farewell to the East End, might be my favorite. At this point, Jenny is an established midwife, familiar with the eccentricities and conditions of the district, and the collection of stories are incredibly varied. Some are remarkably humorous, others are deeply disturbing, and others are right in the middle, bittersweet tales that encapsulate the hardships and resilience of the working class in the 1950s. After watching the second series of Call the Midwife, I was also much more attuned to the different characters at Nonnatus House, including Jenny's fellow midwives, Cynthia, Trixie, and Chummy (played by the glorious Miranda Hart), and Sisters Julienne, Evangelina, Bernadette, and Monica Joan, who are the most disparate set of nuns you could collect under one roof.

Together, these brave and hardworking women bicycled through the streets of Poplar, delivering upto one hundred babies a month, and encountering all manner of miracles and horrors. There were mothers who long for children, but quite a few who resorted to back-alley abortions because they couldn't afford another mouth to feed. A pervasive fear of hospitals meant that home deliveries were the norm, leading to many hilarious and/or precarious situations. Throughout, the midwifes did an extraordinary job, and over the course of the book, you cannot help but feel like you know them intimately and share all their little triumphs and sorrows.

Farewell to the East End provides a neat resolution to this midwife saga, and Worth sums up what happened to all of her friends, many of whom found love and careers in unexpected places. Interspersed among the personal anecdotes are essays about the social conditions and issues in healthcare that constantly impacted this dynamic area of London. What with the changing infrastructure of the East End, modern attitudes towards giving birth in hospitals, and the advent of the Pill, which lowered the birth rate to less than five births a month, the nuns were no longer needed as midwives. They continued to work for the poor, however, turning to work with drug abusers, the homeless, and later the victims of the AIDS crisis in the 80s and 90s. Nonnatus House itself was closed in 1978, but the nuns continue to do their good work.

Jennifer Worth's books, and now the TV series, are a fitting tribute to these remarkable women and their steadfast devotion to helping the needy. Their humor, common sense, and compassion resonate throughout these stories, and serve as a reminder of how far we've come and how much further we have to go. 

The Master of Disguise: The Real James Bond

Antonio "Tony" Mendez is the man who hatched the audacious plan to exfiltrate six American hostages out of Iran in 1979, a story told in this year's Best Picture Oscar winner, Argo. But Mendez worked for the CIA for twenty-five years, and came up with many more daring exfiltrations and operations that haven't been portrayed in film. Fortunately for us, he wrote The Master of Disguise in 1999, a dazzling memoir that presents a treasure trove of spy stories and a behind-the-scenes look at the CIA during the Cold War.

Mendez was born into rural poverty but through a series of lucky circumstances found himself in a CIA recruiting interview, where he showcased his intelligence and considerable artistic talent. After the usual rigmarole, he was hired for the CIA's Graphics team, the people who worked on painstaking forgeries of all the official documents agents needed when they were traveling abroad under aliases. He details the attention and tradecraft that goes into producing a single document, a process that begins with agents surveying immigration officials and customs inspections halfway across the world and then reporting their findings back to Headquarters. Mendez and his colleagues had to determine how much pressure to use when stamping a passport, microscopically examine stamps for intentional defects that helped distinguish forgeries from the real thing, learn how to open a letter and weave the envelope fibers together again so no one would suspect that someone else had read the contents. It's laborious but fascinating work, revealing all the effort that goes into making the papers and "pocket litter" that help an agent stay incognito in the field.

Of course, Mendez wasn't content to stay in HQ forever, and since the CIA promotes people based on merit rather than length of employment, he set to work to get himself an overseas assignment. He took a slew of courses, trying to learn everything he could about the art of working undercover, and within a few years, he and his family were shipped out to a CIA base in Okinawa. From there, Mendez traveled across Asia, helping issue fake documents for agents and defectors. Once he even created an elaborately-faked diary that was planted in the luggage of some Communist operatives who were aiming to discredit the United States with false propaganda. The diary was discovered by the appropriate authorities, found to be 100% authentic, and those operatives were no longer a threat to the USA.

Later chapters detail Mendez' work in Moscow and the CIA's cat-and-mouse games with the KGB who surveilled all Americans with ruthless efficiency. This made it almost impossible for agents to contact Soviet moles or conduct clandestine business in the Russian capital. Mendez was instrumental in coming up with a series of disguises and maneuvers that enabled agents to break surveillance and meet potential defectors, an intricate process that is much more finessed and elaborate than anything James Bond ever came up with. Not surprisingly, Mendez eventually became the CIA's Chief of Disguise and developed techniques to evade detection that are still used by agents today.

The Master of Disguise is a gripping read, much more compelling than a spy novel simply because it's all true. The minutiae of spy work might seem dull, but Mendez does an excellent job of relating it to the bigger picture and illustrating how everything truly hinges on the details. The chapter on the Argo operation reveals how this audacious plan really came down to information-gathering, impeccable forgeries, artful disguise, and finally, having luck on your side. Mendez had a perfect record of exfiltrations, and despite some harrowing situations, he never left someone behind. So if you are seeking an intriguing insight into the real world of spy craft as told by one of the CIA's most respected officers, you need to read this book.

Side Effects: Medicated Murder

The trailer and subsequent promotions for Side Effects were very confusing. The actors all appeared on various late-night talk shows and said the movie was a thriller with twists and turns so they couldn't discuss it in detail for fear of giving the plot away. It appeared to be some sort of movie about mental illness and medications, but then suddenly there was blood and a murder and it wasn't clear what direction everything was headed. But now that I've seen the movie, I can only maintain the veil of secrecy and exhort you to watch this gripping tale unfold for yourself.

The basic facts are these: Rooney Mara plays Emily Taylor, whose husband, Martin (Channing Tatum), has just been released from a four-year prison term for insider trading. Emily struggled with depression during her husband's arrest and conviction, but even after he returns home, she finds herself sliding into suicidality. After an "incident," she starts seeing Dr. Banks (Jude Law), a knowledgeable and compassionate psychiatrist, who treats her with antidepressants. It takes some time to find the right drug for her, and he eventually starts her on a brand new drug called Ablixa. This wonder drug helps enormously, but it has a side effect that results in an unforeseen tragedy. Banks spends the rest of the taut thriller investigating what happened, talking to Emily's former therapist, Dr. Siebert (Catherine Zeta-Jones), and dealing with the fallout as everyone heaps blame on his prescription-happy practice.

Side Effects has many layers, which are slowly peeled away until you get to the shocking revelation at the heart of the story. It offers commentary on big pharma and doctors who are wined and dined by pharmaceutical reps in order to push drugs onto willing patients. It takes a look at mental illness and its many manifestations in everyday lives. But most importantly, it is a Hitchcockian thriller, with the classic "wronged man" figure of Dr. Banks trying to unravel an intricate web of deceit and clear his name.

The genius of Side Effects is that its conclusion makes you rethink all the objections and arguments you come up with as you watch the movie. It ties itself into knots and miraculously comes loose at the end, offering up a genuinely satisfying and surprising viewing experience. It's a masterful movie, with pitch-perfect performances from its actors and compelling direction by Steven Soderbergh, who said this would be his last film. Let's hope he decides to come out of retirement, because we need more movies like this one.

Burning Love: The Bachelor Gets Hosed

Burning Love, starring Ken Marino and created by his wife Erica Oyama, is a hilarious send-up of The Bachelor, the reality show where a man attempts to find a bride amongst a bevy of eligible women (most of them dental hygienists) whilst everyone pretends that this is a perfectly acceptable means to finding the love of your life. I must confess, I've never watched The Bachelor or any other reality dating show, but I would happily watch Burning Love again and again.

Burning Love is a web series and each episode is about ten minutes long, but you can also watch the first season on E! on Monday nights. That season focused on Mark Orlando (Marino), a fireman who is looking for love, and in the tradition of all great Bachelors, is completely ill-equipped to find it. The contestants vying for his affections are a who's who of hilarious actresses and comediennes, including Kristen Bell (who Marino knows well from Veronica Mars and Party Down), Malin Akerman, Natasha Leggero, Ken Jeong (yes, he's a contestant for a short while), and others, including cameos from some very high-ranking Hollywood types. Adam Scott (also from Party Down), plays Mark's therapist, while Michael Ian Black is the host of the show.

The web series format means each episode is crammed full of comedy gold, poking fun at every imaginable Bachelor tradition. Instead of a "rose ceremony" at the end, where the Bachelor gives a rose to the women he wants to continue on to the next round, Mark presents his ladies with a hose, symbolizing his profession (and something more besides). There is a contestant who is nearly nine months pregnant, who says she is looking for love, ideally before her due date. There's the unfortunately-named Titi, who Mark keeps around mostly for her name, while he gets rid of the blind girl, the super Christian one, and the incredibly old lady (a move he later regrets when he discovers she was very rich and likely to die soon). There are emotional breakdowns, hysterical pool parties, ridiculous Jacuzzi dates, and a constant stream of satirical commentary that makes this one of the funniest shows around.

One of Burning Love's greatest achievements is that, absurd as it is, it is not so far from the truth. The Bachelor would be exactly like this show if it just owned up to the fact that its contestants have less than pure motives, and the whole premise is a thoroughly immature and laughable attempt at matchmaking. Burning Love beautifully tears apart the facade of reality show dating and is well worth repeat viewing. The second season flips things around with Julie Gristlewhite (June Diane Raphael), a contestant who was rejected by Mark, returning to become the show's Bachelorette and select a husband from the likes of Adam Scott, Ryan Hansen, and Paul Scheer. So head on over to Yahoo! where you can catch her daring exploits, or check the listings on E! where you can discover if Mark Orlando ever manages to find the object of his burning love. 

The Master: Cold & Calculated

The Master is a gorgeous film with scenes and settings bursting with cinematic beauty. The cast of Joaquin Phoenix, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams, present a dramatic tour de force, acting their guts out and presenting vivid characters that are passionate and complicated and disturbing. The soundtrack, composed by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, is eerie and engaging. But despite all of these promising pieces, the film doesn't come together as a compelling viewing experience. Instead, you're left wondering, what's the point of it all?

The film is set just after World War II and Phoenix plays Freddie Quell, an alcoholic veteran who seems incapable of readjusting to post-war life. He initially finds work as a photographer in a department store but is forced to flee when his ungovernable temper leads to a fight with a customer. He then works at a cabbage farm, only to poison one of the migrant workers with the moonshine that he likes to brew with all manner of toxic ingredients. Fleeing once again, Freddie ends up as a stowaway on a yacht belonging to Lancaster Dodd (Hoffman), an enigmatic and charismatic man who is the leader of "The Cause," a movement that involves hypnosis, theories of past lives, psychological probing called "Processing", and other sundry beliefs standard to most cults. Dodd discovers Freddie on board but is intrigued by this strange man and asks him to stay on. He subjects Freddie to some Processing, thereby revealing some sordid details of Freddie's family history. Dodd's wife, Peggy (Adams), is initially happy to bring Freddie into the fold, but as his alcoholism and violent tendencies begin to cause trouble, she and her children grow increasingly worried that Freddie is too unstable. But Dodd remains unconvinced and continues to subject Freddie to the various tests and rituals that every acolyte must go through to become a member of The Cause.

The Master is ostensibly a take on Scientology and other cultish religions that burgeoned in the post-war period. But it is mired in a vagueness that plagues the entire narrative and make the film feel like a thoroughly pointless exercise in filmmaking. Presumably writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson wanted to avoid overt comparisons to Scientology and its ilk, so he offers up no clues as to the history and beliefs of The Cause or Lancaster Dodd himself. The focus is on the disturbed Freddie, but over the course of two hours, the character appears to stagnate, learning nothing at all when he is with The Cause or away from it. By the end, we seem to have come full circle, with all the characters continuing to behave as they did from the beginning, with no resolution, or even promise of where the story might go from here.

The Master engages your senses, with stunning visuals, a mesmerizing soundtrack, and three acting performances that earned well-deserved Academy Award nominations. Yet somehow, that is not enough. A good movie should tell a good story but The Master is like a sketch show of riveting scenes that don't tie in to any coherent narrative. It offers an experience but not much emotion, and by the end I was simply bored. For many people, The Master was one of the best films of the year, but for me, it was simply a bewildering movie that had nothing to say. 

Is It Just Me? No, Miranda, It Isn't

I first saw Miranda Hart on The Big Fat Quiz of the Year, and subsequently fell in love with her on Call the Midwife where she plays the bright and bumbling, Chummy. But after her hilarious appearances on Would I Lie To You? I knew that this woman's memoir would be a must-read book. I wasn't wrong.

As the title suggests, Is It Just Me? consists of a series of embarrassing anecdotes and hilarious observations about the world that are sometime unique to Miranda but often applicable to everyone. For example, she relates a story about standing up to leave an interview only to have her skirt get caught in the chair and pulled down around her ankles. That feels like something that could only happen to Miranda, but almost everyone has a slightly less horrific tale of embarrassing themselves at an interview. Her writing style is incredibly Wodehousian and will keep you laughing out loud. Beware reading this book in public spaces, because you will get strange looks when you start giggling helplessly. In addition, she uses conversations with her 18-year old self to propel the narrative along, which feels a bit odd at the beginning but quickly turns into an extremely endearing and inspiring dialogue.

Each chapter deals with a particular topic, e.g. Hobbies, Office Life, Weddings, or Health. They contain a mix of amusing stories and genuinely helpful advice about not taking the world too seriously. Her 18-year old self is predominantly mortified by the doings of her older self, who is nowhere near as sophisticated, accomplished, or married as she was expecting. But as the book progresses, we realize that Hart values a different set of criteria for a well-lived life, and these are criteria we could all stand by.

British comedy is still a very male-dominated sphere and famous UK comediennes tend to be wry and sarcastic in keeping with British tradition. Miranda, on the other hand, is an unashamed goofball, thoroughly willing to put her 6'1" frame into any situation and see what happens. She may have put crusty bread rolls under her bra straps to emulate shoulder pads, and worn a scarf as a skirt after an unfortunate "incident," but she can just laugh about these things and turn them into fantastic stories designed to reduce you to a hysterical mess of giggles.

Miranda Hart's ultimate message to her reader (or her preferred epithet of "My Dear Reader Chum") is to just be yourself. Embrace weird, wonderful, wacky you and follow your dreams. And if you ever feel at a complete loss in a particular situation, you can be supremely confident that it isn't just you.

Back Story: David Mitchell Tells The Truth

David Mitchell was always one of my favorite guests on QI, but I really came to appreciate his brand of comedy during my marathon viewing of Would I Lie To You? where he features as one of the team captains. His rants on various and sundry topics are always entertaining, and the constant needling about his supposed posh background will frequently lead to a diatribe about how everyone expects him to be sitting around in a castle stroking a pheasant. His autobiography, Back Story, provides a wonderful insight into the man behind the "posh nerd" persona, and is alternately amusing and touching.

Mitchell comes from a middle-class background but the fact that he grew up in Oxford and got a degree at Cambridge makes him seem a lot more aristocratic. His parents worked hard to give him a private school education and his stories about the schools he attended are alternately amusing and horrifying. His first school took discipline too seriously, but fortunately he went on to less draconian establishments. He was a scholarship student, fairly nerdy and eager to please. As a young kid he liked dressing up like 18th century noblemen and desperately wanted a birthday party at McDonald's - so both an eccentric and normal child then.

Like Stephen Fry, Mitchell's comedy sensibilities finally took flight at Cambridge. He was determined to join Footlights at the outset but also worked in dramatic productions for other groups. This part of his autobiography is very similar to The Fry Chronicles, including numerous trips to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, name dropping of various future comedy icons, and his partnership with Robert Webb, with whom he would go on to create the brilliant Peep Show and That Mitchell and Webb Look. Unsurprisingly, Mitchell went on to become the President of Footlights, a role that seems to inevitably lead to fame and fortune in British comedy circles.

Of course, fame and fortune weren't instantaneous, and Mitchell and his compatriots were leading rather squalid lives after graduation. They would work as theater ushers while scribbling sketches and trying to put up strange productions of plays and comedy shows all over the UK. Mitchell got increasingly desperate as all his friends managed to land agents, and it seemed like his dreams of being a comedian were never going to go anywhere. But of course, things worked out in the end. His trajectory seems to have been slower than Stephen Fry and his colleagues, but he got there in the end and the audience can be grateful for it.

The penultimate chapter of Back Story takes an unusual turn as Mitchell discusses his love life, or lack thereof. Specifically, he tells the tale of his seemingly unrequited love for Victoria Coren. He pined for her for three years, until she called in 2010, started dating him again, and as of November 2012, became his wife. It's a sweet story, serving as the perfect bookend to a period of his life when he was consumed by his career but also desperately lonely. I don't know how much of a difference this will make to Mitchell's "lonely nerd" persona now - the other panel show contestants certainly can't make fun of him anymore for not having a girlfriend. But I suspect the onscreen character of David Mitchell will just be as ranty and pedantic as ever, thereby ensuring many more hours of television comedy gold.

The Fry Chronicles: The Early Years of a Cultural Icon

Binge-watching British panel shows led me to binge-read autobiographies by my favorite British comedians. To kick things off, I read Stephen Fry's The Fry Chronicles, which mainly covers the seven-year period of his life from when he entered Cambridge to his thirtieth birthday. Stephen is a raconteur par excellence, which accounts for why one book would be insufficient to cover his entire life story. His troubled childhood was previously discussed in the enigmatically titled, Moab Is My Washpot, but The Fry Chronicles is mostly light and amusing, with only hints of the addictions and travails that would hit him in his thirties.

Beginning with Stephen's acceptance to Cambridge (a minor miracle given the fact that he seems to have spent his childhood getting kicked out of various boarding schools and spent time in jail for identity theft), the book paints a Wodehousian idyll of university life and the remarkable theater scene at Cambridge. If you're a comedian who went to Cambridge, most people immediately assume you were a member of the famed Footlights troupe, but surprisingly, Stephen fancied himself more of a dramatic actor. He appears to have been in every play produced on campus, and it was only during an occasional foray into an English seminar (studying seems to have been no one's priority at Cambridge) that he made friends with Emma Thompson. In his second year at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, he watched the Footlights show starring Emma and Hugh Laurie and they mumbled some greetings at each other. The next year, when Laurie was the Footlights President, he asked Stephen to help him write the Christmas pantomime. Just like that, the comedy duo of Fry & Laurie was born.

The book offers a dazzling look into Stephen's charmed life in comedy, packed with star-studded cameos from people like Tilda Swinton, Douglas Adams, Rowan Atkinson, and all the comedy greats of the period. Cambridge really is a who's who of famous people and Stephen appears to have met them all. This autobiography is packed with stories of hits and misses (usually more hits) including his re-write of the musical, Me and My Girl, which became a huge smash on the West End and Broadway. I always knew Stephen was a Renaissance man, but I didn't realize just how much he had accomplished beyond his well-established comedy career.

Of course, a charmed career is no consolation for a person struggling with undiagnosed bipolar disorder, and Stephen candidly discusses his constant sense of unworthiness despite all the fame and adulation. In true Brit fashion, he self-loathingly describes his self-loathing, telling the reader he knows how whiny and terrible it must sound. But it only endeared me further to this marvelous man and I shall eagerly await the next installment of his memoirs. If you love Stephen Fry or simply love the dizzying world of British comedy, I suggest you pick up a copy of The Fry Chronicles and start reading.