Fiction: Every house has a story; some have more than one. The birth house of the title of Canadian Ami McKay's first novel has many stories and even more births. It is, as it suggests, one of those houses to which local women came in the days before maternity hospitals to give birth.
McKay's narrator is Dora Rare, a woman as rare as her name, being the first female child born to her family in five generations. As a child growing up in a village in Nova Scotia in the lead-up to the first World War, she becomes the favourite of the local midwife, Miss Babineau. By watching the old lady apply her repertoire of traditional cures and herbal remedies to women during pregnancy, and later in labour and when giving birth, she learns early in life all about the birthing process.
Dora is unusual, not only because she is the only girl in a household of brothers. She is a watcher and a thinker; above all, much to the discomfort of her God-fearing father, she enjoys reading 19th-century classic fiction.
McKay draws on the social history of Canada during the early years of the 20th century, with particular reference to the experience of ordinary women. This is a society in which women, including the narrator's kindly mother, accept that life is about keeping a house, producing children and always being amenable to a husband's sexual needs. McKay's achievement lies in shaping a candidly told story rich in sub-plots about what is an effective, non-sentimental feminist polemic confronting domestic violence, marital rape and incest.
Few historically based narratives wear their research as lightly. In Dora, McKay has created a believable character, a girl who plays with her brothers as one of them, until the day her father decides it is no longer seemly. Dora has her own needs and fantasies which she does not conceal: "I think about Tom from time to time, when I run out of dreams about the fine gentlemen in Jane Austen's novels."
Her mother is presented as sympathetic but completely passive. Outspokenness in a woman, unless she is old and wealthy, is a bad thing. Many of the men in the book are unpleasant for a variety of reasons, but McKay is careful not to present all of the females as perfect or victims either. Instead she creates characters who are people: good and bad, gossipy, devious, spirited and pathetic.
Through Dora's eyes the new, emerging tensions between tradition and medical progress are charted. Miss Babineau, who is reported as having seen angels, is no righteous saint, can lie when she needs to and is given to secrecy. With time, she appears to have shifted in the eyes of the villagers from a position of trust to being tolerated on the margins, depending on how much her "gifts" are needed.
When oily Dr Thomas arrives in the village, courtesy of a medical insurance scheme, making promises and promoting the new techniques conventional medical practice can provide for expectant mothers, Miss Babineau's methods begin to drift towards folklore and witchcraft.
MISS BABINEAU INTRODUCES an element of practical earthiness, regarding sexuality as a necessary evil, that is sustained throughout the book. Through a couple of the male characters, including Dora's husband, Archer, this earthiness moves on to acquire a sinister crudeness. He is threatening, and a definite menace undercuts his sexuality. McKay handles this element with more skill than might be expected of a first-time novelist. She could easily have allowed it to degenerate into caricature but instead remains in control of the characterisation - and the narrative. There is no mistaking her intention, however: women are viewed as passive and well-behaved, or opinionated and hysterical.
In grooming the young Dora as her successor, Miss Babineau in fact places the narrator in a dangerous position. Running parallel to this is Dora's courtship, with its secrecy and disastrous outcome. The Birth House has already become a bestseller in Canada and has its own website; there is no doubt that the facts of social history and also its wartime setting, with its reference to votes for women, have ensured this, but McKay has certainly shaped a dramatic, convincing novel that manages to avoid many of the traps which stalk this type of quasi-historical fiction.
Central to the plot is the living hell suffered by a local mother, the aptly named Experience Ketch, who has dutifully produced "some 15 or 16" babies for her brute of a husband. Early in the narrative, Miss Babineau has been summoned by Experience's grown son, who knows his mother needs help. Miss Babineau orders Dora to come with her to attend to this birth; it is the beginning of her apprenticeship. It is also the heart of the novel. Mrs Ketch gives birth to a baby she does not want and shows no remorse when the infant dies. This birth sequence sets the tone of the narrative, and although there are exchanges between friends and moments of female solidarity, McKay remains on the harsh side of realism.
Marriage is a humiliation for Dora and again McKay deals well with this, avoiding much potential melodrama thanks to Dora's naturally edgy personality. This sharpness works throughout the book as it makes the narrative more plausible. Another disaster for the Ketch family, this time the death of a daughter, pregnant either by her father or by one of the men to whom he regularly hires her out, leaves an unwanted baby. Dora unofficially adopts the baby girl. More trauma, again involving the Ketch clan, occurs with the death of Experience, which her husband blames on Dora. By this point, a local campaign against Dora, fuelled by superstition and the exploitation of the old beliefs, and gossip about a "witch's mark", make her an outcast.
MCKAY WRITES IN a deliberately non-literary style. Her prose is factual and suits the measured, alert, at times wry tone of Dora's telling: "Widowed at the age of 19. Already I've grown tired of wearing black to church and town. It makes me feel useless and old."
The accidental death of her husband is true to every twist the plot takes - surprising and believable. As is Dora's relief: "Mother and most of the other women treat me as if I will break, always shushing me and patting my knee, then bringing me another cup of warm milk."
Flight from accusations brings Dora to Boston and another strong set-piece which neatly further develops the feminist theme. Throughout the novel, use is made of cryptic newspaper reports which chart the shifts in local opinion.
For all the polemic and anger, nothing is ever too neat in this book. Late in the narrative a protest march undertaken in 1919 by 200 women intent on the right of giving birth at home, with the assistance of rural midwives, is reported. Dora admits: "I'm tired of being afraid" - it is an interesting comment as, for all the injustice, pain and fatalistic acceptance chronicled in this unusual, vigorous and disciplined novel, there is surprisingly little fear, just significant amounts of intelligent outrage. The points are made, but a story is also told and told well.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
The Birth House By Ami McKay Fourth Estate, 387pp. £11.99
