The Borning Room

A short novel which beautifully depicts the life cycle and the rightful place of both birth and death within it. As Georgina lies in the borning room in 1918, preparing to die, she remembers the room's place in her life, begun in 1851. This includes the deaths of her Grandfather and Mother,

although it is that of her mother which affects her deeply.

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LibraryThing member raizel

Nice episodic, story about a family's history centered around a room where people are born and die. There is the grandfather who is spiritual and whose Sunday worship is spent outdoors in the woods; a runaway slave whose firsthand knowledge of childbirth is helpful; a teacher who lives with each of

the families of his students; and others. I especially liked a paragraph in which the first-person narrator describes the light her mother brings to others and the flickering that she herself provides.

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LibraryThing member Randalea

In this day of sanitary hospitals, we don't get to experience birth and death in our homes much anymore. This is an account of a home where life and death happens. The real human scenario unfolds right before our eyes.

LibraryThing member csoki637

What I remember of this book is the child narrator's belief that pregnancy occurs when a married woman swallows a watermelon seed.

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