An Orphan’s War
Maxine Taylor never wanted to be a nurse. That was her mother’s ambition, which Maxine felt obliged to fulfil because her ne’er-do-well brother had broken their parents’ hearts. But after her medic husband dies in the aftermath of the evacuation of Dunkirk and Maxine makes some disastrous decisions in her personal life during an ill-fated stint working in St Thomas’s Hospital in London, she returns to her native Liverpool and finds work at a local Dr Barnardo’s Orphanage, which might just fulfil her dream of working with children – as long as her past does not catch up with her…
This is typical saga fare. The characterisation is fairly superficial, and the characters all fall easily into stereotyped, black-and-white categories of goodies and baddies. It’s hard to empathise with Maxine’s grief for her husband Johnny, supposedly her best friend from childhood, when all the scenes of their marriage show him in rather an unsympathetic light.
Molly Green shows that she has not yet mastered the art of vignettes – creating minor characters in just a few telling details. Most of the orphans at the orphanage are just a list of indistinguishable names – Alan, Bobby, Betsy, Daisy, Doris – rather than possessing individual quirks and personalities, though perhaps they are individualised more in Green’s previous novel set in the same orphanage, which I haven’t read. On the plus side, the historical background seems sound enough, with no glaring anachronisms (apart from possibly the modern, liberal values all the “good” characters seem to possess). Saga fans will no doubt enjoy it, but this is not a novel that will win over anyone with reservations about the genre.
