The Orphans from Liverpool Lane (Liverpool Orphans Trilogy)
Sisters Marcia and Cynthia Rogan are the Liverpool Lane orphans. More aptly they are ‘orphans of the living’, a term that evokes shivers. When they are put under the charge of the nuns at St Mary of the Blessed Angels orphanage in 1944, both girls are underage, and their mother, Eunice, is weighed down by ill health, single-parenting and trying to make ends meet. The war drags on, and her husband John is somewhere in the Burmese jungle. Once she feels well enough to bring her daughters home, John’s arrival, after five years away, isn’t joyous for long. He is old beyond his years, short-tempered, and a shadow of his former self. Add his alcohol and Bromoform addiction, and things slide downhill fast. The sisters’ close relationship is very well-drawn here, but they differ greatly as sisters often do. Marcia just wants her old Dad back and for things to be the way they were. Rebellious Cynthia wants to dance her way through life as a Tiller Girl. Inevitably John’s addiction overwhelms the family’s ability to cope. Eunice takes him away for treatment. Marcia, still underage, is sent back to the nuns.
This heartbreakingly poignant story is relentlessly bleak, taking place in a bombed-out, broken-down city where hope is hard won. Morton evokes time and place well using interjections of colloquial Liverpudlian – Corpy, craic, leccy bills, tick-man, Kirkby kiss – but it might be helpful for these terms to be explained. Although most readers will twig to local dialect such as shurrup, gerrin, gorra, and nowt, these terms are so sparsely used they feel like an afterthought. The nuns, mostly depicted as caring, inevitably carry secrets which propel the story forward, and precipitous events occur without parental consent. Themes of love, acceptance and forgiveness are carried through to an uplifting conclusion.
