Book review - A Cuppa' Tea And An Aspirin by Helen Forrester

 Having read a Helen Forrester autobiography aged seventeen, where upon reading Twopence To Cross the Mersey, I set off to find Lime Street, the Cavern and the Liver Building. Helen Forrester captivated me then with her profound, raw and beautiful descriptions of 1930's Liverpool with its poverty, its bustling docks and its strong sense of community.

Whilst this book was written as an autobiography (one of four), A Cuppa Tea and An Aspirin is a fictional piece, yet includes much of the same spirit, much of the same sense of reality as Twopence- did for myself aged seventeen. 

A Cuppa Tea and An Aspirin was published exactly 30 years after Twopence To Cross the Mersey as a way of I suppose commemorating and celebrating the anniversary of a set of much loved historical autobiography. As far as I understand it before this time there were not many written accounts of what it was like to live in the poverty of the 1930's docklands in Liverpool. Of infested tenement blocks, of cocoa houses and of the simplicity of a jar of tea or soup if the families somehow managed to get their hands on such luxuries. Helen Forrester certainly opened my eyes to a whole new world, before Jennifer Worth contributed further and showed us a peek into 1950's East-End London, and for that I am so grateful. 

It was a family member that first introduced me to Forrester's work and so to the bustling city that has since become my favourite place in the world and somewhere I have visited at least once a year for every year of my life since. The character's in this work, though fictional are so bright, so gritty and so well formed that even though they are not real it is not hard to imagine they resemble so many people that have since passed. These warriors and ordinary people who lived through the First World War before then living through the Second World War. 

This is a story of Martha Connolly, a working class mother who looks after nine children whilst trying to clothe, feed and raise them into a world where it is as hard to get a hot bath as it is to stop a lice infestation. The story is non-linear and jumps back and forth from the thirties to the present day, where we see Martha's life alter unrecognisably. As friends die, her children move away and Martha suffers ill health we find her in a nursing home reminiscing on the past hardships but also warmth and vibrancy she experienced whilst living in the courts. 

Though this novel is not unique in its telling nor particularly note worthy in style, the story is what lifts it off the page and makes it at the same time comfortable and appalling to read in equal measure. 

I will definitely keep an eye out for the other volumes in the autobiography collection and delve back into those stories possibly each year, feeling a sense of peace at the familiarity people had with their families, friends and neighbours not that long ago.