“Jesus?” she asks, when he tells her.
“Jesus bloody Jesus like the Jesus Jesus?” He nods.
Her bike gone, Orla must return home to her widowed father and toddler sister in the North England village of Glasson Dock.
It’s unfair that her grieving dad gets to do what he wants, which is drink; what Orla wants is to steal and skip class and get out of there.
ImageAs coming-of-age stories go, “The Gospel of Orla” is winningly off-kilter.