Five Quarters of the Orange

Rating:
Summary: I Highly Recommend
Review: Five Quarters of the Orange

Past and present converge to tell the tale of love and life lost during the Second World War. Set in the Loire Valley of France, Joanne Harris has created a beautiful story that bring the characters to life and draws the reader in.

Framboise Simon returns to the village of her childhood to reconstruct the way of life she lost during the war. Her only legacy from her long deceased mother is a scrapbook of recipes which on closer examination also holds the key to the truth of her past. Framboise is haunted by her memories as she grows closer to the truth that will ultimately set her free.

Intrigue, suspense, love and hate are all rolled into this wonderful story. Truly a book I'd recommend to friends.

Rating:
Summary: Lovely Patchwork Quilt
Review: Framboise returns to the village of her youth as an old woman, unrecognizable because of her age and using a different first name along with her married name. None of the villagers connect her, a 65 year old widow, respectable though peculiar, with the skinny kid that was run out of the village with her mother and two siblings some fifty years prior. She's Mirabelle Dartigen's daughter. . . if they only knew.

In her return "home" Boise must face the past and sort out what happened to her enigmatic mother. The album, with it's clippings and cryptic writing, leads her to discoveries about her mother that shock her and change her whole view of who her mother was.

At the same time, Boise relives her own life, especially that pivotal summer. This, side by side with her discoveries from the album, form a full picture of what did happen, answer some of her questions and give the reader a story told in patchwork that, when fit together, makes a lovely quilt of story.

The story is told in the first person, going back and forth from Boise's childhood to her current struggle with first the village and then her relatives. It transitions smoothly, the story is firm and real--and like the oranges that play such a crucial role, the scent of the story lingers for some time after the reading.

The main plot was a well-used one, and as such disappointed me a bit. Harris managed to make up for that, though, with her style which kept me intrigued even during the most obvious bits. Over all the novel was a good one and I look forward to reading for her other two novels.

Rating:
Summary: STELLAR BOOK, MEDIOCRE READING
Review: How disappointing to listen to a voice performance that doesn't capture the essence of the main character. What follows is my impression of the hardcover book, but the audio left me uninterested.

Suggestion? Read rather than listen.

While her debut novel, Chocolat (1999), was delicious and followed by the ripely seductive Blackberry Wine (2000), Joanne Harris's third offering, "Five Quarters Of The Orange," is bittersweet and tangy.

When 65-year-old Framboise Simon returns to the small French village of her birth she is unrecognized by the townspeople who a half century earlier, during the German occupation, had branded her family as ignoble traitors.

With a menu composed largely of her mother's old recipes, Framboise open a small café. These recipes have been kept in an album, the repository of many memories and thoughts. When the café becomes popular and is discovered by a food writer, Framboise's brother, Cassis, appears on the scene with his son and daughter-in-law in tow. They want the album the mother, Mirabelle, kept so they can produce a cookbook, and profit by making public secrets long hidden in the family's past.

As a child Framboise had been befriended by a young Nazi, Tomas Leibniz. The confused girl had been swayed by his attention, and lavish gifts. Was it so easy to almost unknowingly become an informer? The album will eventually reveal a trove of untruths and deceptions.

Ms. Harris once again dots her narrative with lyric descriptions of the French countryside.

Rating:
Summary: STELLAR BOOK, MEDIOCRE READING
Review: How disappointing to listen to a voice performance that doesn't capture the essence of the main character. What follows is my impression of the hardcover book, but the audio left me uninterested.

Suggestion? Read rather than listen.

While her debut novel, Chocolat (1999), was delicious and followed by the ripely seductive Blackberry Wine (2000), Joanne Harris's third offering, "Five Quarters Of The Orange," is bittersweet and tangy.

When 65-year-old Framboise Simon returns to the small French village of her birth she is unrecognized by the townspeople who a half century earlier, during the German occupation, had branded her family as ignoble traitors.

With a menu composed largely of her mother's old recipes, Framboise open a small café. These recipes have been kept in an album, the repository of many memories and thoughts. When the café becomes popular and is discovered by a food writer, Framboise's brother, Cassis, appears on the scene with his son and daughter-in-law in tow. They want the album the mother, Mirabelle, kept so they can produce a cookbook, and profit by making public secrets long hidden in the family's past.

As a child Framboise had been befriended by a young Nazi, Tomas Leibniz. The confused girl had been swayed by his attention, and lavish gifts. Was it so easy to almost unknowingly become an informer? The album will eventually reveal a trove of untruths and deceptions.

Ms. Harris once again dots her narrative with lyric descriptions of the French countryside.

Rating:
Summary: I Still Love Oranges, Maybe Not In So Many Ways
Review: I love taking a trip to France with Joanne Harris, but this novel fell short of what Harris is normally capable of.

The main character is a much used Harris character, a crotchety old lady who runs a café in a quaint little French town. Her life is a bit of a mystery but explained with flashbacks to her tragic childhood urged on by messages her mother leaves her in an old scrawled cookbook. Eventually the anger of the old woman makes sense but I was left hoping for more. Harris writes with such explanatory sensitivity to the senses that her books are normally explorations into another world. I enjoyed this novel but I didn't find it as appealing as many of her others.

Harris makes a mystery out of this novel, leading the readers down paths that would have been more effective had they been written with her more unique and magical hand. Instead we are immersed in the beauty of French cooking, the countryside and in the quaintness of little villages only to be sabotaged by the harshness of corrupt Germans and a touch of the war resistance. I wish the story had been told with less effort and more lyrical meaning, as Harris is quite capable of weaving together great fairy tales of hope. I loved certain aspects of this novel but yawned through other parts. The smell of oranges will pervade your senses as you read, don't forget what Harris brings to the table despite the five quarters of this story.


Rating:
Summary: memories and recipes..........
Review: Joanne Harris uses a tantalizing array of luscious food as a backdrop in this dark and compelling novel. Five Quarters of the Orange focuses on the German occupation of France as viewed through the eyes of children and the memories of one of these children,Framboise, now a 60 year old woman. The novel takes place in a small French village near the Loire river. While Framboise's widowed mother, Mirabele, nurtures her orchard, a young German soldier, Tomas, nurtures a friendship with Mirabelle's three children, Casis, Reine, and Framboise. Framboise, now in her 60's tells the story, looking back through her memories and through a "cookbook" her mother has left to her. However, it is not just a cookbook. It is also a diary and book of memories that Mirabelle had bound together in no particular order. Framboise pieces together the family history using her memories of her childhood and the information gleaned through Mirabelle's "cookbook". What emerges is a dark story of Mirabelle's inability ,through her own cloud of migraines and medication, to show any emotion but anger to her children. The children are used by the German soldier to gather information on their neighbors. To the children it is just a way to get chocolates, books, and other items that are difficult to come by in war time, among the most important of these is the friendship and love the children perceive they get from Tomas. They choose not to really see what they are doing as imperilling to their fellow villagers. They are lonely children who are desperate for adult attention and the results are tragic and take years to comprehend.

Rating:
Summary: A great mystery in a sophisticated novel
Review: Joanne Harris's Five Quarters of the Orange is a refreshing tale of suspense within a sophisticated novel. A woman named Framboise moves back to her home town to the same farm she grew up on. She reflects back upon her childhood and the scandalous events that forced her family to leave this town many years ago. The story switches back and forth between Framboise growing up with her siblings in occupied France during WWII and her life years later as a cafe owner with children and grandchildren of her own. The theme of food preparation and the smells of fresh ingredients vividly leap off the page. I especially enjoyed learning about Framboise's frigid mother who was tormented by headaches which were agrivated by the smell of an orange. Her mother's story is pieced together through a scrapbook of recipes and fragments which is given to Framboise upon her death. I couldn't put this book down and can't wait to read the rest of Harris's writings.

Rating:
Summary: Dark but very compelling
Review: Mirabelle Dartigen is a brilliant chef whose legacy to her daughter Framboise is her talent and a notebook containing her recipes. She is also a widow who is plagued by blinding migraine headaches, and addicted to the morphine she needs to survive them. These debilitating, crippling headaches are always preceded by the smell of oranges, so she will not permit an orange in her house.

Tormented by pain, drug addiction and mental illness, Mirabelle attempts to raise three children alone in war torn France after her husband is killed by the Germans. She is not up to the task, physically or mentally, and the children are left to raise themselves.

Framboise, wild to begin with, has hardened toward her mother, whose afflictions have made her distant, mean and unapproachable. In order to ensure that her mother doesn't interfere with her plans, which alternately involve telling the town's secrets to a charismatic German who brings her and her siblings presents, and catching a giant pike thought to grant any wish to whomever catches it, Framboise steals an orange and places it in her mother's pillow in order to trigger one of her migraines.

Throughout the book, she uses oranges to control her mother, who reacts to the odor by shutting herself into her room for days in screaming, sleepless pain, while the children fend for themselves, and do as they wish.

Years later, the elderly Framboise, looking back and reading through her mother's diary-like notebook, gains some insight into the woman's agony and her own part in it. She has returned to her home after decades, hiding her identity from her town, which remembers her family as conspirators with the Nazis, and responsible for the murder of a German and the execution of several townsfolk. She lives among them because it is her home, but is terrified that she will be found out and recognized as "Mirabelle Dartigen's daughter".

The book alternates between the nine-year old Framboise, and the elderly Framboise. It also follows two dramas, the one during WWII where her and her siblings' best friend is a Nazi who trades chocolate for secrets, and the present day where one of her relatives is blackmailing her and threatening to expose her.

The complexity of the relationships and the characters is outstanding, and the story's suspense keeps building and building. The writing is excellent. This isn't a book to read if you're in the mood for something light. Pick this up in your deeper moments when you can shift into Framboise's dark world, which seems all the more frightening because it all seems so plausible.

Excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: Dark but very compelling
Review: Mirabelle Dartigen is a brilliant cook whose legacy to her daughter Framboise is her talent and a notebook containing her recipes. She is also a widow who is plagued by blinding migraine headaches, and addicted to the morphine she needs to survive them. These debilitating, crippling headaches are always preceded by the smell of oranges, so she will not permit an orange in her house.

Tormented by pain, drug addiction and mental illness, Mirabelle attempts to raise three children alone in German-occupied France after her husband is killed by the Germans. She is not up to the task, physically or mentally, and the children are left to raise themselves.

Framboise, wild to begin with, has hardened toward her mother, whose afflictions have made her distant, mean and unapproachable. In order to ensure that her mother doesn't interfere with her plans, which alternately involve telling the town's secrets to a charismatic German who brings her and her siblings presents, and trying to catch a giant pike thought to grant any wish to whomever catches it (and to bring tragedy upon anyone who sees it without catching it), Framboise steals an orange and places it in her mother's pillow in order to trigger one of her migraines.

Throughout the book, she uses oranges to control her mother, who reacts to the odor by shutting herself into her room for days in screaming, sleepless pain, while the children fend for themselves, and do as they wish.

Years later, the elderly Framboise, looking back and reading through her mother's diary-like notebook, gains some insight into the woman's agony and her own part in it. She has returned to her home after decades, hiding her identity from her town, which remembers her family as conspirators with the Nazis, and responsible for the murder of a German and the execution of several townsfolk. She lives among them because it is her home, but is terrified that she will be found out and recognized as

Rating:
Summary: A Childhood Completely Unlike Most of Ours
Review: The story follows a little girl and her family's life in a town during occupation during the war. She manages to get involved in the sordid blackmarket running going on in the town, with her brother and sister getting presents and attention from ratting on their nieighbours, in a way they convince themselves is harmless. Her adventures as a girl are told as a memory, when she returns to the town under a different name as a middle age woman. She sees all sorts of battles, as a girl and a woman, but will warm your heart, the way she has survived, and managed to return. A fiesty, courageous read. I'd recommend it to anyone.