Book
Five Quarters of the Orange.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780060958022
- ISBN: 0060958022
- Physical Description: 307 p. : ill ; 20 cm.;
- Publisher: New York, NY : HarperCollins, 2002.
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Available copies
- 2 of 2 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 0 of 0 copies available at Lillooet Area Library Association.
- 0 of 0 copies available at Lillooet Branch.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 2 total copies.
Other Formats and Editions
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fernie Heritage Library | FIC HAR (Text) | 35136000375882 | Adult Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
| Midway Public Library | FIC TRA(HC) HAR (Text) | 35143000195039 | Adult Hardcover Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Monthly Selections - #1 March 2001
/*Starred Review*/ The past isn't gone, or even past, in this wrenching narrative, where every sensation is perfectly delineated, from the poisonous prick of childhood guilt to the swoon of surrender before a ripe berry tart--sensation as talisman. Writing from the restored Loire farmhouse where she grew up and lives under an assumed identity, 65-year-old Framboise recounts her life. Memories of the World War II Resistance remain, and her family's name is still despised. The story of why unfolds like a crab-apple blossom, and the tart, living fruit puckers the memory even while it nourishes. Framboise is too like her silent, taut mother, whose migraines are always preceded by the scent of oranges. Framboise uses that knowledge in the terrible way of children, to wrest a bit of freedom and control even though that means meeting with the German soldier who has enchanted her siblings and herself. That story weaves itself around the tale's present, where Framboise tries to divine her mother's notebook of recipes and jottings as if she were reading entrails. She tries to keep those luscious recipes and cryptic phrases from the hands of a dissembling nephew, for they protect secrets she is keeping, even from herself. There's not a moment of slackness in the perfectly wrought prose: light, heat, cold, softness, and, above all, the texture and shape and scent of bread and cake, fruit and wine, thyme and olive--all of these come off the page like the musk of desire. Darker than Chocolat (1999), Harris' first novel, and without a trace of the sentimentality that softened Blackberry Wine (2000), Harris' latest will strike the readers as a far more complex vintage. ((Reviewed March 1, 2001)) Copyright 2001 Booklist Reviews - BookPage Reviews : BookPage Reviews 2001 May
War is hell, as we all know, but the last word on that still hasn't been said. Now Joanne Harris gives us a book that exposes the ugliness of war from the viewpoint of three neglected children living in a German-occupied French village during World War II. In Five Quarters of the Orange, narrator Framboise Dartigen unfolds a chilling tale in which she and her two siblings find themselves collaborating with Nazis, trading secrets about their neighbors for chocolate and comic books.The great strength of Five Quarters of the Orange is Harris' unflinching honesty about childhood - its capacity for treachery and cruelty. Graphic images of Framboise's war against the life of the nearby river underline this theme. After a village girl is bitten and killed by a venomous snake, Framboise nets a dozen snakes, crushes their skulls and leaves them to rot on the riverbanks.
At the heart of the novel, as in the author's earlier work, Chocolat is a complicated relationship between mother and daughter. Framboise's mother Mirabelle mistakenly applies the same techniques to child rearing that she applies to growing fruit trees: prune them severely, and they will flower. She discovers too late that children don't respond well to constant scolding and deprivation. Mirabelle is also plagued by olfactory hallucinations. Prior to her terrible migraines, she thinks she smells oranges. The scenes in which Framboise takes revenge on her mother by planting a cut-up orange near the stove so that the scent fills the house are among the best in the book. Harris reveals her true genius in these episodes of nine-year-old vindictiveness.
Five Quarters of the Orange isn't just another war novel. It's also a mystery. Why does Framboise disguise her identity when she returns to her childhood village after an absence of 50 years? A scandal hangs over her head from that earlier time, a scandal so flagrant she is sure she will never be accepted back into her community if the people there know exactly who she is. This unknown scandal, gradually revealed to the reader through flashbacks, provides most of the novel's suspense.
To dwell only on the horrors of Five Quarters of the Orange would be to do the book an injustice. Though Harris' genius shines most truly in her portrayal of the ways in which war compromises even the innocent, this book is also rich in charm and whimsy - the same kind of graceful good humor that made the author's previous book Chocolat such a big hit. Scenes of the grotesque give way to moments of gentle slapstick.
People who are tired of conventional treatments of the elderly in literature will especially enjoy the episode in which the elderly Framboise and her aging neighbor get the better of a 20-something hoodlum terrorizing Framboise's creperie. Their shared triumph sparks an autumnal romance that cannot fail to delight the most cynical readers. Even for someone with skeletons in her closet like Framboise, it's never too late to make a clean breast of things, never too late to fall in love.
Lynn Hamilton writes from Tybee Island, Georgia. Copyright 2001 BookPage Reviews
- Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2001 March #2
An overwrought and often contrived tale with one too many characters named after food.When elderly widow Françoise Simon returns to the sleepy village on the Loire where she grew up, she's grateful that no one recognizes her after all these years as Framboise Dartigen, daughter of a woman suspected of collaboration during WWII. Framboise sets up a small crêperie and keeps her silence, whiling away the time by studying the immense scrapbook her mother, Mirabelle, left to her. This crumbling but fascinating volume is crammed with recipes, clippings, and handwritten notes in a peculiar code, which she gradually deciphers. Framboise is forced to relive her own central role in the long-ago scandal as the youngest of three children who eagerly take small luxuries like chocolate and silk stockings from the occupying German soldiers, offering in exchange information that can be used to blackmail the villagers. Framboise befriends Tomas Liebniz, youngest and best-looking of the soldiers, and confides her desire to catch Old Mother, an enormous pike lurking in the depths of the Loire. He provides fishing tackle and advice, as well as a means of getting around her disapproving mother. Mirabelle suffers from excruciatingly painful migraines, which can be triggered by the scent of oranges. Tomas gives one to the nasty little girl, who saves the peel and uses its pungent smell to repeatedly incapacitate her mother. Only morphineânow impossible to obtainâeases the pain, and despite her hatred for the Germans who shot and killed her husband, Mirabelle too turns to clever Tomas, who procures it for her. After his accidental death by drowning and a bloody shooting rampage by German soldiers, the Dartigens face the wrath of the townsfolk . . . .Harris (Chocolat, 1999) is capable of elegantly sensual writing, but Five Quarters degenerates into melodrama all too soon.Author tour Copyright 2001 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2001 April #1
Tragedy, revenge, suspicion, and love are the ingredients for the latest offering from the author of the acclaimed Chocolat. Framboise Dartigen recounts what happened in her tiny village of Les Laveuses during the German occupation and why after carrying the secret for more than 55 years she hid her identity upon returning. Beset by wartime privations, the people of Les Laveuses were a mixture of resistance fighters, collaborators, and financial opportunists. When a German soldier died mysteriously, townspeople were executed, and Framboise's mother was tortured and driven out by her neighbors, who believed that she had collaborated. Only her children knew the truth, and now Framboise, the sole survivor, has come back to claim the family farm and run a little crêperie featuring her mother's recipes. In the album she inherited from her mother are not only her recipes and mementos but also clues to what really happened so long ago. Like the oranges whose fragrance so tortured Framboise's mother, the ending is bittersweet, and readers will love it. Highly recommended. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/01.] Susan Clifford Braun, Aerospace Corp., El Segundo, CA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2001 April #5
If Harris's previous novel, Chocolat, was an adorably sweet morsel of French village lore, then this, her third, is a richer, more complex dessert wine. Still using her arsenal of culinary metaphors, quirky characters and slightly surreal incidents, Harris presents a complicated but beautiful tale involving misfortune, mystery and intense family relations. Framboise Dartigen, a feisty yet sensitive girl, grew up in a gossip-ridden hamlet on the banks of the Loire called Les Laveuses. Striving for attention and power, nine-year-old Framboise (or Boise, to her family) took to playing nasty tricks on her headstrong, mentally vulnerable mother, Mirabelle, who had a weakness for oranges. And it was not the usual affliction Mirabelle actually experienced "spells" (akin to epileptic fits) if she even smelled the fruit. But despite Framboise's girlish pranks, Mirabelle's maternal instinct was strong. When her children befriended German soldiers who were in the village during the World War II occupation, things went awry, and mother and children were forced to flee. As Framboise tells the tale, she's in her 60s and has returned to Les Laveuses, posing as a widow named Françoise Simon. When the café she owns is reviewed in a national food magazine, her cover is blown and the past resurfaces. Harris has constructed a multilayered plot, punctuated with scrumptious descriptions of French delicacies and telling depictions of the war's jolting effects on one fragile family. This intense work brims with sensuality and sensitivity. (May) Forecast: Given Chocolat's brilliant success in print and on screen, this book will have no trouble attracting attention. Whether the previous book's readers are ready for this more serious novel is questionable, however. Harris, who lives in England, will make appearances in six U.S. cities in early June. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information. - School Library Journal Reviews : SLJ Reviews 2002 February
Adult/High School-Framboise Dartigen relates this story from her point of view as a nine-year-old and as a woman in her 60s. She spent her childhood in a Nazi-occupied French village with her widowed mother and siblings. Knowing that the scent of oranges brought on her mother's severe migraines, Framboise was clever enough or devious enough to hoard orange peel for her own advantage. During their unsupervised play, the children met a young Nazi soldier and were captivated by his charm and the black-market gifts that he gave them. Years later, Framboise, now a widow herself, returns to the village on a quest for the truth about her family's role in a tragic event for which her mother bore the blame and was forced by the townspeople to flee. Framboise inherited her mother's journal, and soon learns that the past and the present are intertwined. Harris has woven a dark, complex story of a dysfunctional family in stressful times. As in the author's Chocolat (Viking, 2000), mother and, later, daughter are gifted cooks whose love of food and cooking shows in the wonderful descriptions of bread, cake, fruit, wine, olives, etc. A picture of life in an occupied territory emerges in which collaborators, resisters, enemies, friends, and family members live in the same area, going about their daily routines. Harris's fans will not be disappointed; her attention to detail, vivid description, and strong characterization are all in this book, too.-Carol Clark, formerly at Fairfax County Public Schools, VA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
