Five Quarters of the Orange

Joanne Harris has been a favorite author of mine ever since I read Sleep, Pale Sister. Her stories evoke a magical feeling with the right tinge of nostalgia. I was able to pick up Five Quarters of the Orange in a discount store and I was so happy with my find but couldn't for the life of me imagine how it could have ended up there. Surely her books are flying off the shelves? Well, that's a different matter.

This novel revolves around Framboise, a woman in her sixties recalling her childhood in a small French town during the German occupation. With her brother, sister and dour mother, they eke out a life not without hardships. Framboise is a complex character, as a nine year old she is precocious, angry though wanting of affection from a cold mother who had nothing good to say about her and their little lives. She would use an orange to induce her mother's bad spells so they would be left to their own devices while their mother retired to her bed for a long time. She was very smart and crafty often times besting her older brother and sister in games and dares using her steely determination and will power.  As a sixty year old, she grudgingly sees herself as a woman that inherited her mother's negative traits. She is scared of being close to her two daughters and would rather live an anonymous life without complications which means allowing no one to get too close.

As Framboise goes back from present to past you can already sense an underlying darkness in her story. Her past is rife with secrets and mischievous acts but Harris won't tell the reader right away. You have to travel with Boise back to her hometown where she puts up a small cafe using her dead mother's recipes that were compiled in an old album which was her inheritance.  There are many things that she is soon able to decode from her inheritance. Did her mother wish it so? Harris reveals them slowly and sweetly, much like wrapping the last piece of delectable chocolate.

Parallel to her reminisces is the story of the German soldiers which the children would trade information with, unwittingly setting off  wheels for a bigger and more evil act. There are so many revelations, insights and questions that need answers and my general feeling while reading the novel is that I wanted to consume it right away only to hold on to the very pages in the hope that the story wouldn't end. Such is Harris' magic in weaving a magical romantic tale where even the ugly, the hopeless and the evil can be rendered good, beautiful and like a crepe, sweet.