Book Review #1: Five Quarters of the Orange

At the risk of sounding like a completely psychotic stalker,

I like you Joanne Harris.
I really do.
You me? We think in terms of food.
We connect.

Five Quarters of the Orange is the story of the pure innocence of youth, of young love, of loneliness, but most of all, of deep dark secrets.

It tells the story of Framboise Dartigen, a sixty-five old woman as she moves back to her home town, the village of Les Laveuses, on the Loire. She has hidden her true identity in order to return to her village and wishes nothing more but to live there peacefully for the rest of her life. She has done well for herself, setting up at successful creperie, serving food made from recipes passed down to her in a old feathered book from her mother, punctuated by snippets of the queer workings of her mother's mind. This, something she has never understood til now.

Alas, the peaceful living is not to be. Her existence in her beloved village is threatened by the possibility of exposure. the exposure of a secret she longs to keep hidden.

Framboise narrates the origins of this secret in her former self, that of a nine year old child.
The imagery is so good that one is propelled into her world to see it through her very eyes. One starts to envision the simple house where she stays with her mother,brother, Cassis and elder sister, Reine-Claude. She tells of playing with her siblings, days spent fishing in the river, setting up traps and preparing baits and her obsession with trying to catch Old Mother, a tough old pike that has eluded her all these while.

The books jumps between the nine year old Framboise, her innocent and carefree days and her sadness as she is slowly left out by her siblings as they grow older, and the sixty five year old Framboise as she struggles to "defend" herself against her enemies who continue to create mischief to break her down.

This book is an excellent read. Its not really the kind that keeps you at the edge of your seat, flying through the pages to the point of not really taking in the words due to one wanting to find out what happens next so much (like the excellent Bourne series). Its more of the sort that makes you take your time to read each word and picture the quaint little village fields and red nosed laughing men in straw hats in your mind.

Must say that it does have a certain amount of French-ness to it. Maybe its due to the fact that the author, Joanne Harris is half French. Or maybe its the peppering of French cuisine in the book. Not surprising, as Harris is also the author of Chocolat. I never did read that book, although the French-ness of it all is forever imprinted in my mind by all that chocolated-finger lickings.

This is where I fall in love the book. As a self-declared food snob, I totally adored the way the author went about describing things in foodie terms, like how she describe the pallor of a frightened face to be as "white as curd" or the way she named the main character Framboise, which is a luxurious raspberry liqueur. Yummmm.....

The whole story is finally tied together by the two main male characters of the book,Tomas Leibniz and Paul. Both are very contrasting features in the book, Tomas being the character who connects Framboise with her siblings back again and even her mother too and Paul, the unassuming boy with a stutter that silently watches every move and unknowingly, to all, becomes the answer to their troubles, both the nine year old and the sixty five year old Framboise. Go read it to find out how.
Definitely high recommended.

I stumbled upon a review of this book here at the Joanne Harris website and think its really good too.
Maybe that's what they pay reviewers well for ? :)

Rating: 5/5