Five Quarters of the Orange
by Joanne Harris
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joanne HarrisEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-06-04
ISBN: 0060958022
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of Five Quarters of the Orange
Book Review: Food and tragedy - worth reading
Summary: 5 Stars
I really loved this book. The protagonist is Framboise, an old woman who is telling us the story of one monumental event in her life. As young girl growing up in the French countryside during World War II, Framboise had a poisoned relationship with her single mother, Mirabelle. Framboise's father has already been killed in the war, and the little family is struggling to establish a new dynamic amidst the swirl of events around them. Mirabelle is an accomplished cook with a bountiful farm, but she suffers from horrible migraines in addition to some psychological problems. Mirabelle always knows when one of her "spells" is coming, because she smells oranges, even though she strictly forbids them in the house.
Framboise and her two siblings (all, interestingly, named after foods - Framboise itself means raspberry) strike up a capitalistic relationship with a German soldier (part of the occupying force). The children provide a little information here and there about black market activities in exchange for items such as chocolate, magazines, and other products scarce in war-torn France. (Framboise always asks for an orange as part of her "payment." She uses its peel to trick her mother into thinking one of her spells is coming. This allows Framboise to not only inflict suffering on her mother, but also to gain a few hours of freedom as her mother holes up in her room, desperately trying to ward off the migraine.) The children don't really realize what they are doing. After all, the people they inform on are not killed or jailed. The soldier simply extorts them for his own goods.
And the soldier, named Tomas, ably fills the masculine void left by the children's father. In a world devoid of much affection (their mother is a brusque, busy woman not prone to displays of tenderness), the children love him. Before the end of the novel, though, the soldier turns up dead. And how he dies, and who pays the price for his death, are secrets of the novel I won't spoil here.
This book is much about mothers and daughters. Upon her death, Mirabelle leaves her "album" to Framboise - a book full of recipes, thoughts, notes, etc. By reading the album, Framboise comes to know her mother in a way that she never has before. The relationship between the two is certainly acrimonious; Framboise often refers to it as a war, trying to win this or that battle. But as the book progresses, even Framboise herself admits that she and her mother are very much alike.
Also, Harris is a master of description. She frequently writes about food - the foods that Mirabelle cooks, the foods that Framboise cooks as an adult, all the recipes in the "album" that Mirabelle leaves to Framboise upon her death. Your mouth will be watering. Have a Patricia Wells cookbook handy; you'll want to whip up some French country food.
Lastly, the novel is about secrets. It is, after all, the tale of Framboise finally telling a secret that she has carried with her for her entire life. This is where the title comes in - it's one of the secrets that Framboise has kept. Framboise tells no one, not even her siblings, of her use of the orange to trick her mother into thinking a migraine is coming. As a result, when her two siblings (and one friend) see her with one of the oranges she's procured, they ask her to share it. In order to reserve some of the peel for her secret purposes, Framboise turns her back to her siblings/friend while she "quarters" the orange. But in fact, she divides it into five pieces, hiding one of the slices in her pocket. This way, she saves one-fifth of the orange to use on her mother. The fifth quarter of the orange is the "something" that no one knows about. It is what is hidden. And for a novel filled with secrets, I think Harris chose the perfect title.
I heartily recommend this book.
Summary of Five Quarters of the Orange
In her bestselling and critically acclaimed novel Chocolat, Joanne Harris told a lush story of the conflicts between pleasure and repression. Now she delivers her most complex and sophisticated work yet, an unforgettable tale of mothers and daughters, of the past and the present, of resisting and succumbing -- an extraordinary work of fiction lined with darkness and fierce joy.When Framboise Simon returns to a small village on the banks of the Loire, the locals do not recognize her as the daughter of the infamous woman they hold responsible for a tragedy during the German occupation years ago. But the past and present are inextricably entwined, particularly in a scrapbook of recipes and memories that Framboise has inherited from her mother. And soon Framboise will realize that the journal also contains the key to the tragedy that indelibly marked that summer of her ninth year....In Five Quarters of the Orange, Joanne Harris returns to the small-town, postwar France of Chocolat. This time she follows the fortunes of Framboise Dartigan, named for a raspberry but with the disposition of, well, a lemon. The proprietor of a café in a rustic village, this crabby old lady recalls the days of her childhood, which coincided with the German occupation. Back then, she and her brother and sister traded on the black market with the Germans, developing a friendship with a charismatic young soldier named Tomas. This intrigue provided a distraction from their grim home life--their father was killed in the war and their mother was a secretive, troubled woman. Yet their relationship with Tomas led to a violent series of events that still torment the aging Framboise.
Harris has a challenging project here: to show the complicated, messy reality behind such seemingly simple terms as collaborator and Resistance. To the children, of course, these were mere abstractions: "We understood so little of it. Least of all the Resistance, that fabulous quasi-organization. Books and the television made it sound so focused in later years; but I remember none of that. Instead I remember a mad scramble in which rumor chased counter-rumor and drunkards in cafes spoke loudly against the new regime." The author's portrait of occupier and occupied living side by side is given texture by her trademark appreciation of all things French. Yes, some passages read like romantic, black-and-white postcards: "Reine's bicycle was smaller and more elegant, with high handlebars and a leather saddle. There was a bicycle basket across the handlebars in which she carried a flask of chicory coffee." But these simple pleasures, recorded with such adroitness, are precisely what give Framboise solace from the torment of her past. --Claire Dederer
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