Five Quarters Of The Orange (Paragon Softcover Large Print Books)

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I was nine years old in 1942. Father had died in the war and Maman was unpredictable. "I can smell oranges," she would say and rage furiously as she disappeared to her room with a migraine. Cassis, Reine and I would then go to Angers, where we exchanged information with the Germans for sweets. His body was soon found, and 20 villagers were shot. Signs went up accusing us of collaborating, and our house was surrounded. "Oui, I was his whore," screamed Maman. "I needed pills for my headaches. I shot him."

Also, the general plot and the ending was somehow predictable for me compared to Gentlemen and Players. I was not astonished when the mystery was being revealed layer by layer.Beyond the main street of Les Laveuses runs the Loire: smooth and brown as a sunning snake - but hiding a deadly undertow beneath its moving surface. This is where Framboise, a secretive widow, plies her culinary trade at the crêperie - and lets her memory play strange games. This is nearly a five star. I've never read this author and I sure will now. Or at least search for her other works, if any. It comes after reading several losers or abandoned in a row. And it enthralled to such a degree that I have far more enthusiasm now for researching for better fare shortly. The dreamy and almost fair-tale narrative remains undisturbed by the spectre of the Occupation, as Harris avoids moral or historical themes, to ponder on the internal and social turmoil of the protagonists ... Harris seduces her readers with culinary delights, through suggestive textures and smells which indulge the senses What's On In London

quarters? There is no such thing – there we have the logic of children: split an orange five ways and what do you get? The scent convinces her mother that she is about to have one of her spells, she takes morphine tablets, and takes to her bed, Revolutionary France had a history of naming children after garden produce, although nowadays French laws on naming chidren are quite strict. Why do you think Mirabelle named her children as she did? How did this choice affect the way she was seen in the community?Joanne Harris é, na sua essência, exactamente o que este livro oferece: narrativa de ritmo pausado, polvilhada de conteúdo habilmente exposto, montagem engenhosa de argumento e… descrições quase palpáveis de comidas, bebidas, cheiros e sabores. The characters are not easily liked, very few are amiable, and the entire is both dramatically and emotionally tense. And that tension is for its entire length and continued within personality and character far beyond the ending. Because our narrator and others are never easy people. It is a whimsical touch, which surprises and troubles me. That this stony and prosaic woman should in her secret moments harbor such thoughts. For she was sealed from us- from everyone- with such fierceness that I had thought her incapable of yielding. In what way would you say Mirabelle’s recipe book the key to her innermost thoughts? Why do you think she chose to record them in this way?

Harris indulges her love of rich and mouthwatering descriptive passages, appealing to the senses... Thoroughly enjoyable' -- Observer Framboise can be difficult to like, both for her mother and for the reader. What do you think made her the way she is? And what are her redeeming features? Framboise Dartigen, the youngest child of Mirabelle Dartigen—a woman still remembered and hated for an incident that happened in the village, Les Laveuses, when Framboise was nine, during the Second World War. Harris's vividly sensual account of a nine-year-old's loves, loyalties and misunderstandings is a powerful and haunting story of childhood betrayal Good Housekeeping Joanne Harris is masterly in her conjuring of the sense of time and place in the wartime segments of the book, and with almost poetic style she brings to life the smell of country cooking, and the movement of fish in the Loire and the stifling smell of orange oil Yorkshire PostIn what way could this be said to be a novel about a woman’s struggle to build a life in a largely male-dominated world? Are such women treated more harshly for going against what society sees as their “natural inclinations”?