Five Quarters Of The Orange

A completely satisfying read! The book is replete with war, childhood, mystery, scandal, love, hate and best of all, recipes and cooking. Set in the tiny french village of Les Laveuses on the banks of river Loire, the story is told by chief protagonist Framboise Dartigen. Boise for short. Nice name eh? I thought so. Wait till you hear the name of her Mom, the even more mysterious Mirabelle Dartigen.

Mirabelle is a widowed mother who went about the wrong way to bring up her kids but with the best intentions. She treated them the same as the trees in her small but plentiful farm. Cassis, Reinette and Framboise are the threesome. Paul, a neighbor makes up an occasional quartet. It was too late even for the favorite - Framboise- by the time she figures out the tenacity with which her mom had loved the kids. Mirabelle is afflicted with migraine and the onset this is always through an imagined smell of oranges. A fruit effectively banned in their home. Their father was killed in the war which made their mom into an all the more stringent disciplinarian. Boise the youngest and the most like her mom couldn't but exact her revenge by laying her hands on any orange she can find and surreptitiously bringing it home. Joanne Harris has succeeded in telling the ultimate story that felt so complete at the end. I read her 'Chocolat' just before this and it was just OK. Yet, I could feel a pull to the way this author did her story telling and so got my hands on 'Orange'. Totally worth it.

The book is permeated with various aspects of cooking. Mirabelle left her scrap book of recipes to Framboise in her will and the story unfolds once a much older Boise is able to decipher her mother's handwritten notes scattered all over the book. Fell in love with the the concept from the beginning. That and the fact that I am a sucker for quaint french countryside descriptions of any form ever since coming across them in a biography of the french impressionist painter Camille Pissaro. The two may not track together much but as an outsider it was enough of a connection. OK, that one is coming soon since I want to read it again. Hope the Library here has a copy...

Read more on the book here and here and on the author here and here. I shouldn't forget to mention 'Old Mother', a rather large pike that nine year old Boise finally managed to catch from the Loire. The fish is present throughout the book and adds another dimension to the whole story. I hope you will get a chance to read this wonderful book if not for the story, then at least for the green tomato jam recipe:-)