Five Quarters of the Orange
by Joanne Harris

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Book Reviews of Five Quarters of the Orange

Book Review: 3 1/2 stars. A history of complicated family dynamics
Summary: 3 Stars

The history of this family's dynamics, especially the relationship between Framboise and her mother, is a complicated story well told. Harris uses the sensualities of food - mostly the sweetness of the fruits that the Dartigens grew on their farm - to juxtapose the emotional hardships and hostilities of love and of war and the disenchantedness and consequences that result from this environment. I would have liked to have seen Harris spend a little more time on Framboise's relationship to her own daughters in the present which is touched upon but never really explored. There is also a subplot concerning Framboise's brother and nephew (also in present day), which Harris uses as a catalyst for Framboise to tell her story but which was unnecesarily overwritten and which, for me, distracted from the richer narrative at hand. Overall, a fine book, not an uplifting one but one which does have warmth in unexpected places.

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