Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #715035 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-07
• Format: Audiobook
• Binding: Audio Cassette

Sunday Express on BLACKBERRY WINE
'If Joanne Harris didn't exist, someone would have to invent her.'

Observer on CHOCOLAT
'Mouthwatering...a celebration of pleasure, of love, of tolerance. Read it.'

Woman's Journal on BLACKBERRY WINE
'Enchanting'

Customer Reviews

From the bach of the vase/sleeve....
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 named after a raspberry liqueur, plies her culinary trade at the créperie -- and lets her memory play strange games.

Into this world comes the threat of revelation, as Framboise's nephew -- a profiteering Parisian -- attempts to exploit the growing success of the country recipes she has inherited from her mother, a woman remembered with contempt by the villagers of Les Laveuses. As the spilt blood of a tragic wartime childhood flows again, exposure beckons for Framboise, the widow with an invented past.

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JOANNE HARRIS, author of Chocolat (Mouthwatering . ..a celebration of pleasure, of love, of tolerance. Read it. Observer) in her exceptional new novel, Five Quarters of the Orange, looks behind the drawn shutters of occupied France to illuminate the pain, delight and loss of a life changed for ever by the uncertainties and betrayal of war.

A Brilliant Book Spoiled Only By Choice Of Narrator
Joanne Harris' book of deception, secrets and lies spanning three generations and set, in the first instance, in occupied France is an absolute masterpiece. This audio adaptation was spoilt only by the choice of narrator (the otherwise talented Rula Lenska). Unfortunately Miss Lenska's monotone voice is not suited to this emotional tale. However, if listening to audio tapes is your preferred method of familiarising yourself with a novel then buy this as the story is too good to miss!!

The shame of collaboration through a child's eyes
Five quarters of the Orange is a beautifully written powerful story of collaboration and resistance in France during the second world war. Seen through the eyes of 9 year old Framboise and later when in her sixties, the story is set in the same small provincial French village as Chocolat and Blackberry Wine.

Subtly, gradually, we learn her family's terrible secret. Moving back and forth between 1940s German-occupied Vichy France and the 1990s Framboise learns to come to terms with her guilt and shame and to confront her past head on.

Central to the story is Framboise's relationship with her hard, embittered mother who nonetheless loves her children dearly and would do anything - anything to protect them. When she dies she leaves Framboise an album - an album with scrawls and indecipherable lettering and recipes. What secrets does the album hold? Framboise can't at first understand its meaning but it eventually helps her piece together her past and above all her Mothers' true feelings and actions.

As in Chocolat, ancient French recipes come vividly life, the descriptions of food and wine is wonderful.

Framboise's childhood is closely bound with the big river. She and her brother and sister know and understand the water intimatelly - it is their haven, their hiding place, their refuge, and eventually their downfall. Their childhood isn't idyllic but it is exciting and daring. Their escapades, that they barely understand the implications of, are mirrored in a (rural) occupied France that tested people's loyalties and strengths to breaking point and threatened to tear society and families apart.

How does their tough but memorable childhood affect their older selves? How did the war change the children's relationships with each other? Bridging the gap of 50 years, linking the 40s with the 90s through the eyes of at once a lively intelligent 9 year old and a fiercely independent, wise but vulnerable 60-year old is the great strenght of the novel.