Five Quarters of the Orange

Five Quarters of the Orange
  - Joanne Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was my third Joanne Harris book, after Chocolat and The Lollipop Shoes. It follows the same rich, evocative style that I found so compelling in the previous two books. Once again, culinary art forms an integral part of the story – recipes, ingredients, and the entire process of creation of the scrumptious-sounding delights – I feel that I can almost get a whiff of the aroma, and taste the flavor. The description of the French countryside is vivid, and makes me want to explore these small, sleepy villages and towns along the river. And the story is poignant, rather heartbreaking.

The story is told in a first-person narrative, alternating between two time lines – when the narrator was about 9 years old, and when she has crossed to the other side of 60. I find Joanne Harris a brilliant story-teller – while in the previous books she juggled multi-person narrative with great skill, in this one, she switches between two time periods effortlessly and seamlessly

The earlier part of the story is set against the backdrop of WW2, in occupied France. It does not focus on the major events in the war, but how it impacts a small village on the sidelines. The focus is more on relationships – a strained relationship between a mother and her children, changing dynamics between siblings who have completely different temperaments, trust and secrets between friends, and empathy between French children and a German soldier. A whole range of emotions are sketched with a wonderful attention to nuanced details.

This is a bitter-sweet story, (though more bitter than sweet) of loss and heartbreak, with glimpses of hope and warmth. Throughout her childhood, the narrator shares a mostly antagonistic relationship with her mother. The mother seems to be rather hard on children, we can understand a part of her difficulties in raising three children alone after the death of her husband in the war; but it is only much later that we, along with the rebellious daughter, come to know of the other demons that she had been fighting. Children, on the other hand, in their naivete and in the absence of understanding from the mother, deliberately hurt her. It’s so painful to watch that you want to shake some sense into them, even as you want to shout out to the world to see the futility of war and the importance of empathy

In the current time period, the daughter comes to know her mother, long dead by then, through her journal. It is then, that she regrets her own actions, and not understanding her mother’s challenges and feelings, as well as the love her mother couldn’t show, which had long lasting repercussions. Perhaps the greatest of all losses you can feel is the lost opportunity to right a wrong.

The book had a great start, and probably could have been a 5 star for me, but I ended up rating it at 3.5 or 4. I felt that the suspense was tediously long-drawn – from the very start, it is hinted that “something” had happened in the village, which was catastrophic for her family. Bits of information is given out gradually, however, it is not until the very last pages that the events are revealed in entirety. By then, the wait had been so long that the revelation failed to have the full intended impact. On the other hand, it sorely missed on how the relationship among the siblings evolved (or deteriorated) after these events, and how their relationship with their mother turned out. It was a crucial link between the past and present, but was not given much attention other than a few facts in retrospect.