Throwback Thursday: Five Quarter of the Orange by Joanne Harris

Throwback Thursday is a meme created by Renee at It’s Book Talk to share old favourite books rather than just the new shiny ones. This is a great idea to bring back to life some much-loved books. Please feel free to join in.

My choice for this week is:

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris

I am head over heels in love with this book. Only a terrific author can write about something as appalling as war and occupation and unnecessary death but yet make you feel so alive and carefree whilst reading it. The prose was as mouthwatering, succulent and juicy as the food in the book and I wanted to be there! Yes, I wanted to run down to the Loire and swim and splash and yell and hang upside down from trees overhanging the river and race through sun-soaked fields and pick fruit in the orchards. I wanted to sneak off on the back of bicycle to the nearest village to watch a film in the cinema unbeknown to my mother, I wanted to set traps in the Loire and catch fish and I wanted to go to market on a Thursday morning and sell home-made pastries. And all this under German occupation. Only a talented author can make you feel like that while telling the story of something far more sinister.

This is a book about an old woman who comes back to the village of her childhood, but can’t allow the villagers to find out who she really is. Aged nine Framboise and her family has to make a hasty exit from Les Laveuses and now she can’t allow them to know the truth of who she really is and also what really happened back in 1942. The book is as sumptuous as it is teasing with bits of information that allows the reader to piece all the fragments together over the course of the story and lead us to the final catastrophic moments.

I adored this book; it was ripe, tangy and a feast for the senses. I want to read it all over again. But if not, it has made me hungry and now I need to go and raid the fridge………

This book is in my Top 10 ever!

Here is my original review from 2010.

Have you read any Joanne Harris? She is one of my favourite authors so I’d love to know what you think about her books.