Five Quarters of the Orange - In Review

Wow. What an interesting and surprising story this turned out to be. I started this assignment by reading the first 50+ pages of The Physiology of Taste. It was horribly dry and boring, so my group decided to switch novels. And I'm so happy about that decision.

I had a hard time getting ahold of a copy of Five Quarters of the Orange. One person in my group borrowed the copy from Waldo, so I knew that wasn't an option for me. I didn't want to wait for it to delivered from Amazon and it wasn't available for purchase in stores at Barnes and Noble. With a packed-tight schedule during the week, I decided I would go to Parchment Public Library on Saturday since I would be in town that night. I went there to discover they didn't have a copy of the book. Since I  had tickets to an event at the High School that night, I knew I would have to wait until Sunday to borrow the book from another library. Kalamazoo Public library is closed on Sundays, so Portage Public library was the one - and they had a copy! I waited until they opened at 1pm, standing anxiously at the locked doors. I walked up to the receptionist's desk to receive a library card, since I had never been there before. After providing my ID, the reception told me that since I did not live in the city of Portage, she would have to see my Kalamazoo Public library card first. I didn't have one, I had never been there either. "Oh, sorry. We have a reciprocal agreement with KPL which means that you can't have a library card here until you have a library card with them first. Sorry, you can't borrow anything today." I WAS FURIOUS! I didn't understand why that even made sense - does it? - and I didn't know how I was going to read the book. I ended up having to buy an ebook through Barnes and Nobel and reading the full novel, 335 pages, on my iPhone. I started reading at 2pm and didn't finish until after 2am. Oh, how I wish I had just selected this book from the beginning. Even with the exhausting and frustrating experience I had obtaining this text, I did actually enjoy the story. And here is what it's all about.

Framboise is the youngest of three children, to a mother who suffers from complicated "bad spells" or migraines that leave her debilitated. Framboise and her siblings, Cassis and Reine-Claude were adventurous young children. They conspired with German soldiers occupying their country after WWII. The children provided information to the soldiers regarding any actions people took that may have looked like resistance to the Germans. In return, the Germans provided the children with magazines, chocolates, chewing gum, cigarettes, and make-up, among other odd things. Framboise took a special interest to a particular soldier named Tomas. Tomas was very friendly to all of the children and had a special, charming way of relating to them easily. Boise loved him.

Framboise did whatever should could to avoid her mother. She hated her. Her mother was very distant and seemed uncaring. She used harsh words with the children and acted more as a dictator than a loving mother. The children's father died in war. The mother was forced to take over the farm and maintain the household by selling her baked goods and preserves. The mother suffered from severe migraines that left her bed-riden and sick. She sometimes wouldn't come out for days. The spells were usually prompted by the scent of oranges. Boise took advantage of this situation by placing oranges under the stove and in her mother's pillow case when she wanted her mother to go away for a while. Boise received the oranges from the soldier for information about resistors.

The mother kept an album of recipes and hand-written notes. The notes were written in a secret language created by the father. Framboise received this album after her mother's death. It wasn't until then that Framboise realized or understood all that her mother was going through.

The mother suffered with an addiction to morphine. She used the pills when she had the bad spells. Framboise's orange throughout the house gave her many migraines and the mother soon ran out of her supply of pills. She traded goods with German soldiers to receive more pills, and sometimes did other things to get her fix. Sometimes, it was revealed later on, she did these 'things' with Tomas, the soldier Boise loved.

Framboise is reading the album as an adult. She went back to her hometown after fleeing as a child. She renovated the home she grew up in that was destroyed by fire and attack. She started a small restaurant that was extremely popular. Boise is an amazing cook. Many of her recipes came from her mother's album but Boise has her own specialties as well. People all over the world come to her restaurant for the genuine experience and good food. Boise's nephew (Cassis's son) and his wife try to talk Boise into handing over the album so they can use the recipes in their restaurant across town. Boise fights against them and refuses to ever give up the album. The nephew and wife do horrible things to try to fail her business so they can get ahold of the recipes, and later, the story of Boise's mother.

Tomas drowns in the river trying to help Boise capture the legendary "Old Mother" pike she had been after for months. The children try to cover up his death, in fear of being accused themselves, by making it look like a resistor had shot him in the head. Framboise's mother, having had relations with Tomas, find out about his death and believes she may have killed him herself during one of her "bad spells." The town knew of her involvement with Tomas and her children's conspiracies with the German soldiers. After a mass execution of resistors in the town, a mob formed to attack the mother and her children. They burned the house down and the four of them barely escaped with their lives.

The mother moved away and changed her identity to start a new life on her own. The children were sent to an Aunt's home to live new lives of their own. Framboise had the urge to come back to her hometown and restored the home she grew up in. She kept her identity a secret to avoid banishment, until at the very end of the story, she revealed herself and her mother's story to a reporter.

Of course, there are many details included in this story that play a significant role in its overall meaning and theme, but I tried to create as brief of a summary as possible. The idea of food used to manipulate, bribe, and hurt people is a theme that catches my attention especially.