{"id":2718,"date":"2012-08-18T15:14:49","date_gmt":"2012-08-18T14:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2718"},"modified":"2012-12-09T13:53:24","modified_gmt":"2012-12-09T13:53:24","slug":"five-quarters-of-the-orange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2718","title":{"rendered":"Five Quarters of the Orange"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Five-Quarters-Orange-Joanne-Harris\/dp\/0552998834\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Five-quarters.jpeg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Five Quarters of the Orange\" width=\"180\" height=\"280\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2720\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This book is a little dark and mildly menacing.  The characters aren&#8217;t particularly likeable but I enjoyed reading about this family with all their flaws, interspersed with sumptuous descriptions of food.  Although I am sure that it&#8217;s very common in real life, I haven&#8217;t read many books featuring dysfunctional relationships between mothers and daughters.  The interactions between all the characters feel very real.  I think that shows the quality of Joanne Harris&#8217;s writing: she makes everything convincing and a pleasure to read about.  <\/p>\n<p>But ultimately this book disappointed me.  I had hoped that it would be of the same calibre as the only other book by Joanne Harris that I&#8217;ve read: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Gentlemen-Players-Joanne-Harris\/dp\/0552770027\/ref=pd_sim_b_7\">Gentlemen and Players<\/a>, which is a deliciously dark and atmospheric mystery set in a boys&#8217; school.  Five Quarters of the Orange just doesn&#8217;t come close to that.  Yes, here there also is hatred, fear and passion.  Again, this is very well written.  But the story itself just didn&#8217;t quite make the grade.  I couldn&#8217;t help but compare it to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Book-Thief-Markus-Zusak\/dp\/0552773891\/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&#038;ie=UTF8&#038;qid=1345299257&#038;sr=1-1\">The Book Thief<\/a>, also a set during the German occupation with a young girl as narrator, which is a far more striking piece of work.<\/p>\n<p>(35th in 2012)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This book is a little dark and mildly menacing. The characters aren&#8217;t particularly likeable but I enjoyed reading about this family with all their flaws, interspersed with sumptuous descriptions of food. Although I am sure that it&#8217;s very common in real life, I haven&#8217;t read many books featuring dysfunctional relationships between mothers and daughters. The [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2718"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3794,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions\/3794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.utilitygirl.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}