Five Quarters of the Orange ~ Joanne Harris ~ 5/04 Export

Five Quarters of the Orange

...is a rich and dark novel of mothers and daughters, of the past and the present, of resisting and succumbing. Author: Joanne Harris

Frambiose Dartigan begins her story in Les Laveuses, on the banks of the Loire not far from Angers.

Five Quarters of the Orange revolves around culinary intrigue as Framboise unravels the terrible wartime secrets during her childhood in occupied France that drove her family away from the village. She cuts between idyllic descriptions of the village, children running free in the surrounding woods, and the increasingly dark memories of the war.

Framboise returned to the village desperate to keep her identity a secret and, with the help of the recipes scribbled in her mother's album, opens a small creperie. A women in her sixties she struggles to find peace with the memory of her harsh mother, who could not tolerate the scent of an orange.

Reading and Discussion Schedule

MAY 1 - 2........Part One The Inheritance
May 3 - 7.........Part One and Part Two Forbidden Fruit
May 8 - 13.......Part Three The Snack-Wagon
May 13(PM) - 17..Part Four La Mauvaise Réputation
May 17 - 22.....Part Five Harvest & Wrap-Up

Link to Post #45 - questions for Part One
Link to Post #74 - questions for Part Two
Link to Post #151 - questions for Part Three
Link to Post #235 - questions for Part Four
Link to Post #304 - questions for Part Five
Link to Survey

Five Quarters of an Orange

Cinq Quartiers D'Orange

Fünf Viertel einer Orange

LES GOURMETS LITTÉRAIRES
Pedln || horselover || Eloise || Mal || Kiwi || Scrawler || Ginger || Hats || annafair || Traude || Joan G.
Chef de Discussion: Barbara St. Aubrey
La cuisine des gourmets littéraires

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Our May selection is quite the page turner - here I was suspecting something benign like Chocolat but instead we have all the heart in the mouth intrigue of a World War II mystery as we read about the experience of families surviving, especially children growing up surrounded by enemy soldiers.

Joanne Harris fooled me on this one - after having read her Coastliners and seeing the movie Chocolat I was not prepared for the forboding darkness of this story - and she was a master at making it into a real page turner - it has been awhile since I read something I could not put down till I knew what happened next.

I actualy cried at the end - been a long time since I read and cried at the ending. Whew this book sure had me tied to every page...

I am not good at remembering the names of Hollywood actors but I can see the part of Framboise being played by a child star who is now a young women - she had a tomboy appearance about her - I need to see if I can find her name - but I sure do not see Johney Dep playing the part of the German soldier in this one - he could carry it off I am sure but I would think someone just a bit hard looking.

Our discussion of the book itself starts next Saturday - in the meantime lets hear from you - who you are - where were you during WWII - do you remember rationing and gardening to bring food to the table - do you have family recipes - what woods or rivers or lakes did you play in when you were a child - did you have a secret hiding place or a tree house?

Come on in and stay a bit - let's get to know ya...

Barbara, looking forward to it. I haven't started it yet -- my gosh, I was thinking I had lots of time and you went and said it's a WEEK (yeek) from today. I'll be there.

The schedule looks good -- I'll be able to go almost to the end. Am leaving town on the 20th. And will take this book that revolves around recipes to my gourmet cook DIL.

Super Pedln I think you will really like the book - I was pleased although it turned out to be a very different story than her other work -

As a result of reading this story I am realizing we have not had a good understanding of what it was like to survive an occupation and I am finding a few other stories that stay clear of women being labeled either bad or good based on if they were in the underground or made some other heroic contribution - that most women were on their own, with children, and without money, simply trying to survive.

The cooking is wonderful in this book - rather than painting a homey picture it seemed to me more like crowning the table with glory. Such respect for food that few of us share here in the States - I wonder if that is because few of us are tied to the land or the seasons any longer but rather all our food is saran wrapped, much of it pre-cooked and purchased without worms or wasps in a large grocery chains.

My memory includes shopping for my mother when the grocer used ladders and these tweezer like poles to gather your groceries off his shelves and then he proceded to add up the price on the brown paper that would be used to wrap the groceries and tie them with string. No paper sacks yet and cash registers did not do the adding. In fact we kids used to have a race to see if we could add up the columns of numbers quicker than the grocer.

I was born in 1943 so the war really didn't have much impact other than I didn't see my father until I was almost three years old. There was something that happened to one of my cousins in Greece. I won't give the whole story away, but like Framboise Simon's mother she was also acquised. She was forced to leave Greece and she never saw her children again. The only relation we had was that I was named after her and I looked like her. As a child I never really understood the looks I got from many of my aunts. So this story had some personal issues with me.

Oh Scrawler - never see your children again - after reading this book these many years later and remembering all the stories of women being brutelized, I am convinced it is other issues - maybe the rage of everyone else who were deprived and lived in fear experiencing losses, so that the rage had to go someplace and if there was any suspician that anyone did not suffer enough or looked that they were strong enough to survive they were made to suffer - it reminds me so much of the Bible story about throwing the first stone except the hysteria of a crowd takes over and the women is demonized as a real scape goat for all the pain and suffering of all those doing the demonizing.

Trying to understand this issue I have ordered another book to read that is supposed to be a truer account than the usual black and white, right and wrong, good and bad, of how folks managed in this very region of France - Marianne in Chains: Daily Life in the Heart of France During the German Occupation by Robert Gildea

here is the link

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0805071687/102-0093847-5812164?%5Fencoding=UTF8

After all that - but your post hit me hard - so glad you will be joining us Scrawler - have you read the book yet - I think it is more though than a story of survival during war don't you? In fact there were so many themes that could be followed and that is what I loved about this book - I am all set now to get her other one that is part of this food trilagy - Blackberry something or other - and I understand she has a new one out that is getting wonderful reviews as her best work since Chocolat.

I am so glad you will be reading and discussing this with us -

Have you and pedln noted that this is an experiment in a three week discussion - we have had some requests for shorter discussions and so we are trying to follow Ginny's lead - she did Waiting for Godot in three weeks - no feedback yet as to if the three weeks was prefered or not - I think it will have something to do with the number of pages in a book - I have a hard time imagining a 600+ page book being read and discussed in three weeks.

Oh yes, I want to mention - we are also trying out something new - there was a survey after ...Godot and as a result of the survey it sounded like folks are wanting some boundries to make discussing the books more enjoyable -

So we have a simple set of guidelines we are calling Book Discussion Criteria: to address ways we can be more assured we are creating a pleasent discussion that honors each contribution but allows each contributor the joy of reading for themselves material we each find that would add to our conversation as well as, a way to make our posts easier to read - and finally the way we all feel valued. I'm looking forward to see how this experiment with boundries adds to our discussion.

Scrawler and Pedln do you have family recipes that were passed along to you - or that you have passed along to your children? I have several that are handwritten by my mom but come to think on it my children didn't think the most important thing was to have some recipes that reminded them of home - it could be that since I moved away from Home when I married at 19 I had a homesickness for my mother's cooking where as my children married much later in their lives and lived close by for the first 7 and 8 years of their marriages.

Cannot be sure what year of the war this is supposed to represent - it sounds like it could be 1944 since by the summer of 1945 the war in Europe was over - and so that would make me two years older than Framboise, nearer to Reine's age if Framboise is 9 and Reine is 12 - in '44 I was age 11 with memories of food stamps and kitchen gardens and preserving food and picking apples - since there were no men around to pick the farmers said come and take what you will so the orchards didn't have all that rotten fruit lying on the ground. We had to learn early to hide our German heritage and no longer to speak German at home - that was a seminal moment for our family.

I just got back from CA where I spent my time house-hunting, so did not find out the May selections until now. I did love the movie, "Chocolat," and your description of this book is so intriguing. I am going to try to get it in time for the discussion.

Rah rah horselover is with us This book was all over our local Borders when I was in last week and so I hope you do not have a difficult time finding it horselover - we will be looking for your posts...

When are you moving horselover - what state do live in now - why California...come on fill us in...this sounds intriguing.

I'd like to see a discussion take as long as the participants want to discuss the subject. Sometimes you can't rush certain subjects like you can't rush a meal - you have digest everything.

I am not a cook. I tend to burn my TV dinners, so no my family tended not to give me any recipes for fear that I might burn the town down. My husband did all the cooking and he taught both my son and daughter to cook.

I to would like to see a discussion take as long as the particapants want to discuss the subject as to me it is the partisapants that make the discussions for me. GO POSTERS, GO.

I have a few recipes from my mother and aunt, one dessert in particular. And my kids have a few from me. But none of us cook like we used to. We eat a lot more fish now, and eat lighter. I used to fix a lot of casseroles, and I love them, but they are pretty caloric and have a lot of fat.

And now I pick up recipes from my kids -- my daughter is trying to teach me how to make pesto. Who even heard of pesto 25, 30 years ago? And they use a lot of olive oil, and I do too, now, but I didn't 25 years ago.

Thanks Scrawler and Ginger also for that suggestion - I believe that is what Joan P. is able to do when she offers a Great Book - unfortunatly we are within a time frame that is usually scheduled for a month - and since May ends with Memorial Day weekend and the start of family vacations, and there have been requests for shorter book discussions this is the time we experiment - lets revisit this suggestion again at the end of our discussion and see how rushed or not we felt.

As y'all know even though we focus each week on another part of a book it is fine to revisit and bring up another point about the parts we have already completed - it is just that we do not discuss ahead of the schedule and for those who have been trained to critique upon reading the entire story that is a change but one that seniornet has found to be most successful and part of our "folklore" since the beginning when great folks were getting this venue off the ground so to speak.

Ok one other bit of housekeeping - the length of paragraphs - was not intended to reduce what you have to say but rather to break it up - we usually write as we speak but, for ease of reading on the internet it is better with white space between every 5 or 6 lines -

Several Discussion leaders have shared how when we quote from the book they are discussing they break the authors paragraphs up into several shorter paragraphs - just to make it easier for us to read - what you can get away with in a book does not seem to work while we are reading off a computer screen. And so the second "Criteria" has been altered to reflect the intent.

Now to the fun - did you have that rule growing up - work first and then fun!

Food and recipes - so true isn't it - our lives have changed and few of us cook as we did 30 and 40 years ago much less do we keep the kitchens of our mothers.

Scrawler hehehe are you the kind of cook that they tease and says she burns water? So your husband is the cook - how did that workout in the morning or was breakfast a simple bowl of dry cereal with no cooking involved - does he do a certain dish that everyone thinks is their favorite - how about birthday's did he bake? You mentioned a Greek aunt, is your heritage Greek and do you eat foods that are closer to the Greek cuisine - I am not as familiar with Greek foods except for the Feta cheese we can buy so easily now and I remember something I ate one time wrapped in grape leaves - oh yes and Baklava.

I wonder if like so many of us - do you pull out recipies during holidays that we no longer eat on a regular basis?

Pedln I know just what you mean about our kids teaching us - My daughter is into fresh steamed broccoli every night so that her youngest has eaten broccoli since he was an enfant and cannot imagine a meal without it - and together she and the boys make these wonderful vegtable soups that have no stock as a base but fresh vegtables and herbs in water -

Have you found that when you do cook or bake some of the old family recipes you are out of the habit and they do not always turn out as well? I also find if I do prepare a meal as I one time did I can no longer do it while doing 10 other things and gabbing the entire time - although it could be that I have been living on my own for so long that those habits have also been dulled.

I remember reading an article at one time that the French with all their rich foods have less coronary problem and less diabetes than we do - I think this is the article - Smaller Food portions may explain...

That sure makes sense to me since my daugter-in-laws grandparents were French and sure enough not only is she still slim and attractive but she does serve small portions as compared to our full plates that I assume is part of my German heritage.

These lovely names in the story - the one though that confuses me is Reinette - do any of you know enough French to know what fruit that would be - I thought I remembered that the children were all named after fruits and berries -

Cassis is a black current and Framboise is a rasberry but I do not know what is a Reinette - and the mother is Mirabelle which is a type of plum - how about these charmers inside their Mirabelle - I've learned that Mirabelle is the symbolic fruit of Lorraine - here is a great site in French all about recipes using Mirabelles and links to the annual La fête - in August. Mirabelles - recipes - Lorraine

Oh and cannot pass this site up translated into English all about the Mirabelle of Lorraine

This is getting me going here - I think I need to cook or bake this month - more like scrawler's husband I really liked to cook - I hated though the everyday cost saving meals day after day after day - those cassaroles that you speak of Pedln - oh and the chicken and rice with mushroom soup and the chicken in stewed tomatoes and the fried ham and apples - maybe that is what we avoid when we feast on TV dinners -

Pedln do you live near your children, the ones who are ahuh 'teaching' you how to cook - that sounds so funny - I do not think my mother ever thought in terms of me teaching her anything and here we are opened to learning from our children.

Oh yes - for any site written in another language - you can translate the entire site or just a word using Bable fish

http://world.altavista.com/

Hello Barbara, here I am. Reinette is an apple variety from the west of France. I guess we have that variety here too but I am not sure. How interesting that a mother gives fruit names to her children. It evokes sweetness, softness. Never heard of that before.

I ate "clafoutis" once. It is a pie made with fruit, eggs and flour. France has the best cuisine in the world, Quebec cuisine is half way between the French and the American cuisine. I mean the one we cook every day. I love to cook from scratch, but I try to eat healthy rather than try to make elaborate meals. Sometimes it can be dull, but to eat realy fine French cuisine, we go out to a restaurant. I don't know every kind of French cheese as I don't eat much cheese.

May is a busy month as I am going to a Bash in Richmond Virginia with Senior Netters from all over. I will check in now and then and look at what is happening. It should be so interesting. I love that kind of fiction.

Eloïse

Thank you Eloise I just knew you could help us out - an apple - interesting - a crisp apple is what comes to mind - it will be interesting as we read this story to see how well the names choisen help to give us a picture of these characters.

Well it may not be from scratch but at least I shopped for some frozen vegtables - stir fried vegtables at that - which is my start towards getting back to eating real food rather than TV prepared dinners.

Thanks for your offer to look in - we may have a few more cultural questions as we go along here...

My husband passed away about ten years ago, so I tend to eat very light. It's just me and the cat now. My son also passed away and my daughter lives in Rhode Island. And yes I've been known to burn water.

My family came from the Ionian Islands and we are noted more for our intelectuals rather than our cooking. When my husband first had dinner, he made the commit that it was very bland. We don't use a lot of spices etc. We eat very sparingly. Just leg of lamb with potatoes and a salad with vinger and olive oil. What we do eat a lot of are olives (the dark black olives with pits that have a very sour taste to them) and yes once and awhile some feta cheese. It was my aunts who came from the Turkish side of Greece that used a lot of spices etc.

Scrawler how romantic - did you live in Greece - did you grow up there - I understand the Greeks suffered badly under the Nazis - I remember as a child being told how Greek mothers had to choose one of their children to be well fed who would then serve the Nazis while she watched her other children starve.

I do not know as much about Greece although the literature of Ancient Greece is part of our vocabulary - found this map - is the Island your family comes from on this map Map of Ionian Islands off the mainland coast of Greece

And I thought the photos included in this site were wounderful - Greece

Do you have a favorite web page for Greece - do you visit often - or maybe most of your family no longer lives in Greece.

I also live alone - but my situation is very different than yours - I was divorced at age 58 after 39 years of marriage - thank goodness I had been working so that I could take care of myself but I know what that is to cook for one - I end up bringing in so many of my meals and that is part of why after reading this book I thought it would be fun and healthy and good for my spirit to spend this month cooking my own dinner again - I like what you are saying though - eating lots of salads -

Cannot wait to get started talking about this story - it just was such a surprise as compared to what I expected - it was thought provoking and a page turner - she was clever how she baited your curiosity through out the story.

Scrawler, my DIL is of Greek heritage. She & my son were married in the Greek Orthodox Cathedral in DC and the children were all baptized in the Orthodox church, the oldest child's was on the Greek Island of Limnos.

She comes from a family of wonderful cooks and she is too, but I don't know what all is considered Greek. I have one Greek recipe from her that is delicious, called Spana something. It's spinach and cheese and something in filo dough. I only made it once -- it took me over two hours just to wash and tear the spinach; then it was supposed to serve 8 and four of us ate it in 30 minutes. I told my DIL about that and she laughed and said, "Oh, we always fight over who has to make that for family dinners because none of us wants to take the time."

I will go and look for this book in a used book store and I am going to try and join you. I love France and what's more, it talks about food. My mouth just waters thinking about French cuisine.

I have not been in the Loire Valley, Les Châteaux de la Loire.

Barbara, you will enjoy cooking your own food because it is so much healthier. I know it takes a little time, but what is 10 minutes more. What takes time is washing dishes. I spend more time washing dishes than anything else because I cook 3 times a day but from the start of preparing meals, eat it, wash dishes usually takes no more than 30 - 45 minutes. It's worth it for me.

Eloïse

The description of wasps flying around the ripe plums and skimming the bugs off the cooked syrup reminded me of canning of fruit and vegetables we did when I was growing up in New England. I remember that I loved the chopped green peppers, onions and tomatoes better than the chili sauce they became after we cooked and preserved them. These days we'd call those fresh raw vegetables salsa.

Mal

Surprise! Surprise! - My library has this book so I have ordered it. Now there is one hitch I may not be able to get it for a few days as I have no car at the moment and have to rely on Ruth and family to take me to the library. I may be a week late even getting the book but I will come in during the first week and read the posts and then catch up on the next weekend when I know for sure I will be able to go and get the book. It looks like my kind of book from the posts so far.

Carolyn

I cook from scratch and as I am now gluten free that requires cooking everything as Gluten free products are so expensive here. I am also sulfite intolerant so that means all my brassica's have to be steamed and just cooked and I can't eat canned fish etc. This morning I made gluten free spicy buns and pumpkin loaf for my treats. I have the loaf sliced and in the freezer and the buns are also in the freezer. I use a lot of spices in cooking and enjoy the type of cooking that is common here which is known as Pacific rim. I love to cook Indian, Thai and Indonesian but enjoy simple fare as well such as garlic chicken breast and steamed vegetables. I like chinese but don't cook that as much as I used to as its fiddly. Lunch is the hardest meal for me. I am on w/w so it has to be simple if I have eaten a hearty breakfast and intend to have a substantial dinner. Today I had rice crackers avocado and tomato. I made a bad choice with the avocado as its loaded with points!

Carolyn

Hurray - look at who is here - wonderful - we will have a good time -

Pedln - you also have some Greek connection - spinish and feta sounds wonderful but it also sounded like you had quite the recipe on your hands - they fought over who made it because it was so difficult! And you did it!! Wow, looks like you rung the bell...

Eloise - I hope, I hope, I hope - yes, wishing hard that you do find the book - your French views will be so welcomed.

Mal pleased you will be joining us - you always bring so much to a discussion - wasps in New England huh - now are these wasps what we call Mud Dabbers I wonder - need to look into that - I bet it is a local word we use to describe the same flying black stinger.

Kiwi how fabulous to see you here - you are another who cooks from scratch - I just loved seeing that photo of your home - a huge palm tree right out the front door - Kiwi do you see the sea from your house?

Well I must say I've been true to my word for the past three nights - didn't even have to go to the store - Had lamb chops in the Freezer that I forgot I purchased and some Orange Roughy last night and tonight I wasn't terribly hungry so I simply cooked up some frozen mixed green and yellow beans with a shallot and a red skinned potato in some canned chicken broth - thicker than a soup and really good tasting.

I still want to get out my old recipes - I used to really cook and studied cooking for several years - My mom prided herself in her cooking - she had this oxtail stew to die for but unfortunatly never did get the recipe - when we were children for our Birthday not only did we get to pick the filling and the icing for the cake but we also got to pick what we wanted for supper - my favorite was that Oxtail stew and my cake had to have my mother's damson plum jam in between the layers with an orange/lemon peal fluffy icing. mmm - mmm good...

We start on Saturday but here is a question to get the juices flowing -

Notice that the cover for the book in the two countries written about in the story have a very different cover design than the book published in the US -

The cover illustration says a lot about a book and here we have three very different looks -

We can imagine what aspect of the book the covers are depicting but, what really works is to take the title under the French and then the German version and seperatly put them in Google - the web sites that come up have a translated version available -

Why not read the discriptions - and lets talk a bit about what themes you are deducing from the cover art work after you read the discriptions that the reviewers offer on the French, German and the US site - what is not up there is the English version which surprisingly offers yet another cover - a rather pragmatic cover don't you think - to find it go to the famous bookstore Waterstone's in England which is now handled by amazon.

Let's talk covers and what they tell us about themes...

Elosie - help - the French version translates as Districts - "Five Districts of the Orange" - how do the French use the word Districts - does it mean sections - it certainly seems to change the incongruity of "Five"?!?"Quarters" -

What ingredients go into Thai food?

Green chillis in some Thai food and Red chillis in other recipes.Shrimp paste, lemongrass, garlic, sometimes citrus peel. Stir fried green vegs and onion. Shrimp paste is found in Asian food shops. Thai food is quite hot usually and the lemongrass flavor is quite strong in most recipes. You can use fish, chicken or thinly sliced beef as the meat content. Stirfry the meat first and set aside then do the vegs with the spices. I add a little chicken stock when the vegs are ready and thicken the whole dish with cornstarch mixed with a little water til smooth. Make the sauce quite thin. Add the meat and toss through the sauce and vegs til heated through. Serve on bean noodles or rice.

Carolyn

It looks like some recipes need to be posted. Carolyn, your menus sound great. But what are "brassicas" that you must have steamed? And concerning the avocado -- you talk about points and w/w -- are you on weight watchers. For years I didn't eat avocados, or very few, because of caloric content, fat, etc. NOW, I understand they are VERY GOOD for you because they have all these good things we need in our diets to be healthy -- Omega 3s, HDLs, etc. So, bring 'em on

PEDLN, brassicas are cabbage, spinach, broccoli, etc.

BARBARA, the kind of wasps we had in New England were small and yellow with a fierce sting. They did not make nests of mud. Hornets were larger and black and built gray, papery cone-shape nests under eaves of houses.

I've now finished this enigmatic book, which surprised me at the end. It would make a wonderful movie, I think. What a tragedy of secrets and errors!

At one time I cooked like a French chef, not Nouvelle Cuisine, but cream, butter and wine sauces, which I love, and all kinds of pastries and breads. This is my favorite kind of food. One of the best meals I ever had was in the country home of the parents of a French friend, about 1 1/2 very fast hours in a Mercedes out of Paris. Many, many courses with a different wine with each one. C'était supérbe!

Mal

Thank you for telling us what Thai food is as I have asked others and never got an answer.

I should have mentioned that most people use coconut cream instead of chicken stock in Thailand but I don't like coconut cream so I have adapted the recipe for me.

Carolyn

Barbara 'quartier' is when you want to designate a location usually. "Le Quartier Latin" The latin quarter, I live in the "quartier d'Ahuntsic" I also can say I live in the "district d'Ahuntsic".

But you can't have a "district of an orange", impossible, but you can have a "quartier d'orange" meaning a part of an orange. You can say "Un quartier de boeuf (beef)" and not "un district de boeuf".

Was this book written in English first and then translated in French? That could explain it

Eloïse

I've got the book and started reading. I like the sort of stream of consciousness style at the beginning. I also love stories about FOOD. One of my all time favorite movies is "Babette's Feast" -- also about wonderful French food.

Yes Pedln, it does look like we need a recipe section - we could come up with our own cookbook as a result of reading this book - what fun we could have - what would we call it - something after Joanne Harris who inspired all this talk of cooking I would think...

I am so excited tonight - came home rather late and there on the front porch was a flat shipping package - my order delivered - Joanne Harris' "My French Kitchen" -

The book is just filled with photographs of France - foods, houses, windows, knockers on doors, children with loaves of bread, food cooked, food served, food in various stages of being prepared, gardens, cows, dogs, fishing boats and warfs, baskets, chickens, pigs, feet walking on coblestones with a carryall visable, mesh sacks filled with a days purchase from the market slung on the back of a young women - I am out of breath - the pictures are glorious - they give me a real feel for village life in France.

The part that I especially like is the realization I made a week or so back - when y'all were reading how did you visualize the house that the young nine year old Framboise lived in...

I saw in my mind's eye a country cottage, probably not in good repair BUT I never dreamed of a stone cottage - My experience with old farm buildings was not in stone - only when I started to look things up on the internet did I realize this area of the world - old means stone - a stone cottage - and sure enough the wonderful book that arrived today is filled with stone cottages - their windows opened or closed - some curtained, some not - most with vines or roses growing attached to the side of the buildings - but stone - not wood needing paint.

Here is a link to a wonderful photo of a Granite House in the French Countryside

Kiwi - with where you live I bet you have all sorts of access to Asian foods - I do not know any other way of purchasing coconut milk here other than in the can - is that how it is sold in NZ as well - found this site for those of us who would like to learn a bit more about
Thai food and cooking

Thailand sounds still like such an exotic land to visit and yet, they appear to be having their political problems - didn't the "Piano Tuner" that we read only a few months ago take place in Thailand - I vaguely remember Burma being mentioned - of course that story took place in Victorian times when Britain was the conquerer.

Ginger are you all ready to rush out and buy yourself a wok so you too can eat the foods that Carolyn/Kiwi recommends?

Pedln looks like Mal knows her brassicas -

Mal I had to look up wasps of course - and sure enough the east coast seems to have a whole different association with various wasps that we seldom see - found the yellow jackets and the mud daubers as well as a few others...there is a European Wasp in Kentucky that is spreading down the Mississippi - I wonder if that is the wasp that Boise, her sister, bother and mother had to contend with in the orchard.

Eloise that explains it then - yes it was a French site - I think Amazon - that I hit the translating link and it said Districts - yes, the idea of quarters is so right for this book -

Have y'all found yet where in the book the five quarters are made part of the story? Have you noticed not only are the chapters or rather sections also five but the last is very slim like the fifth quarter - the story is set up as if cut into five quarters just like the story...

Oh YES horselover "Babette's Feast" - what a wonderful movie that was - I think I rented it about a dozen times - I should have purchased it - I just loved not only the food - the preperations - but the whole concept -I wonder if that is a book? -

One more day to go before we start -
Has anyone looked up the reviews given on the
French and German web sites
and notice the different emphasis each nation has put on the various aspects of this story...I thought the German cover to be so dark
as compared to either the French or US cover
and why is there so much use by the French of this medium powerdery blue - the color is on everything from pottery to shutters to children's playcloths - and of course the cover of the French translation of this book.
Does this chalky medium blue have some significance or symbolism -

I don't think I could hadle Thai foods but do apprieciate knowing about it.

Thanks Carolyn.

hehehe - no wok or lemon grass for you Ginger -

Besides the themes of food and secrets and old stories, I think this book is about ghosts and terror. Not the "slice and dice" terror that we see in Hollywood these days, but the terror that wakes you up in a cold sweat at three in the morning.

It is also about a family and how they are torn apart by war, but also the crulty which comes with war.

But most of all this book is about the smells, sounds, and tastes that seem to leap out at you from the pages. It is a unique horror tale nestled in a sophisticated novel.

Joanne Harris is listed in Horror, Ghost & Gothic genres. Her first story written at age seven was, "Flesh-Eating Warriors of the Forbidden City." Her first mature book was "The Evil Seed" a vampire book, which her mother still refers as "that awful book".

She said she wrote the book to get back at her parents who refused to allow her to read horror and ghost tales when she was child. I can relate to that since my mother won't let me read them either. I used to sneak them under my bed covers at night and read them by flashlight.

Some of the worst horror stories I've ever read are within the covers of Grimm's Fairy Tales. Those are considered acceptable reading for children.

This is a book about a widow and her children and what World War II and occupation of their French village and a nearby city by the Germans did to them. Family secrets and war secrets are encrypted in a journal kept by the mother. That journal is ostensibly a book of recipes, but Five Quarters of the Orange is not a book about food.

Through the character of Tomas Liebniz I was finally able to break through a prejudice about Germans in World War II that I learned as a growing child. This book served more than one purpose for me.

Mal

Would you know. At Chapters Library here this afternoon they only had the French version and I sat down and spent one hour reading it at random. I loved it, loved it. I didn't notice the translation at all. Very good.

What I loved most of all is what it says about FOOD. The book is constantly referring to food. Of course in France, half of life is spent eating. NONONO. just kidding, but a quarter of it, yes. Spending 6 hours at dinner is not a rare event. Shopping for food, preparing it, eating it, wine with it, a short break and they start that all over again.

This will be fun.

Eloïse

Fun and grim, ELOISE.

Mal

Good Morning Scrawler - pedln - horselover - Eloise De Pelteau - Malryn (Mal) - Kiwi Lady - Ginger.

Today is our day to rumble - a couple of thoughts -

Let's just focus on the first section through Sunday - Let's schedule Saturday and Sunday as the days we are going to read and discuss up to page 39, and then the remainder of the week we can include both Section One and Section Two, where we read about Framboise's childhood memories.

On Saturday and Sunday let's ask and discuss;

Who is Framboise -
What does the book say about her characteristics -
how is she different or similar to her mother, father, brother.
What does Framboise value -
What values are important to her -- honesty, courage, secrets???
How do her values compare or contrast with those of her her mother, father, brother.
Does the village, the farm, the woods, the Loire, the food, mirror back any of Framboise's characteristics?

Why is the farm and her memories important to her - so much that she wants us, the readers to know?
Why is a farm setting in a small village important to the story -
Could this story be told if it took place in a larger city
Since Cassis and his family are from a large city how does that show in comparison to the characteristics of Framboise - is there a difference in their expectations for Framboise because of their generation or because they are from a city -

What is Framboise searching for -
why does she want to hold on to and relate to us her story -
what food both raw and cooked, what events, objects, or people does she allude to as having a deeper meaing?

Foster in his book "How to Read Literature..." says that the reason for a quest is always self-knowledge and the real reason for a quest is never the stated reason - lets watch as this story unfolds and look for Framboise's real quest.

Do you find any words that are repeated - we know words repeated are important - example: Framboise talks about stones - the stone inside a fruit that appears to be a metaphore for her heart - lets look at all the times stones are used - do they have a significance as a metaphore. What other words are repeated - what do these repeated words really say-

One other Foster literary truism - when ever people eat or drink together, its communion - eating together allows us to know how characters are getting along - what about when they don't? - the meal shared tells us a lot about the dynamics between those at the communion table. What about that meal shared in Paris - what does it tell us...

We know the first chapter is where the entire book is usually laid out - I think it is this whole first section we need to look at in order to find the various players or characters, the themes, plots, life and death contrasts that will be furthered in this book.

Then finally as we read this first section - important - this will be hard for those who have read the entire book but please skim the first section again and remember how you felt while reading it for the first time -

What are/were you most afraid of or worried about?
What is/was making you anxious?
Describe the person, object, or event that bothers you.
Tell us specifically what concerns you --
Why are/were you worried?
What can you imagine to be the worst thing that could happen?
What do you hope will occur?

Scrawler I think you are on to something there about Ghosts and Terror - let me quote again from Foster's book:

...The spook announces itself again and again where someone grows in strength by weakening someone else...
Using other people to get what we want. Denying someone else's right to live in the face of our overwhelming demands. Placing our desires, particularly our uglier ones, above the needs of another. That's prety much what the vampire does.
...he wakes and says something like, "In order to remain undead, I must steal the life force of someone whose fate matters less to me than my own" My guess is that as long as people act toward their follows in exploitative and selfish ways, the vampire will be with us.

You also see a theme of food - secrets - family - the cruelty of war - surviving and being torn apart by a war [and the occupation by the enemy?]

Mal sees theme about widowhood - a widow surviving with her children - World War II - the occupation of a French village and a nearby city - how occupation by the enemy affects those in the family, village and city - Family secrets - war secrets - a mother's journal - a book of recipes.

But Mal does not see that Five Quarters of the Orange is about food.

Mal also sees a theme of breaking down prejudice against the enemy, now 60 years later, Through the character Tomas Liebniz.

Eloise sees a theme in the FOOD - noting the book is constantly referring to food. Elosie is aware in France, a great amount of time in life is spent - Shopping for food, preparing it, eating it, wine with it, a short break and they start that all over again.

The aspect of the US cover I thought was facinating - two opposing curls of the same peel - which reminded me of the Janus - the Roman God with a head that is two faces - one facing the east looking at door openings and beginnings and the other facing the west - but in essence two faces on the same head -

How many instances or characters are we going to read that are representing two sides of the same coin or two faces on the same head or of the same skin - two in one...

What will tie them together - in section One, to me Framboise and her mother Mirabelle could easily be the two curls on the same orange peel, just as Framboise could be on the same peel with the album.

here is a great site all about The Roman God Janus

My, you're up early, BARBARA. Good morning to you!

I looked at the cover of my book before you asked about the different covers, BARB. It's a fine piece of artwork. I see a different kind of symbolism in the American cover. After you eat the sweetness of the orange, what's left is the bitter rind and the pulp. This might be applied to the story.

I also see a snakelike shape and the letter S. These might represent the river, which plays a big part in this book. The S could stand for several different things: Sex, the SS, Secrecy are a few.

Yes, there is much mention of food and eating in the story, but it is not the book. Food is an often bright thread woven in among very dark shades. Five Quarters of the Orange to me is several different stories with two primary ones -- what's happening today, and what happened in the past.

I'll be back later with something about the characters.

Mal

Hi Barbara,

I am late. I have not read Part One. I will read those today. My cover looks like the first one pictured in the heading. Mal made me take a second look at my cover. I had not related the appearance of the rind to a snake or river or the letter S. Thanks for your observation, Mal.

I wish my cover looked like the middle one. It looks like a beautiful still life painting.

After picking up the book again and starting at the beginning, I realized that the orange peel on the cover of the American book could also symbolize the mother -- and Framboise. Framboise's mother says in her album:

"The sweetness
scooped
like some bright fruit
plum peach apricot
watermelon perhap
from myself
this sweetness"

"I feel hard inside, frozen."

In some ways, the mother in this story reminds me of the mother in Donna Tartt's The Little Friend. Both women had suffered great loss. Both reacted physically. At times they were kind to their children, at others they were harsh. One is a widow; the other's husband left her. It seems to me that in each book the children more or less are forced to raise themselves because of their mothers' emotional and physical illnesses.

Framboise, her mother's favorite, Cassis says, inherits a Perigord truffle and her mother's album. She has enemies in the form of Laure and Yannick and a friend, it appears, in Paul.

It is not easy to be drawn to Framboise and her mother, who seem to be quite similar in character, but there is a mystery about them that is intriguing, and their talent for cooking makes me want more.

It's interesting to see how this author brings in so many of her characters, if only by casual mention of them, in this first part of the book. It is also interesting to see how she points up the Standing Stones, the Treasure Stone and Old Mother.

At the end of 39 pages the reader wonders why Framboise bought the family home from her brother and returned to a place where she does not want to be recognized. And why did she leave?

Mal

Good morning, we've been having heavy thunderstorms here.

I'm well into the book, so will have to go back and review the first 39 pages, but what I remember from the first reading is that there is treachery here, (as Scrawler has said, Ghosts and terror) and much foreshadowing of ominous things to come.

Why was the father's name taken off the war memorial, why was the mother hated by the villagers?

I don't want to get ahead of the game, so will stop now. Barbara, a wonderful picture of the stone cottage. And thanks for mentioning Babette's Feast. I've never seen it, and went right away and put it at No. 1 on my Netflix que.

When I looked at the cover of the book I saw the "S" of the orange as something turning into itself. If you think of the "S" as a secret, isn't that what a secret does turn into itself. Or in other words the person keeping the secret keeps it inside by not relating it to anyone.

One of the most important aspects of this book was that Joanne Harris made her characters human. In this way we, the readers, become closer to them. She shows various sides of these characters - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

But than she goes a step further by using sensory details. I can't tell you how often I've read stories where the characters don't even take a sip of water.

"My mother marked the events of her life with recipes, dishes of her own invention or interpretations of old favorites. Food was her nostalgia, her celebration, its nurture and preparation the sole outlet for her creativity." (p. 4)

I really had to stop and think about this one. Since I have no creative skills in the art of cooking, I really couldn't relate to her mother. But than when I thought of my own creative outlet, writing, I realized that the only time her mother was probably happy was when she was cooking. And when you realize how important food was to her than you begin to paint a picture of a sad woman, in a sad period of history, where her one and only happiness was the preparation of food.

"The sweetness scooped like some bright fruit plum peach apricot watermelon perhpas from myself this sweetness"

"On another, what might be a poem, though I never saw her open any book other than one of recipes. It is a whimsical touch, which surprises and troubles me." (p.5)

Now this was an interesting sentence. Why would a simple poem trouble Framboise so much? Perhaps it was because she was beginning to see her mother in a different light.

"I listened because I saw in our kitchen seminars the one way in which I might win a little of her approval, and because every good war needs the occasional amnesty." (p.5)

Ah! I think this perhaps may be the root of the story "which I might win a little of her approval". As children we seek our parents approval. I know first hand what that means. I think in some ways even now I'm still seeking my parents approval even at my age.

And very often it happens when we can't get their approval we strike out against them and than turn to someone else for the love and comfort that we really wanted from our parents. I think this is what happens to Framboise.

"I don't like to be touched and simpered over. I don't see why the blood we share should tie us in affection. Or the secret of spilled blood we hid for so long between us." (p.6)

This paragraph sent a chill up my spine. Could this "secret of spilled blood" be the reason Framboise has come back to her childhood home?

Let's for a moment look carefully at this pargraph and the way the author draws us into her web. I think we realize that something may be wrong with Framboise when she states that she doesn't like to be touched. Most people need the "touch" of a human being. Not all but most.

The next sentence tells us that she isn't really that close to her family and that's probably an understatement. But we can relate to that statement because some of us probably have relations that we would rather not be in the same room with.

It is the last sentence that really tells the tale of who Framboise is: "Or the secret of spilled blood we hid for so long between us." (p.6)

The author slowly brings us along giving tidbits to a hungry dog when all of a sudden she throws us a whole steak and we are stunned for the moment. I truly fell in love with Joanne Harris' style of writing. Not only does she weave a great story, but the fact that she uses sensory details to indulge us in both beauty and the horror of the character's world makes this book a joy to read.

Mal - interesting - the orange peel graphic could be for the SS or secrecy or sex - or for the snake like river - great hadn't thought of any of those symbols

I want to take it a step further because as you say the pulp is gone and each of the symbols you bring to our attention, in this story the essence (I want to say goodness but that is not the best word nor is the power of each the best word either - how about the integrity as in whole, comprehensive, rigid base) the Integrity of each is gone.

I wonder if you were more aware while reading of the four S's - the SS - Secrecy - Sex - and the snake like river - It will be interesting to hear from you as we continue the read to learn if you feel these four areas represent the "very dark Shades" you are aware of in the story. While we are looking for Framboise's quest it will be interesting to see how these four issues play out -

You who brought wasps to our attention the other day - did you notice how often wasps were mentioned in this first Section - until I revewed the section I had not remembered - what could the wasps symbolize or are they a metaphore for something - they sting and give us all a foreboding feeling seeing or hearing of one much less many flying around - hmmm and we have them sucking the juices out of the fruit that falls from the trees - hmmmm can almost see that double curl again - the stinging wasps are not a comfortable image where as the fallen fruit made into these lucious foods are a bucolic image

Welcome Hats so glad you will be with us - Have a good read today Hats - you are in for a treat on this book - and yes the French cover reminds me of a Dutch Still Life - the French reviews all focus on the food as well - I have not learned though what this obsession is with that color blue - everywhere you turn in France that color blue is evident. I know it is essentially the color attributed to the color of the clothes for the Virgin Mary and it was the color used by knights for the King - but this blue is all over --

Come on Eloise - what do you know if anything about this blue being on so many rural French objects - even the buoys in the sea are painted this blue rather than the typical red or bright yellow used by most fisherman.

By the way folks all those who are reading with us are in the heading as a link to your e-mail - thought it would be fun for a change...Should we call ourselves something - like the Joanna Harris fan club - or the Les Laveuses regulars - or the Followers of Framboise Dartigen -

Mal - I was not familiar with the book The Little Friend but a quick gaze at the review and I see this is a writer who followed up another successful novel with this one filled with a family who experiences loss.

Since I suffer from migrains since I was a kid and was all through the idea of it being caused by anything from emotions, age, my monthly and as each changed, there was no change in my headaches - I learned years ago though about the 4 C's and sure enough citris and chocolate do me in everytime - I have no problem with cheese nor coffee - in fact most migrain medication is filled with caffeen.

I remember those 2 day headaches when my children were young, before there was anything except heavy duty drugs for relief and so I was right there with Maribelle although, I didn't strike out at folks or break things.

Interesting observations - "the children more or less are forced to raise themselves because of their mothers' emotional and physical illnesses." and then the business about "the Standing Stones, the Treasure Stone and Old Mother" - what do you think Mal - are the standing stones and the treasure stone a similar metaphore as the stone inside fruit - is the land the host of seeds similar to a human as a host where seeds are planted and give off the "fruit of thy womb?"

Pedln - She has you doesn't she - what a writer - do not remember when I last read anything as compeling - what comes next - I felt like a kid reading this asking for just one more chapter when my mother read us a chapter book.

Was there anything in particular that helped you see Treachery around the bend?

Yes, and let's hear from you how you liked "Babette's Feast" -

How about LES GOURMETS LITTÉRAIRES for a group name?

SCRAWLER, I don't see the kind of Gothic horror you mention until much farther along in this book. I think Harris is very clever about concealing evil behind a kind of bucolic rusticity most of the time. We know that the childrens' father was killed in the war, but that fact more or less recedes into the background. The fact of war and German occupation hovers over the reader like a pesky wasp, as BARBARA said, but we brush it away without thinking that the only real way to get rid of wasps is with fire.

Mal

Scrawler - oh what a great definition Scrawler - you really clarify your thought - "If you think of the "S" as a secret, isn't that what a secret does turn into itself."

Thank you for bringing this to our attention - yes - "And when you realize how important food was to her than you begin to paint a picture of a sad woman, in a sad period of history, where her one and only happiness was the preparation of food."

Does anyone else see Maribelle as sad - sad and like the secret that is turned into itself - although I sense she loves her children, they now seem an obligation that she just accepts without thinking of an alternative - as Framboise remembers - she does not strike them only her tongue is quick and harsh.

Wow Scrawler - this is a post to behold - "which I might win a little of her approval." I am wondering if that is the quest for Framboise but than you also give a lot of emphasis to, "Or the secret of spilled blood we hid for so long between us."

There is a barrier there isn't there - holding on to herself is the feeling I get - and if you do not feel loved you do hold yourself in - but than yes holding onto secrets is also going to make you into a secretive kind of person who holds onto yourself.

Hmmm hadn't thought but maybe that is what the symbol is suggesting - that there are two great quests going on - one to uncover the secret or rather the meaning of the secret and the other to find love.

Wow each post brings up another view of the same words and phrases - this author really is much deeper than the usual light read that a movie like Chocolat suggested - although I read somewhere the movie is a simplified version of the book which makes me now want to get that book as well.

I like the way you put it Scrawler - "The author slowly brings us along giving tidbits to a hungry dog when all of a sudden she throws us a whole steak and we are stunned for the moment...she uses sensory details to indulge us in both beauty and the horror of the character's world makes this book a joy to read."

LES GOURMETS LITTÉRAIRES How about it folks - great suggestion Mal - is this the name - let's give others a chance to suggest something and we will choose the name by tomorrow evening - I like the French ring with the allusion to food and letters - great going Mal...

"There's more of me in that sly little bitch than the pair of you ten times over."

I think Framboise hated every part of herself that resembled her mother. She wanted to win her mother's disapproval, not her approval, and she did this by rebelling early. She wants to hit back; to get her mother.

I was raised by an aunt who tried to turn me into her own image. After I realized this, I detested what she was doing and almost hated her. Most especially, I hated anything I did that reminded me of her. I see this in Framboise, more than I see any need for approval or feeling of love.

BARBARA, the remaining stones of the jetty don't bring thoughts of fruit to me. They make me think of strength. They had the ability to withstand the force of the water's current and damage by wind and storm, whatever life brought. They are an unchanging constant in the unpredictable, often cruel, changing world of the river, which is a symbol for life. They also are a challenge to Framboise, I believe. I think she'd like to be a strong as the stones.

Yes, real cooking is a creative art, and that's why I loved it so much. Any softness and affection Mirabelle had left went into the creation of recipes and cooking them. She cared more for those creations than she did her children. Well, she would not allow herself really to feel for her children. She's a sad, twisted, introverted woman, in my opinion.

My sister and I inherited our mother's "sick headaches." They were awful to bear and very debilitating. At some point, mine went away; I don't know why.

The mother in The Little Friend hid behind drugs a doctor prescribed for depression, and became addicted to them. Her behavior was similar to Mirabelle's at the time of her migraines. Wild, unpredictable lashings out and tantrums, then retreat.

Mal

Barbara and Mal, when my children were small, I suffered with migraines too. I remember putting a pillow over my head and just waiting for the pain to leave. Now, I don't have them anymore. At some point, the headaches disappeared.

I have heard that "sick headaches" are caused by hidden anger or depression. I remember the mother in 'Atonement' by Ian McEwan suffered with headaches too. These headaches caused her to retreat from her children and family.

I think secrets or repressed memories can taint each family memory. Secrets leave us with a legacy or pattern of pain. Framboise is left with this legacy.

I feel sorry for Framboise and Mirabelle. Obviously, Mirabelle was plagued or haunted by some dark memories. Even the smell of an orange could set her off for days. There is also something dreadful about a clock.

"Once, when a friendly woman at the market gave us an orange to share, our mother refused to let us into the house until we had washed, scrubbed under our nails and rubbed our hands with lemon balm and lavender, even then claimed she could smell the orange oil on us...."

I also think Mirabelle loved Framboise deeply. She loved Framboise because she seemed very strong. To prove her love, she left her most valuable item, the album, to Framboise. I don't know, but I think this small, raggedy book will lead to the disclosure of some mysteries.

Must I go to the Library each day, in the West end of Montreal, to read parts of the book. What I read at random, the food just caught my eye as I am a GOURMANDE. "Les Gourmets Littéraires" is good why not.

Yes Barbara France is BLEUE 'Bleue' because we say La France, feminine, but you say 'le ciel est bleu' 'sky' being masculine.

I have no idea why there is so much blue in France. Notice the inversion 'bleu' in French and 'blue' in English. The original French flag had a blue background with a white 'fleur de lys'. It could come from that, I don't know. Or it could be from Mary's gown.

Eloïse

This book starts out as a kind of thriller--there is a terrible secret that the narrator has kept hidden and is afraid will be revealed if she lets down her guard. When a food critic visits the town and flatters her, she does let down her guard, and of course later regrets it. "I should have known better." But the reader is now drawn in. What is this horrible secret, and how will it be revealed in the book?

This is also the story of a mother who is seriously disabled by an illness which is labelled Migraines, but which may have elements of epilepsy as well: the forshadowing aura, the smell of imaginary oranges, and the falling down may indicate seizures. The children, of course, must learn to cope with the personality such a disabling illness creates. Each of the children has an individual way of dealing with this cold, hostile mother. The book focuses primarily on the relationship of Mirabelle and Framboise, whose personalities are so similar they are constantly at odds with one another.

And, on top of this, is the horror of war and occupation by an evil force such as the Nazis. Life seemed to go on somewhat normally in this small backwater town, but fear and shortages lurk constantly in the background. We see the war from the viewpoint of three neglected children living in a German-occupied French village during World War II. "Later my mother tried to explain. All uniforms were dangerous, she told me, but the black ones above all...They could do anything. It didn't matter that I was only nine years old. Put a foot wrong and I could be shot, shot, did I understand?" Do any of us who have never lived in such an environment truly understand what this is like?

In our throwaway society today, we hardly comprehend what it was like to save scraps of spoiled food and pieces of fabric from which to make clothes.

I have not read the whole book yet. So far, there is only the hint of collaboration by the family which starts in a casual way. The children who tell about the radio do not seem to really understand what they have done. I can't wait to find out what is going to happen!

Also I wonder what is the meaning of Framboise's efforts to catch Old Mother. Will she succeed, and what will happen if she does? It's hard to tell at this point if this is just a minor subplot, or whether it concerns the the central mystery of the book.

I will return after I have read up to the end of Part II.

Horselover, you really brought it home -- what it must have been like --

"Later my mother tried to explain. All uniforms were dangerous, she told me, but the black ones above all...They could do anything. It didn't matter that I was only nine years old. Put a foot wrong and I could be shot, shot, did I understand?" Do any of us who have never lived in such an environment truly understand what this is like?

This poor woman, trying to eke out a livlihood in war time, her husband dead, she must do it herself. And altho she doesn't show it, she's terrified for her children. She can't watch them all the time, how can she protect them. How can she keep them from the evil Nazis? No wonder she is bitter and hard.

The sun is out this morning. Please, may it stay.

Eloise, perhaps you can help us out. What is "Mamie?" Is it an endearing form of "aunt?" It's been a million years ago since I had 2 years of high school French, but I thought the word was "Tante," or am I getting my languages mixed up.

Anyway, Cassis' children seem to insist on calling her Mamie Framboise and I wondered what the word meant.

As for her restaurant, I was surprised she called it "Creperie Framboise." Since she wanted to keep her identity a secret, i'd have thought she would stay as far away from "Framboise" as possible, even if it was referring to raspberries.

PEDLN, my French dictionary says "mamelle" means Mamma. Perhaps "mame" means the same. Why would being called "Mame" bother Framboise?

It seems to me that Framboise's mother would be remembered more than the children would. After all, it's been fifty years since Framboise lived in Las Laveuse, hasn't it?

Is there really a town called Les Laveuse? I couldn't find one when I did a search. Laveuse means "washer-woman" or laundress. That could have some connotation when related to this story, couldn't it?

Angers is located on both the Marne and the Loire Rivers, a strategic point, I'd say, and reason for its occupation by the Germans in World War II. Apparently this medium sized city was bombed many times during that war. Because of its location I can see why it would have more sophisticated restaurants, like the one owned by Laure and Yannick, than the créperie in the country owned by Framboise.

I just had a weird idea. When you break down the word, "orange", it is OR, which means gold and ANGE, which means angel. The smell of oranges triggered off attacks for Mirabelle. Could this gold angel be a symbol of death?

I think there's something more wrong with Mirabelle than just the stress of supporting and raising her children. She had severe headaches before her husband was killed in the war.

Mal

"I know what you're thinking. You wish I'd get on with the story. It's only the story about the old days that interests you now; the only thread in this tattered flag of mine that still catches the light. You want to hear about Toms Leibniz. To have it clear, categorized, ended. Well, it isn't as easy as that. Like my mother's album, there was no page numbers. No beginning, and the end is raw as the seamless edge of an unhemmed skirt."

I felt with this paragraph that I became part of this story. That Framboise was talking directly to me. It's true isn't it that now with our mega-bytes and 15 second commericals that we want everything to be clear, caterorized and ended by the end of the last commercial in a TV program. But Framboise I think is saying to us to be careful because this story is more than just facts and figures, it goes much deeper and like her mother's album there are no page numbers. I have fallen in love with the author's words: "the end is raw as the seamless edge of an unhemmed skirt" - another suggestion of a secret.

"The years with Herve seem almost a blank now, like the strange calm patches you sometimes get in a stormy sea, a moment of waiting, of forgetfulness."

I can relate to this passage. Memory sometimes fades only to return in bits and pieces. But, oh what a beautiful way of puting it.

"She named each one of us, on a seeming whim, after a fruit or recipe - Cassis, for her thick black-currant cake, Framboise, her raspberry liqueur, and Reinette after the reine-claude greengapes that grew against the south wall of the house, thick as grapes, syrupy with wasps in midsummer."

If there is one thing I didn't care for in the this book it was the names given to the characters. I'm not saying that they should be named simple names like Tom, Dick or Harry, but these names tended to confuse my reading. I was consantly going back to find out who she was talking about. Perhaps it was just that I was unfamiliar with the French names. Although my father's family is French/Irish and I don't think I've ever heard of any of my family named in such a way. The names do, however, go with Frambroise's mother's character in her love of "food". I guess it can't be any worse than what some of us did to our children in the 70s. I have several friends whose name are Bambi!

"I watched the children grow from curious big-eyed bundles to small brightly colored birds flying over my meadow and through my orchard on invisible wings."

I think Framboise was happy around her grand-children although it was difficult to show the same love she had for them to her own children.

"I have a good daughter in Pistache. Noisette (my secret favorite) is more like me; sly and rebellious, black eyes like mine and a heart full of wildness and resentment."

I thought this was an interesting. The daughter who looked and acted like Frambroise was her secret favorite. Would you agree with this statement? Are the children that are closest to us those who look and act like us?

"She leveled her teeth at me. She had very white, very large teeth, and her air is the color of fresh paprika."

The first part of this sentence reminded me of the fiary tale "Little Red Riding Hood". The wolf in that story had very white, very large teeth - could the author be saying that Laure was really a wolf in sheep's clothing?

"You know, Cassis, to most people, all old ladies look pretty much the same."

This sentence really startled me until I thought about it. I guess I'd never thought of it before me, but "little old ladies" do really look a like in the world generated by youth. We tend to go about our business without really being noticed.

"Our mother had bad spells, he said patiently, headaches that were so terrible that sometimes she didn't even know what she was doing. Had we ever had sunstroke? Felt that woozy, unreal feeling, imagined the objects were closer than they were, sounds louder?"

I think this a very realistic way of looking at migraines. They do feel like that at times. But I don't think I've ever had headaches so bad that I didn't know what I was doing. That sentence seemed strange to me, and I began to think about it more. Could this be one more nestled clue.

Well, of course, SCRAWLER, the narrator is talking directly to the reader in the paragraph you quoted, so it's no wonder you felt as if she is talking to you, the reader -- something writers are told never to do.

The names didn't bother me at all, except that I immediately thought of the liqueur when I read "Cassis", not a currant cake. I thought of "queen" when I read Reine-Claude. Reinette. Little queen. Suits her, doesn't it?

Mal

Scrawler, I think kids get named after things (or people) their parents loved or thought highly of. When I was growing up there was a man in my town named Oofty-goofty Bowman. His parents had been circus clowns and named him after one. (In the phone book he was listed as OG). Mirabelle loved foods, thus the way she named her children.

Mamie, pronounced mamee, (not maymee). My son Daniel calls me that but only since he has been living in Switzerland for the past 23 years. It is a fond name for mother. An aunt would be called 'tante' or 'tatie'. When Daniel was living here he used to call me maman like all my other children. Mamelle is the breast.

Scrawler, nobody in France or in Quebec is called by a fruit name that I ever heard of, did the author want to be different?

Eloïse

ELOISE, my Harrap's French-English dictionary gives "Mamma" as the first meaning of "mamelle" with "breast" as the second meaning. My Larousse is packed away, so I can't refer to that. When you say "my friend" meaning a woman friend, do you say "m'amie"?

The narrator says Mirabelle called her children by the names of her recipes "on a whim". I wonder if the author has been whimsical about other names in this book? What does Liebniz mean?

Mal

Been gone all day today - my youngest is moving to Lubbock in 4 more weeks and so I am trying to soak up as many visits as I can before they go - the twin boys had a Birthday last week and so for their Birthday gift I got us all tickets to see "Stomp" - the young people that put on that great performance using garbage cans and mops and plungers - anything but real drums - they put on this incredible stage performance of drum music or sounds - they dance and act like clowns - it is terrific - they are in these dirty ghetto looking clothes and engage the audiance in this non-stop 100 minute performance -

Chris, the oldest at age 14 last February plays the drums, and the twins are now 13 - so we have three early teens - perfect show followed by barbeque out on the lake.

Just got home and see there are some incredible posts again - I will be back later tonight to follow up and then we really get into it looking into section two as the follow up to section one -

Hehehehe Looks like a few of you couldn't wait for Christmas morning and started to get into section two - the suspense Joanne Harris builds made it too hard to only talk about Section One for a whole week and it appears for some it was even hard to stay in Section One for two days - ah so - but boy do I understand - the story is riveting and Joanne Harris has the nack of keeping the suspence going.

Ok back later and than tonight I will e-mail to each of you the next set of questions to help us go deeper into the story -

Mal - In your post on Saturday you had a wonderful symbolism worked out for the stones of the jetty making you think of strength. "They had the ability to withstand the force of the water's current and damage by wind and storm, whatever life brought. They are an unchanging constant in the unpredictable, often cruel, changing world of the river, which is a symbol for life. They also are a challenge to Framboise, I believe. I think she'd like to be as strong as the stones."

Great symbolism - OK now why not take it one step further and think of the landscape and the other aspects of nature in this story, not only about "humans inhabiting the space but at the same time the space inhabiting humans" (Thomas Foster) - which brings us back to those pits or stones in the fruit -

What I am thinking here is, just as the Jetty stones are in the unpredictable, often cruel, changing world of the river - the stones, or pits, are within the soft flesh of the growing fruit - Framboise has said her heart is as hard as the stones in the fruit - I'm thinking that she sees herself as unpredictable, often cruel, in the changing world - the river being the river of life.

And we know from Myth that, 'he who crosses the river performs a rite of passage' - after Cassis hears of his father's death he runs away and sleeps for two nights on the other side of the river. - And so we have Cassis in Part two no longer a little boy in more ways than being age 14.

So much of this story happens in and around the river - it must be important to the story - baptisms happen in rivers - and this river has been likened to a snake - another symbol fraught with meaning -

The snake represents both physical and spiritual rebirth; accompanies all female dieteis; is associated with sex, life and death, the underworld, potential energy, a mediator between heaven and earth and between earth and the underworld; It is knowledge, power, guile, cunning, darkness, evil, corruption, swift as disaster, guardians of temples, the vital spirit of all natural forces, satan, the power of evil, wisdom, temptation, the dragon of the Apocalypse; the Virgin Mary crushes the head of the serpent of Eve instead of succumbing to him - What else - there are so many symbols for the snake...

Hats - you see how "secrets or repressed memories can taint each family memory. Secrets leave us with a legacy or pattern of pain. Framboise is left with this legacy." And so you are seeing a women in pain - fits doesn't it - when something hurts you do not want anyone to touch it - and Framboise did not liked being touched - I wonder if secrets keep you from being free with your touching of others - I would think wouldn't you that Maribelle had to hold on to her secrets which must have been an effort that kept her more rigid -

And yep, it does look like Maribelle loved Framboise to give her something so intimate as her album. But I sure do not get the significance of the truffle in oil - evidently it has a lot of value according to the conversation she has with the food reporter...

Another one for Eloise - Eloise - help What makes a truffle in oil so valuable?

Eloise - We have it - France is Bleu -

horselover - A thriller - great description - the German reviews also focus on the secret - and here I thought the dark cover was alluding to their Nazi history - I do believe that just shows the outlook those of us who lived those years still hold when we read about WWII - in fact all the villagers that were being reported I was sure were receiving a more sinister punishment and was shocked when I read the simplicity of the explanation being the soldiers were sending goods back to their families in the "Fatherland."

And yes the innocence of children seems quite a contrast to the evils of war - a war they really did not understand with Framboise seeing it as part of the adult world - what a job for a parent it must have been to try not to frighten a child and yet have to try to implant the seriousness of life and death and what that could mean. Quite a women this Maribelle...

Ah yes, Pedln - you saw it in horselover's - post - she is terrified for her children and "no wonder she is bitter and hard." Some how we can relate to her experience without ever having lived in her shoes. I am seeing though that Framboise has some of the same character traits as her mother - so much so that she drove one of her daughters away from any closeness just as Maribelle drove Framboise away -

Although come to think of it Framboise herself says she isn't sure if the wedge between them is simply the expression of their character. What do you think?

And yes, I never noticed but yes, why did she call her Creperie, "Creperie Framboise." Almost like asking for trouble - hmmmm

Mal, I don't know what you mean, sorry.

I have never tasted real truffle which are dug up from a certain area of France and look like egg sized pieces of dung, sorry about that. But apparently they are exquisite and cost a bundle because they are only good at a certain time of the year and hard to find in nature. The oil extracted from them would be even more expensive. But the French will go to any length to flatter their delicate palate.

Eloïse

Scrawler - you hit all the high points - interesting isn't it that we each think we are so different and yet to the young we all look similar to each other - blah - but I noticed that as soon as you loose the look of a sexual animal you are sort of dismissed - and to be dismissed is so much better than being patronized - oh how I hate that - you can hear it in their voice as if you have lost your brain along the way just because your skin isn't firm. Ah so the glories of aging...

I love your reference to Little Red Riding Hood and that to me is the come on statement to direct us how best to look at Part Two - there are so many allusions to the Bible, Myths, Fairy Tales - in fact it is riddled with these associations - all to get to the bottom of what is really going on here...

Mal - and your realization that "orange", it is OR, which means gold and ANGE, which means angel goes right into the biblical association that was evident in Part Two when Framboise and Reinette discuss the lipstick and turning Toupet in for hiding a radio - the sentence says, "I remmber her eyes were almost gold" the color of boiling sugar syrup as it begins to turn. As the Apostle turns on, betrayed Jesus - for silver granted - but there is the sense of value received for betrayal - and so I see a connection here between betrayal and gold.

The narrator may be saying that Mirabelle called her children by the names of her recipes "on a whim" but I doubt any author is "simply whimsical" about names. And so I wonder, now that you brought it up, what the name Liebniz means - Did you find the many websites about a philosopher whose father created calculus and who lived in the late 17th C. and early 18th C. -

You can't but wonder if this guy has some meaning for Tomas Leibneiz What is compelling is his philosophy is concerned with the problems of evil Liebniz The Author of Sin not me - each site spells his name differntly...tra la la lah...

Virtually everything in the novel has more than one meaning; The novel works on many different levels.

Some guestion for Part Two to help us go deeper into the story and uncover the author's message expressed as Framboise's Quest.

What motivates, scares, upsets the characters?
What are the parts that make up each character?
(artist, farmer, business women, friend, loyalty to country, loyalty to family, loyalty to themselves, fearless, fearful, loving, vengeful, etc.)
Why are the children allowed to live outside the law?
How is Mirabelle a winner?
What significance does the relationship between Mirabelle and Framboise have in the novel?

Describe Framboise as she appeared as a witness to the events.

Why does the fish have a name?
Where does the fish come from?
What is Framboise going to do with the fish?
What point is the author making?

What common themes are represented or developed by the author's use of this and other symbols?

How does our knowledge of the history about WWII affect our understanding of the the social influences and the political influences affecting the development of these characters and/or the setting -

Hi Barbara, glad you are back.

Eloise, I am glad you are here to help us through the rough spots.

Barbara, you said to Scrawler,

"I love your reference to Little Red Riding Hood and that to me is the come on statement to direct us how best to look at Part Two - there are so many allusions to the Bible, Myths, Fairy Tales - in fact it is riddled with these associations - all to get to the bottom of what is really going on here..."

I think it is interesting that Framboise related her mother's "bad spells" to fairy tales. It helps to remember that children take an adult meaning and see it in a totally different way or on a different plane. I guess it helps to force ourselves not to forget the way in which children think or the way we thought as children.

"Because of the bad spells...My youthful mind associated the phrase with stories of witches. The gingerbread house. The Seven Swans...."

As a child, I loved fairy tales. As an adult, I still remember and love them. I am not familiar with "The Seven Swans." I wanted to ask Eloise about "The Seven Swans." Is it a french fairy tale?

Eloise, I've never tasted a truffle either. Are they kind of like mushrooms>

Barbara, great idea to have a listing of recipes. And maybe at some point you can share with us some of the new Harris you received, about French Cooking. Does it have recipes?

You ask what motivates the characters. I think one thing that motivates the child 'Boise (do we need different names to separate the child from the woman?) is that she is afraid of being left behind. Her dearest friends and playmates are growing up, seeking and wanting new adventures of which she knows nothing. 'Boise wants to be part of their life. Catching "Old Mother" is one way she can show Cassis that she is not still a little kid. The "orange simultions" that she plays on Mirabelle give her the free time to go to Angers with her brother and sister, to be part of their life.

Hats, I didn't know Seven Swans either. The site below is really about beadwork, but it gives a very brief summary of this fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. (I would have pasted, but wasn't sure about the copyright.)

http://www.caravanbeads.com/2cb%20/61.clarke.html

Hi Pedln,

Thank you for the link.

Ever since Framboise' father was killed she dreams of drowning in the Loire. This author is making us fear the river, and she gives the stones special significance. She is foreshadowing the climax of her story from the very beginning of it.

Framboise thinks on Page 44:

". . . . dreams of drowning, of rolling blind in the black surf of the Loire . . . . of screaming and feeling my scream forced back in my throat, of drowning in myself."

(The emphasis is mine.) What does she mean, drowning in myself?

She goes on to say:

". . . . that if I were to catch Old Mother, something might happen. What it might be I would not articulate even to myself. But something, I thought in mounting, incomprehensible excitement. Something."

Old Mother is the carp that even the greatest fishers have been unable to catch. The myth is that Old Mother carries a curse. What then is the "Something" Framboise can't articulate?

Framboise is always pushing her luck. She deliberately tries to antagonize her mother from the time she realizes how helpless Mirabelle is when she has the attacks. Mirabelle is not always helpless, though, and Framboise does not consider the consequences of what she does, either to her mother or the taunts she makes in her escapades to defy the dangers of the river, which are made very clear when Jeanette is bitten by the adder. Snakes also symbolize knowledge, BARBARA, and when Jeanette dies from the snake bite Framboise realizes she is vulnerable to death's sting, too, but that doesn't stop her defiance of the river and even life itself.

Why are the children allowed to live outside the law? It seems to me one of the biggest reasons people behave the way they do is because of a system of rewards and punishments. These children are constantly punished by their mother, if only with tongue lashings, and they are seldom rewarded. The Germans reward them for the little secrets they told. There is no disciplinarian around to stop them from doing it except themselves.

Framboise threatens to tell their mother about Reinette's dealings with the Germans, but "I felt no real hostility toward the Germans." Why not? What Framboise wants is to be involved, to be treated like an adult, "a bearer of secrets". If she did not think her mother was carrying around a deep, dark secret, would she feel this way? What is Mirabelle's secret?

Mal

Mal, I remember snakes in THE LITTLE FRIEND and here those snakes are again!

I think these children are looking for a little bit of excitement. I remember that need for excitement in childhood. That drive for a little bit of fun, a day less boring, could lead to something beyond our imaginations. When we went to bed at night, we went with a sigh that we had not been caught by our parents or other adults.

These children also are looking for "adventure." It is their way to become a part of the adult world.

"Try to see what that meant to us. We were children...The adult world was a distant planet inhabited by aliens. We understood so little of it."

"Even so, Cassis's whisper awed me. RESISTANCE. It was a word that appealed to my sense of adventure, of drama. It brought images of rival gangs struggling for power, of nighttime escapades, shootings, secret meetings...dangers braved...."

"In a sense this was still very similar to the games we had played in previous years, Reine, Cassis, Paul and I: the potato guns, passwords, the rituals. The game broadened a little...The stakes were higher."

"Suddenly I felt as if a gulf had opened beneath me, a hot, deep hole like a giant mouth. If Jeannette could die, then so could I. So could anyone. Cassis looked down from the height of his fourteen years in some scorn: "You expect people to die in wartime, stupid. Children too. People die all the time."

The first time a child realizes that someone can die is especially emotional. The death of Jeannette touched her even more than her father's death because she could relate to Jennette as a person and than saw the dead body. After all Frambroise was older than she was. Her father's death she could only imagine in her mind. I can't even imagine what it would be like for children living in a occupied country when they were surrounded by death. "You expect people to die in wartime...children too." This sentence sent a chill up my spine just reading it.

"A pause that crawled between us like a racing snail."

I love the image this sentence gives us. "A racing snail."

"I thought of the dreams that had plagued me ever since Father died; dreams of drowning, of rolling blind in the black surf of the swollen Loire with the clammy feel of deal flesh all around me, of screaming and feeling my scream forced back into my throat, of draowning in myself."

I have dreams of drowning too. I don't know what they mean, but I know that I feel uneasy when I'm near water. I don't think I could have done what Framboise did when she played in the Loire. For me that part of this story was especially frighting. As Mal, said this is the author's way of forshadowing what happens.

"My mother and I stalked each other like cats staking out their territory. Every touch was a spark that hissed with static. Every word was a potential insult, every conversation a minefield."

I love this description of the two characters. It does seem like that sometime when you have two women in the same place. Or for that matter a man and a women in the same area. Especially, I think between a mother and a daughter and if one feels that say the kitchen is her territory. I find this happens when both people have similar personalities.

"I don't know why we pitted ourelves against each other; maybe it was the simple fact that I was growing up."

This is a very honest answer to a very difficult situation. Sometimes we really don't know why we do the things that we do.

"To her, those petty rules mattered because those were the things she used to control our world. Take them away and she was like the rest of us, orphaned and lost."

I had to laugh at this because this is the way I felt about my mother's rules. When I had my own children I went in the opposite direction and had very few rules for them.

During the war people behaved differently than in normal times. A friend who lived through the war was from Dunkerque during the invasion and still at the age of 65 can remember the smell of the blood that colored the sea shore red. She still carries the scars of the war.

Speaking of Resistance, a close friend of my sister's who was about 6 when the war started was asked by her grand mother to stand guard on the corner of the street watching for Germans while the adults were listening to the BBC. If she saw anything, she had to run inside and tell them so they could hide the radio as they were not allowed to listen to that.

Pedln, truffles are dark brown and buried under 5, 6 inches of earth at the foot of I forget which kind of tree and some dogs are trained to detect their odor, while mushrooms grow above ground.

Eloïse

That Truffle - I have never seen one encased in oil as the one Framboise inherits from her mom - If that is the extent the French would go to preserve and give value to taste as Eloise explains, than their appreciation for Food is far and away more than anything I can understand.

Years ago there was a small group of us studying French Cuisine with a young women who lived half the year in France and the other half here in Austin - we visited a family who had a small truffle processing operation on their farm - brought back a couple of tiny cans with one truffle in each can -

I used them a bit at a time - cut up in either an omelette or small slivers tucked under the skin of either a turkey or Chicken - sort of a musky flavor that light food was needed in order to recognize the taste - these were black rather than brown. Seems to me they originally used pigs to sniff under the Oak Trees and there are also truffles in Italy.

Aha - here is the web site for everything we wanted to know about Truffles yep, in Italy and they mention the pigs but I didn't know that black Truffles were found in summer while in winter they are white - never had a white Truffle Interesting - when you click onto the Halibut recipe using the Black Truffles there are postings - the first post is from someone in Austin -
Ray Jordan ( tcs@texas.net ) from Austin TX on 02/14/03 This is great, but please,please don't put the truffle on until after baking as all of its flavor will evaporate in the oven.
That may be why I learned from Anne to encase the Truffle in food or to use it when making a sauce - the whole concept of trying a Truffle was so new I did't ask the 100 questions that I wish I knew the answers to now... .

My book is waiting for me and I will get it today.

However I will comment about food. My extended family are not very demonstrative and we were also poor as kids. I realised the trouble my sisters and I took over food at family dinners and how we took trouble with our cooking at home was a way we showed affection to those we loved. Food has a lot of meaning in our family. I have had to learn not to use food to show my affection and not to eat too much to feel good.

Carolyn

Hurrah for Kiwi - her book is coming!! -

Found this graphic of a Pike

Here is the skinny on that Northern Pike

aha and here is a more sinister look of a Pike in the floor of the waterway

Oh - Oh - Oh Y'all just need to take a peek at these sights - Les poissons de Loire (fresh water fish from the Loire river) -- one has more information about food and the other some great photos of the Loire with those moving islands of land.

A few culinary specialties from the Loire Valley

The river Loire flows past three villages

I had a friend who was a great fisherman. He used what is called "Chum" that he made as bait for both carp and pike. I went to reservoirs in New York with him while he fished. One time he hooked a very large carp. He worked so hard trying to land that fish that his pants split right down the back. The fish got away, and all we had to take home was a great big laugh.

Mal

Ok on to your posts - will start than I must run out for a bit and back this evening - all this reference to death - and Boise's death -

yes, Pedln that is perfect - let's call her Boise as a child and Framboise when the book is telling us about her as a women -

Hats your curiosity about the fairytale the "Seven Swans" - seems there is an Anderson tale as well - and than othes talk of "Six Swans" - all I could think of was the ballet "Swan Lake" - once you start looking you can't help be balled over by the vast number of Fairy Tales - I remember not long ago there was a special Adult edition of the Brother Grimm's Fairy Tales and that was a monster size book.

Isn't there a story of a fisherman who catches a fish who allows the fisherman and his wife three wishes - and they wish for the gingerbread man she had just cut out to become a child - something about he runs off and I think the cow eats him...anyone remember?

Seems to me there is a message here - something maybe about disaster comes regardless - or because of innocence the outcome is disasterious and maybe that is why Boise is feeling the need to be sly and catch up with her older brother and sister.

In fact this whole obsession with catching "Old Mother" hmmm "Old Mother" is described as black and lives on the bottom of the river eating garbage - almost witch like the fish is described - and here you have this skinny innocent trying to trap the fish - I wonder if this is another way of saying that "Old Mother" is like the sinister SS also dressed in black and our young Boise is the innocence of those trying to catch what is stronger than they are but at least because of her innocence when she is sly it is to acquire the strength to catch "Old Mother" as opposed to those representing the older established Vichey government who delt with the SS - Just a thought...

What do y'all think "old Mother" is really all about - do you think that fact that it is a fish matters - certainly a fish is more alive with almost as if it had a mind of its own as compared to say a cow or a goat - there would be no sport in catching either animal and suggesting mongrul dog, it would be shot - don't remember any fairtales come to think about it involving wily animals so it had to be a fish.

Whew look at the time - be back this evening to catch some more of your thoughts - great posts Mal and Scrawler - with another from Hats - be back later...

Barbara, Yes, yes, now that you mention it, I remember on that documentary about truffles I saw on the French network, IT WAS A PIG they used for locating the truffles, that tells you how good my memory is. Remember too that only my mother tongue is French I am a Canadian and I don't even know if truffles grow here.

What a fascinating book this is.

Eloïse

This book contains some of the best descriptions of family coldness and hostility I have ever read. In this family, there is little actual physical abuse, but also no real love or affection. Because their mother can show no love, the children have become completely selfish and unconcerned about hurting one another (and their mother). Framboise is willing to torture her mother repeatedly simply to be able to go into town to the cinema. And their lack of empathy extends to the rest of the townfolk. "Strangely enough, the idea that we might have passed on worthless information--perhaps to the amusement or scorn of Tomas and the others--troubled me more than the possibility of causing harm to any of the people we denounced."

This lack of any family feeling extends to the next generation when Yannick and Laure seem willing to go to any lengths to achieve their selfish ends. When Framboise discovers that they are the ones behind the effort to ruin her business, Laure says, "We're not monsters." But in a sense, they are monsters unable to comprehend the pain they cause.

The chapters told from the point of view of the children are so accurate. A nine year old has no conception of the kind of evil the Nazis represent, especially since these Germans pretend to be friendly. Not long ago, the police department in one community conducted an experiment in which children around that age were told repeatedly by their parents not to talk to strangers and not to leave the playground without telling the parent. Yet a police officer in plain clothes had no trouble persuading almost every child to leave the playground to help look for a lost puppy. Mirabelle's warnings about the danger of dealing with the Germans fell on deaf ears. To the children, the problems of the Germans in getting supplies to send home were equivalent to the problems of their family and neighbors.

At the beginning of Part II, a kind of hero emerges in Paul Hourias. He has known all along of Framboise true identity and has revealed it to no one. In his slow, deliberate way, he uncovers the plot of Boise's relatives and urges her not to give in. "You're smarter than she is," he says. "And you know you can win if you try--" During this confrontation, for probably the first time in her life, Framboise feels a sudden instant of love for this man. I can't wait to see what will develop between these two old friends, and what Framboise will do about the threat to her new life in the village where she grew up.

I think the fish doesn't have anything to do with the Germans. It's been around for forty years, and no one's been able to catch it. Because it's managed to survive even after it's been hooked and got away, a myth has come about because of it. Part of the myth is that it contains a curse. This is the kind of thing country myths thrive on.

We must remember that these are uneducated country people who have created their own way of life and their own code of behavior. The war has brought some Germans with a different code of behavior into their village. In other words, part of the world has stepped in. Because of the war and the occupation of France these country people are no longer free and sometimes feel as if they must watch every move they make, or at least obey the German rules.

As some of the Germans are introduced what strikes me is how human they are. Why, for goodness sake, they're just like you and me! Framboise anticipated punishment when she stole the orange. Instead, she received a wink from a German soldier no less. Can you beat that?

I'm sorry, but I can't give Framboise a fragmented personality and call her by two names.

This writer has managed to get through some barriers I had put up against "the enemy" as represented by the German Nazis in World War II. The Germans I heard about during the war were not human beings, They were always an inhuman ENEMY.

I can imagine that soldiers occupying a place were and are often just as scared as the people whose city or town or village they've occupied. That's because they're human and not dehumanized, especially in this book. Think about our occupying forces in the Middle East.

HORSELOVER is right. Children don't understand war and the dangers it presents. If children have fears and prejudices, they are the ones they learned from some adult. The only Germans Mirabelle is afraid of are the ones in the black uniforms, so they're the ones the kids fear, too.

Framboise the child wanted to be free, even free of her mother. This was normal enough, considering how the mother treated her. Mirabelle was a perfectionist. Even the dishes had to be done just so. What a burden to put on a child!

I don't believe the idea that she was torturing her mother ever occurred to little Framboise. She just wanted Mirabelle out of the way, so she could do what she wanted to without feeling the effect of her mother's sharp tongue. Using the orange was an easy way to do it. Didn't you ever feel that way about a parent when you were a kid? I know I did.

Mal

Its coming - its coming - been preparing the new discussion site for those of us in the discussion to post the recipes we find for the foods in this book

We will be able to link any pages we find that show photos or instruction and even anything that has to do with maintaining a garden of the fruits and vegtables used in the recipes - we do not have to be exclusive to French recipes but at least let's be true to our discussion and not make this a recipe book of all kinds of foods -

the most important thing to remember is there is no conversation or messages in the posts - only recipes or links - this is new for seniornet - to have a side by side discussion page - I think we will have fun with this especially since we are finding the story has such a dark side.

Now back to this wonderful conversation you have going with all your thoughtful contributions. -

Mal you are seeing the inclusion of the river stones and the fear of the river as foreshadowing the end - we shall see won't we -

That is an interesting observation - drowning into herself -

Boise sure is defient - I had a friend as a child that had that kind of defience - when I pulled out some of my childhood photos there she is with a bearing that is like a regal dictator - wow she was something and we all envied her.

That is amazing isn't it that even the children have picked up that being an adult is carrying secrets - no wonder there is a wall between children and adults - at least in this story.

Hats adventure/excitment they are almost interchangeable aren't they - yes that was the sum of childhood during certain years - I am so aware for safty reasons children today do not get to explore on their own as much as even their parents who had more freedom -

I am remembering how it was a good thing during the summer for my youngsters in the seventh and eigth grade to take the bus with their friends to a mall or to ride their bikes to the other side of town - in fact my youngest, when he was in the seventh and eigth grade during Easter brea with his friend rode his bike to Wimberly to stay overnight with his older sister. We came out with our Easter picnic the next day to take them back bikes and all - that is a ride of 40 miles - can you imagine today two boys age 13 or 14 riding their bikes alone on any highway or back road?

But adventure was real and that is what Boise seems to be creating. I wonder what potato guns were - do you think a gun made by carving a potato? Or maybe some sort of wooden gun with a sling shot devise that shoots potatos - I remember we made those guns and used pieces of cow paddy or tar balls as ammunition.

Scrawler yes, I would think that also - that she saw her friend dead where as her father left and just never came back - she also says how difficult it was to remember him and yet, the more we read the more she remembers his comfort and warmth -

Those were pretty horrible nightmares she had after her father died - wow - and dreams are so important as symbols - she sure had feelings of being trapped and something trying to hold onto her -

When I was about six I almost drowned in rather shallow water - my older cousin saw me and was able to pull me out - they rolled me over a barrel and all this water came from inside - funny I wasn't scared after they pulled me out and I was so busy trying to save myself while I was in the water that I couldn't think of being scared - I just kept fighting with the water that wouldn't go away and I was mad.

interesting how her mother and father seemed to offer her the exact opposite kind of care. I have a theory about children that I still believe - I think a youngster that is strong minded has even a tougher time - my theory is that for a youngster to have their own ideas and values that may be different than their parents it puts them in a very vulnerable place - after all they are dependent on their parents - I think the parent can be as open and as accepting as they want but it is the child who must cut this cord and accept they are different - that is tough and I think the only way a child can do that is by being angry or feeling they must fight their parent so they can justify their independence - like a revolution.

In fact I believe this so that I was very concerned about my youngest because he didn't seem to go through any rebellious stage - sure enough it just took him longer - he was married and all of sudden nothing I said had merit and visits were few and far between for about 2 years and than voila we became friends rather than mother and son.

Well that is what I think Boise is doing - she is very strong minded and so I would expect her revolution would be fought with every inch of her mind, body and dreams. I love it - like looking at a muscle stretched till you can see every tendon.

Eloise So many scared folks in this world - trauma never does leave does it - interesting that you bring up the resistance - there are books finally being published that are trying to get folks to look closer at reality - that there seldom was this good and bad - resistance versus collaberation - that most folks simply had to do whatever they could to survive -

Found this book which explains the reality of France in June 1940 when German soldiers occupied the city of Lorient until May 8, 1945, when the Lorient “Pocket” surrendered. During occupation the women of this port city took control of their everyday lives and did what it took to feed and clothe their families, worked, stood in lines, bought on the black market, bartered, demonstrated, and recycled. They developed relationships with German soldiers who ran the gamut.

Due to aerial Battle of the Atlantic, sought shelter, buried their dead, took care of their wounded, looked for new lodging, and helped each other. They even tried to have some fun. After evacuation in early 1943, they served as advocates for others and gave information to the American 66th Infantry Division Counter-Intelligence Service.

Liberation and the women were targeted for blame - those punished were the “horizontal collaborators” with Germans. When the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Liberation of Lorient was celebrated in 1995, the story of the women of Lorient was left out.

I just wonder if survival without control over the circumstances is what folks are really raging against and so they, like the ghetto, rage against their own.

Mal- what in the world is chum - is it live bait or a fishing lure - ???

Eloise If we have folks from France here outside of Austin growing Truffles under the live oak trees then I bet there are folks in the Turffle industry in Canada - don't you think - hehehe try Google...

horselover You really did a wonderful job of connecting the dots right to Yannick and Laure - yes, I just did not see it that clearly - and what a telling remark that you point out - I think that is true of most folks who hurt others - they do not see their behavior as monstrous - they are so busy thinking about what will benefit themselves they do not see the pain they cause another - that whole bit that Foster shares in his book about Ghosts, witches and monsters.

Talk about a book of secrets - even benign secrets because yes, Paul hides who he is and what he remembers - and for no apparent reason.

yes good stuff on the enemy in authority seducing the children so easily with sweet but lethal behavior. Great thoughts to chew on in your post horselover - you've started some thoughts churning but it will take me a bit to get it clear in my mind.

Mal hmmm than I wonder - what do you think the fish symbolizes Mal -

Yes dynamite what you share about the humanity of the enemy - there could be some enemy occupiers who are scared but, from what I have studied, the mob mentality along with the feeling of superiority as an occupiers allows you to do things just because you can - for so long I have studied power and its use against those who are or are made weak - I think that is what is so sinister here - the enemy has become so human that we do not want to give them credit for the power they have, that, like Maribelle's tongue, can lash out without any or with little provocation.

I think what makes this even more uncomfortable is that we know we all have two sides and accepting the humane of the enemy is accepting the dark side of ourselves - that is very uncomfortable - we are so busy trying to eliminate our dark side with our latest resolution or book on change or prayer - just as we continue to try to rid ourselves of or at least hate the enemy.

Yes, Mal you have opened our eyes to the fact that the enemy is us since we are all alike - aggressor, resister, and those who succumb...God Bless us Everyone...

I have my book.

Boise, so like her mother is very strong willed. However my experience of strong willed children is although they may get what they want come hell or high water they also along the way suffer more because they do not want to take advice about anything. I have seen this in my own children while they were growing up. I had two strong willed children and two biddable children. The strong willed children suffered much from the consequences of their actions.

Boise and her mother probably clashed because they were so much alike. My daughter told me today I am blunt but her dad was not. I call a spade a spade and say what I think and yet I was the softer parent. I think when the child most like ourselves is growing up we clash with them and often do not see its the very likeness to ourselves which causes the clashes. It is only when I look back I can see this.

I think this book is very much about food. I love food and I love cooking but the work that Boise and her mother did to create their wonderful dishes is more than I should like to tackle. I did preserve, make jams, pickles and breads the old fashioned way - made cider and beer but I still think their cooking is much more elaborate than mine. Now I am having more challenges learning to cook with gluten free flours and ingredients. I am glad I was a cook to start with!

I do not see any symbolism in the story of the fish. The fish is a challenge. Its existence is surrounded by mystery and folk lore that is all I see in the fish. I think every lake, river and pond has such a fish which becomes a legend over time.

Boise loves the country and the country life and she is willing to take the chance of being recognised to live the life she enjoyed in her childhood. I have wonderful memories of strolling in the garden with my grandfather who was a wonderful gardener and orchardist and really enjoying the fruits of his labour. I spent many hours helping him and in turn in the kitchen learning to cook and preserve with my grandmother. I was a very competent cook by age 10. I am thankful for my grandmothers patience in teaching me all she knew. I can understand how Boise came to buy back the family property. I hated it when my grandparents home and grounds were sold and often stopped to gaze at it longingly.

That is all for now but I am enjoying the book very much. It was a good choice.

Carolyn

BARBARA, chum is very smelly bait. It is sometimes made with cat or dog food and fermented grain mixed with menhaden oil. Sometimes only grain and the oil are used. Menhaden oil is an odoriferous fish oil. Chum attracts the fish. To me catching the Old Mother symbolizes achieving what's nearly impossible by the use of wit and strength.

Strong-willed people will listen to people they think are as strong or stronger and as smart or smarter than they are. This is usually not a parent, even if they are.

Real French cooking demands hours and hours of preparation. If you're not prepared to take the time to do that, don't try. It's the sauces and the combinations of herbs and spices that make French cooking what it is, and to do those well it takes a lot of practice.

It's the same with French pastry. I remember putting sticks of butter in the middle of a table heaped with flour and working it and folding it over and over again to make French puff pastry.

Provincial French cooking is easier and less expensive than the fancy stuff. I have a good recipe for Chicken Nicoise I made a lot. It's made with chicken, white wine, black and green olives, tomatoes, roasted green and red sweet peppers, herbs and spices, etc.

Boeuf Bourguignon has to be done right to be good. With these recipes and many others you have to use wine, also brandy for boeuf bourguignon, which you light after it goes in the pot. The noodles are added at the end of the cooking, small round ones that you make. Always use good wine for cooking -- wine you'd serve at the table -- and never, ever use that awful stuff they sell as cooking wine in the supermarket.

Those are only two of the dishes I made for my family. One of the worst things that ever happened to me was to have my hands so messed up by arthritis that I couldn't do all the chopping and slicing that's necessary for this type of food. No, I never used a food processor.

A good set of knives is an absolute necessity. I have one Sabatier knife I wouldn't sell for a million dollars.(Well maybe, if I really had to, but I'd always regret it. I paid $20.00 for it almost 30 years ago. I hate to think what it would cost now.)

Mal

Mal, my mouth waters thinking about French cooking. My sister married a man from Bretagne after the war and they lived in Frence for 10 years. She lives here now and even today she still cooking French every day even if all her children are gone. I love it when she invites me. She uses a bit of wine even in her soups. I often make 'chou à la crème'. You do have to stir a lot, but Oh! the results melt in your mouth.

Eloïse

All these comments about food -- I love to cook it and love to eat it, but like Carolyn, I don't want to put the time that Framboise and her mother put into cooking. Let the chefs do that. Mal, you scare me talking about perfect foods. Mine aren't perfect, so I try to keep them fresh, unadorned, and simple. I'm looking forward to the food page, Barbara.

Talking about the humanity of the enemy -- I'm thinking of Tomas Leibniz. The children seemed to treat him -- or he them -- like/as a beloved older brother. He acted like a boy, like a 14-year-old, and they felt he was one of them. No wonder they wanted to do what pleased him.

Why FIVE quarters? We've determined they're not DISTRICTS. Are they SECTIONS, rather than actual QUARTERS (as opposed to HALVES). Why Five? I don't think the author is referring to the sections of the book, which is divided into five parts.

I think the title of the book does refer to the way the book is divided into five parts. After all the orange is very important in the book. Each part of the book shows a part of the whole orange (story).

Carolyn

"The kitchen was the now only neutral place in the house, a place of brief respite from our private war. I used to stand beside her, listening to her low monotone and together we made her bouillabaisse angevine..."

I think I see another side of Fraboise. With all her rebelious nature, she still listens to her mother as they prepare the food together.

"Even so I felt them slipping from me little by little, and loneliness overwhelmed me."

I think this must be the hardest thing about childhood. When your sisters or brothers seem to grow-up, but you are seen as a child. I remember that being the oldest of two sisters, I would spend a lot of time trying to "lose" my younger sister especially when my mother insisted I take her with me.

"Old Mother was a talisman in my mind, a slinking black talisman that, if I could only reach it, might put right everything which was skewed."

What do you folks think of this sentence? Aren't we all in some way looking for a "talisman" to put what's right everything which was skewed in our own lives?

"Don't tell," she said in a wheedling voice.

I just love the author's words - "wheedling voice". I'm beginning to think that Framboise is much more adult than either of the other two children. I also can see what made them as children will continue into adulthood. Framboise has become very independent even at this early age and can think for herself.

"I felt no real hostility to the Germans."

As seen through a child's eyes, she saw no enemy in the Germans, even when they had killed her father - "Perhaps because my father's face was already blurring in my memory."

"Perhaps the same way that children rarely get involved in the quarrels of adults, and that adults rarely understand the sudden hostilities that erupt for no comprehensible reason between children."

I thought this was an interesting thought. Do children really look at adults this way? I think the author's right, adults rarely do understand the sudden hostilities between children - to us its just noise which is interrupting our world.

"Her passivity was an adult thing, her sly, sweet nature hiding a kind of laziness, almost of indiference. She faced me now, throwing her weak excuse at me like a handful of sand."

Certainly, this is a great description of an older child as she faces a younger sister especially if that sister was determined to get what she wanted. But I couldn't help but whisper to myself that someone should warn Fraboise to be careful of what she wishes for.

"You see from what innocent beginnings it grew. We none of us meant for anyone to be hurt, and yet there is a hard place in the center of me that remembers implacably and with perfect precision. My mother knew the dangers before any of us did. I was sweaty and unstable as dynamite. She knew it, and in her strange way she tried to protect me by keeping me close, even when she would have preferred otherwise. She understood more than I imagined."

Again we have foreshadowing, but we also begin to see both Fraboise and her mother in different ways. I think that this is a wonderful description showing both the good and evil side that is in all of us. Each day we struggle between our two sides of the same person. It also shows how sometimes it's hard for some people to show others how much they really care for them. I think on some plane Fraboise knew her mother was only trying to help her, but she being a child was caught up in her own world and really preferred her world to her mother's.

BARBARA, What a wonderful group you have assembled! This is my first time here. I won't have time to participate and also don't have a copy of the book.

Just a comment on some French words, if I may.

My Petit Larousse, an all-French dictionary, confirms that mamelle n.f. (lat. mamilla ) is breast, as ELOÏSE said.

Framboise = raspberry. Reine-Claude = Prune très estimée = much prized plum; Mirabelle = Petite prune jaune, douce et parfuméee = small yellow plum, sweet and fragrant.

Mirabelles do have the sweetest taste and are the size of a large marble. We had them in our garden, a lifetime ago in Europe.

It seems I am behind on everything,...but finally picked up the book at the library and am reading it ..which means I am letting everything else go...but I am caught up in this book...I love all the food descriptions..but then I love to read cookbooks....they are much more to me than just recipes...they are adventure stories...This is the first book by this author I have read but she has caught my attention.

I enjoyd the four years we lived in Europe and two were in France...the base was new and could be described as out in the boonies..still I have always been one to leave the well traveled path and search out the small places..we lived 60 miles west of Paris and I loved that city but the tiny communities near really attracted my attention..the base was surrounded by farm land and the small communities always had market days ..and that was when you would find me ..shopping and inhaling the whole atmosphere...

I know I stood out as an American mostly because so few of the wives left the base to see these little towns...but everyone was kind to me because I always had my 4 year old daughter with me...she charmed everyone...and the farm that backed up to the base was adjacent to the perimeter road where we lived...The farmer came and asked if he could draw drinking water from the outside faucet and I said of course...he always chatted with my daughter and would leave garden offerings on the doorstep...

This book involves me in the lives of the story characters but also opens my mind to the wonderful memories of a long ago time...I had no idea what to expect but am so glad to be reading this ...shall I weep to when I reach the end? most likely..back later I am engrossed in the lives of these people..they seem so Real...like a story about people I once knew...anna

I have a yellow plum tree...planted years ago because the catalogue description said the birds and squirrels cant see yellow and will leave the plums alone...not only does it give me beauty in the spring but every other year it is loaded with these small golden plums with a sweet taste like no other...

Last year I only had a few but I noticed the branches are bending with promised fruit this year..of course the plums now are thumb sized ( small thumbs) and as green as the leaves so you have to look to see them...

I have an apple tree as well..if you have never sniffed the perfume of an apple tree in blossom you have missed something special...I understand wanting to grow things..I have had raspberry bushes, strawberry plants, cherry , peach and pear trees over the years ...my sunny areas have diminished each year as the trees have grown but I am glad I had a really nice garden when the children were small...

I used the French intensive method and grew everything...peas, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, stringbeans, asparagus, peppers, eggplant and even tried minature corn one year...leaf lettuce , garlic etc now I only have six tomato plants and except for the plum and apple no fruit trees remain...you can see this book just resonates with me...I wondered if I would like it ..and find I love it..anna

When growing up, I remember the popularity of a rabbit's foot. It seemed everyone had one. You could put one on a keychain or in your pocket. The rabbit's foot could be pink, yellow, blue, any color. They were soft and furry. They were sold as good luck charms.

I think the pike is a sort of good luck charm to the children. 'Boise feels that the "old pike" can change the bad situations in her life.

"Old Mother was a talisman in my mind, a slinking black talisman that, if I could only reach it, might put right everything which was skewed."

Catching Old Mother might make Mirabelle, their mother, change too. I think 'Boise thought if she caught Old Mother her mother would come to respect her more, at least show some type of tenderness.

"The day I caught Old Mother they'd all look at me in amazement...and to see that look in my mother's face, to make her see me, perhaps to clench her fists in rage...Or to smile with peculiar sweetness and open her arms...

It just shows how much children want their parents to appreciate them. 'Boise is willing to do anything to get that attention.

HATS, remember how the girl in The Little Friend was determined to the point of obsession to capture the murderer of her brother, even though it had never been really determined that the boy had been murdered? It was as if she had a fierce compulsion to do this, and nothing would stop her. I feel the same way about Framboise's obsession about catching the fish. I don't think it has anything to do with impressing her mother or anyone else. It's something she has to do for herself. Framboise seems to be trying to prove herself to herself throughout the book.

Actually, the stressing the author does about this fish is one of the greatest bits of foreshadowing of the climax of the book that is in it. We will see this as the chapters proceed and clear things up for us. Joanne Harris has a fine talent as a writer for building suspense through the use of devices like this.

To me the talk about food is not a primary part of Five Quarters of the Orange. It is like a "basso continuo". (Those of you who know music will know what I mean.) A basso continuo is a melodic or harmonic line or theme of several measures' length in the bass of a piece or movement of a work, which is played over and over while other melodic lines and themes are stated and woven and interwoven over it.

Berlioz wrote a work in which there is such a device used. It is called an "idée fixe", or a fixed idea and is more or less like an anchor.

In writing, all kinds of turbulent, seemingly unrelated things can be happening, but the repetition of one theme holds the piece together. In this book, that theme is food.

It is the characters and their reaction to each other and various events which are important here. Reine-Claude is very different from Framboise, and her mother reacts differently toward her. Reine is the one who has a blouse made of parachute silk and still wears black patent leather shoes. She's the one who is tempted by lipstick, not oranges or fish, and she is the one the mother pays the most attention to.

Cassis is much weaker than his sister Framboise. It's as if all the strength of the mother went into one little, daring, rambunctious girl.

In ways, Framboise seems even stronger than her mother. Can you imagine swimming out in that current to the Treasure Stone to get the purse so she can pay for herself at Angers?

All the other characters in the book seem to play around and off Mirabelle and Framboise. I believe it's only natural to think it's these two characters who will make important things happen in this book.

Mal

Mal, I see 'Boise as very needy. She does not seem to be as independent as the little girl in THE LITTLE Friend. She is seeking respect or approval from her mother and her sister and brother too. I think 'Boise sees people she loves moving away from her. She wants them back. The only way to get Reinette and Cassis back in her life is by doing something truly spectacular. She needs to impress them.

This need is driving her along.

"Even so I felt them slipping from me little by little, and loneliness overwhelmed me"

HATS, isn't it a wonderful and somewhat miraculous thing that we readers see different things when we read the same pages in the same book?

Mal

Mal, it makes me laugh. It makes the discussion fun.

Underneath all of that bravado, I think 'Boise might be a frightened little girl. Sometimes the loudest and most daring one in the bunch is the one who is quaking inside like jello. I think fear can hide underneath strength.

"I barely listened to her warning. It was my first face-to-face encounter with the enemy. Thinking it over later from the top of the Lookout Post, the man I had seen seemed oddly inocuous rather disappointing. I had expected something more impressive."

I held my breath when I read this passage and tried to imagine myself having to face "the enemy". Isn't it interesting that as children we have very little fear. It is only when we become adults that fear takes us by the throat.

"Her face was stony, but her voice trembled and she kept putting one hand to her temple in a strange helpless gesture, as if one of her headaches were on the way."

I can't help wonder which is better, to be afraid or not!

"Behind us I sensed the German's eyes on me; felt the pressure of that sly, humorous wink like a nail in my forehead. For what seemed like forever, I waited for a blow that never came."

Have you ever felt like this? I know I've felt like someone was watching me. It gives you a creepy feeling, especially when the person is a stranger. I do love the description of how Frambroise felt "like a nail in my forehead". I think this is exactly how it feels. And you do wait for a blow that never comes. It's the thought of what "might" happen that causes us to be stressful.

"I would have made a good murderer. Everything was meticulously planned, the few small traces of the crime kicked over in minutes."

Once again the author gives us a clue to Frambroise's character. And it's a surprising one too. I don't think we usually think that children can be a murderer or that they can plan to murder. And yet if we are to believe the media it happens more often than not. Now this is really very scary.

When I read the description of the market scene it took me back to the markets I remembered...Somewhere I have a photo of one ..taken from a rise looking down on colorful tent tops.

They looked all the world like a carnival and in some ways that was what they were. A break for everyone, the farmers, the crafts, the odds and ends of things. I recall I once purchased a copper and brass samaovar from a tradesman at a sort of jumble stall.

"Boise" reminds me of the youngest of every family I ever knew...with more freedom than the older ones as a rule, and a determination not to be the "baby" but proving somehow old enough to be allowed the same priveleges as the older ones.

It would seem I have caught up with the reading ...anna

OK - Finally - Our Recipe Page is on it's way And I think I have it - I puzzled and puzzled over that darn fish - "Old Mother" - Witchcraft hehehehe - BBBBBUT I think I've got something - Let me first pull together all of your thoughts and then to "Old Mother!"

Kiwi/Carolyn Good reminder that strong willed children sugger more - yes, they go in where angles fear to tread and end up with all kinds of mud on their face don't they. The country life is a special feeling isn't it - so glad you have the experience - with internet no one, especially those who live in rural areas, are any longer isolated to their trips to town.

Did you pick up how during the war these folks did not even have the freedom to turn on the radio - it is easy to understand no short wave radio that would be like the e-mail of the day - but no radio music or talk shows or soap operas - I can remember as a child nearly all moms did their dishes or prepared mid-day dinner listening to Stella Dallas on the radio.

Mal Oh my to be a fisherman and make Chum - I wonder do they still make and use Chum or is this a now a piece of history?

Yes, strong willed people listen to those who they think are stronger than they are - don't you think that is why we have Boise breaking away from her mother -

In one way Maribelle is stronger in Boise's mind and in another because of her headaches Boise no longer sees her as strong - a family alone where Boise keeps the Boshe from taking their produce I would think she was feeling the need for the protection of a strong parent and a resolve to be strong herself to make up for any short comings she felt her mother exposed.

Hehehehe - you are a hoot - hahaha - as you have just determaned a whole passel of folks - ALL those who keep a French kitchen can do something so difficult that we in America hehehe should not even try it is so difficult and time consuming - hahaha oh I am rolling on the floor -

I do agree though and get your point about Haute Cuisine but than, you just know, there aren't any of us good enough cooks to be hired at the Four Seasons in New York City either - ah so - funny - and yep, knives - so many cultural recipes use fresh foods that are dependant on knives - those older French manufactured knives rusted so badly though if they weren't oiled where as I prefered the German knives - they're so much easier to keep in good shape without as much effort.

Eloise 'chou à la crème' - aren't they those little puffs filled with whipped cream - oh my you must add the recipe to our page as soon as it is up - yes with a drizzle of chocolate on top or that spun sugar - have you ever done the spun sugar with the two forks - it has been too many years now and I've noticed if you do not keep a skill going you loose it.

But the fun memories are always there - I often think we are all nothing but a big ball of memory - even our DNA when you think on it is memory from our parents. ah so - easy to wax poetic today...

Pedln The do treat Tamos as an older brother - as you say a beloved older brother - how do y'all feel about that?

I guess I am feeling very queazy about how he has successfully weedled into the trust of these kids - it reminds me too much of an older man convincing a young girl to be his pal in more ways than one - this to me is not just a lonely soldier - a lonely soldier could find other women in town who would be closer to his age to give him companionship - right or wrong there were women who got their contriband by being available to soldiers and for that matter if Tomas could work his charm on these kids he could work it as well on a 17 or 19 year old.

We all can look at this story differently - as was said earlier this story works on many levels - and for me Tomas befriending youngsters is making me very uncomfortable.

Pedln as to the Five Quarters - have you read yet the part where Boise shares an orange with the four of them - Paul, Cassis, Reine and her slice but wants a bit for the clothe sack she keeps to induce her mother's headaches. And so, she hides turning her back to them as she cuts the orange, tucking a small fifth piece of the orange up her sleave, giving them their slices which are irregularly cut and they complain to her about how she cut the orange.

That is the Five Quarters - in other words to the others it appears she was trying to quarter the orange since there are 4 of them eating the orange - but out of the orange in secret is cut a fifth peice - which is really taking some of each of theirs and is a great metaphore for what a secret does - a secret takes from everyone - and taking in such a benign way is still taking from everyone. If they all were in agreement with her taking the slice they would have to be made aware of her great plan.

And that is how I see Tomas - he is every bit as sly as Boise having tipped his hand by not telling on her when she swiped the orange and when he was sharing the craft needed to catch fish - he may not be taking much from these kids but like that secret fifth slice it is based on his plan - he is doing the taking and giving them trinkets almost like the white man taking land from the Indians - and he is secretive not only about his master plan but he is not open with the other Germans.

I see this book as a great example of how what is easier in our desire to see the best in people or to understand the difficutly they are facing we do not accept the damage they are creating because that damage is done in a sly and secretive fashion.

Kiwi yes the book is also divided into the five parts - big issue being made of those five divisions - are there more or other allegories or patterns with the concept of five going on here do you think?

Sure, Chum is used today. It's made and sold commercially for those fisherman who don't want to make it themselves.

I don't think I said anything about the difficulty of French cooking. I said the preparation takes hours and hours of time. Americans are so busy rushing around that they don't even want to take time to make a dinner that takes thirty minutes to prepare any more. Take-out food reigns supreme!

The old French knives weren't made of stainless steel. I have a set of German knives, too, but the Sabatier is the one I love -- even if I have to make sure it's bone dry and oiled when I put it in the knife rack. It fits my hand and works better than any other knife I have.

Oh, boy, would I love some paté de foie gras right now!

Speaking of 5, isn't today Cinco di Maio?

Mal

Scrawler Oh yes, hadn't thought of that but the kitchen "a place of brief respite from our [private] war" but also the war in general - I would think the mother feels safer in her kitchen than in the market in Angers and maybe even safer than working in the garden where anyone passing can spot her.

I am the oldest but I remember how hard it was on my daughter when her brother who was only 10 months older left for first grade - my youngest was only an a year old but it took awhile for my daughter to adjust to life at home without her older brother.

And it sure wasn't important to Reine to be strong and wily - she would have prefered it seems to be known as sweet and attractive -- hehehe reminds me of my grandboys a couple of years ago when the oldest who makes friends easily was chatting and flirting with a girl in his class after school and how annoyed his younger brother was telling why it took so long to get home because Chris had to talk to the girls where as Cody wanted to get in the back fields where they were building a fort. hahaha oh dear...

I like the way you say this scrawler - good point - "...showing both the good and evil side that is in all of us. Each day we struggle between our two sides of the same person." And then to further that thought with - "...it's hard for some people to show others how much they really care for them. I think on some plane Fraboise knew her mother was only trying to help her, but she being a child was caught up in her own world and really preferred her world to her mother's." Those opposing sides can be opposing needs as well. Something to think on there...

Traude You may not have the book but hon we put you in the group because there may be times later than we will be hearing from you as you share bits and pieces of history or the proper way to spell something or the meaning of something - good show - thanks for popping in and please come by again.

annafair

First let me tell y'all - In keeping with our criteria above, I e-mailed Anna and recieved her permission to break up her posts so we have those seperations that make it easier for all of us to read -

anna like many of us, we just roll out our thoughts with out really knowing in our heads when or where a sentence begins or ends - that is fine - we are chatting we are not preparing a paper for English Lit 101 - the only thing we are looking for is more white space between the stream of consciousness - and so anna's posts now have more white space...thank you my dear...

four years in Europe and two in France Anna I am drooling - oh what a wonderful experience - and so you know some of "Bleu" France - I can see how you would have a picture in your head of how some of these folks would sound and appear - not only in dress but in body language as well. What a movie must be going on in your head...

And fruit trees and a garden - Anna you must share some of your tips and where you buy your seeds and when you plant and how you dig the earth up in the spring - please tell us and if there are any particular gardening sites you turn to on the internet will you please link them in our second discussion when it is up -

Hats hmmm a rabbits foot - for luck - a talisman - catching "old Mother" could bring about a change in Maribelle so she would show Boise respect and tenderness - sounds like a kid wishing doesn't it -

The respect part - I wonder what it is about Boise that she wants respected more than she feels she is respected now -

Without checking the book for particulars it seems to me she wants her strength and her sly abilities as well as her perseverance respected. But I wonder if she really wants her mother's blessings so to speak to be better or more capable than her mom or at least have her blessings that she can try to become better and more capable - is that the war between them do you think - not only each fighting to be top dog but a parent letting go and honoring their child's desire and ablity to become 'more' than they, the parent...

Yes children do work hard and if they must they will struggle to receive attention and approvel and a sort of blessing from their parents won't they...how perceptive Hats...

Scrawler Oh yes, hadn't thought of that but the kitchen "a place of brief respite from our [private] war" but also the war in general - I would think the mother feels safer in her kitchen than in the market in Angers and maybe even safer than working in the garden where anyone passing can spot her.

I am the oldest but I remember how hard it was on my daughter when her brother who was only 10 months older left for first grade - my youngest was only a year old - but it took awhile for my daughter to adjust to life at home without her older brother.

And it sure wasn't important to Reine to be strong and wily - she would have prefered it seems to be known as sweet and attractive -- hehehe reminds me of my grandboys a couple of years ago when the oldest who makes friends easily was chatting and flirting with a girl in his class after school and how annoyed his younger brother was telling us why it took so long to get home, because Chris had to talk to the girls, where as Cody wanted to get in the back fields where they were building a fort. hahaha oh dear...

I like the way you say this scrawler - good point - "...showing both the good and evil side that is in all of us. Each day we struggle between our two sides of the same person." And then to further that thought with - "...it's hard for some people to show others how much they really care for them. I think on some plane Framboise knew her mother was only trying to help her, but she being a child was caught up in her own world and really preferred her world to her mother's." Those opposing sides can be opposing needs as well. Something to think on there...

Traude You may not have the book but hon we put you in the group because there may be a time later when we will be hearing from you, as you share bits and pieces of history, or the proper way to spell something, or the meaning of something - good show - thanks for popping in and please come by again.

annafair

First let me tell y'all - In keeping with our criteria above, I e-mailed Anna and recieved her permission to break up her posts so we have those seperations that make it easier for all of us to read -

anna like many of us, we just roll out our thoughts with out really paying attention to where or when a sentence begins or ends - that is fine - we are chatting - we are not preparing a paper for English Lit. 101 - the only thing we are looking for is more white space between the stream of consciousness - and so anna's posts now have more white space...thank you my dear...

four years in Europe and two in France Anna I am drooling - oh what a wonderful experience - and so you know some of "Bleu" France - I can see how you would have a picture in your head of how some of these folks would sound and appear - not only in dress but in body language as well. What a movie must be going on in your head...

And fruit trees and a garden - Anna you must share some of your tips and where you buy your seeds and when you plant and how you dig the earth up in the spring - please tell us and if there are any particular gardening sites you turn to on the internet will you please link them in our second discussion when it is up -

Hats hmmm a rabbits foot - for luck - a talisman - catching "old Mother" could bring about a change in Maribelle so she would show Boise respect and tenderness - sounds like a kid wishing doesn't it -

The respect part - I wonder what it is about Boise that she wants respected more than she feels she is respected now -

Without checking the book for particulars it seems to me she wants her strength and her sly abilities as well as her perseverance respected. But I wonder if she really wants her mother's blessings so to speak to be better or more capable than her mom or at least have her blessings that she can try to become better and more capable - is that the war between them do you think - not only each fighting to be top dog but a parent letting go and honoring their child's desire and ablity to become 'more' than they, the parent...

Yes children do work hard and if they must will struggle to receive attention and approvel and a sort of blessing from their parents won't they...how perceptive Hats...

My first trip in France was in 1975 when my sister and her French husband took me along on their trip. He had lived in Paris after his engineering studies, but he was born in Brittany. We drove to his parent's farm and there we stayed with his 2 sisters and a brother. How absolutely foreign it seemed to me.

The house was one large room, poorly lit by small windows, around which were 2 or 3 'lits clos' or enclosed beds for couples. The others slept on cots along the wall in that one large room. The enclosed beds were meant to keep the body heat from escaping at night during the winter. The idea was not only for privacy, but in winter they could get some heat from a 'brazier' under the bed. Heated houses were rare after the war. Wood for the fireplace was expensive. On that farm, most everyone wore their outdoor clothing indoors also. Men wore caps all day long. Needless to say that the toilet was not in the house but a good 30 feet away from the house and no running water there.

At one end of this room was a coal or wood stove, no electricity yet except a few light bulbs. To wash sheets, water was pumped from a well. They were boiled in an outdoor boiler, spread out on the grass to get sun bleached, if there was sunshine, rinsed in a pool near the river. The weather in Brittany is a lot like England, cold and damp.

After that trip I related well to living conditions during and even after the war in France. Living was one long struggle from sunrise to sunset. Yet, they managed to grow their own food, have chickens and keep a vegetable garden to have plenty of healthy food for the winter. My brother-in-law's father had to give almost their entire crop to the Germans and they secretly hid whatever wheat they could and have it milled at a neighbors mill. He remembers carrying wheat on his back and walk across fields avoiding the town not to get caught.

The war left deep scars on him that he carried to his death 5 years ago.

Eloïse

Well I never had a power surge before but one hit this house and knocked out everything -

I was concerned about what it did to the computer but thank goodness no damage - the frustrating thing is - I had just about completed this long post catching us up - it feels daunting to remember what I said - you really get into it - as if your whole body disappears and your mind wraps itself around what you are all sharing in your posts - well here we go again as a dip anew into your thoughts...

Mal - I wonder what that is within us - there are certain things in life we must do to have any self-respect - some folks call it never lowering the bar - but that does seem to be something that Boise is telling us about herself isn't it.

I love your description of how a story can be constructed based on your knowledge of music that you even explain to us - great stuff my dear - I must say that I have equally heard folks say the whole war issue is an "idée fixe." They are seeing the book as a 'coming of age' story and then you are seeing also that the food is an "idée fixe" - and yet, in some spots it is almost as if the food is a character in the book that affects and moves the story along -

As you put it so well in your post to Hats - "...isn't it a wonderful and somewhat miraculous thing that we readers see different things when we read the same pages in the same book?"

Maribelle and Framboise are 'where all the action is' but than sweet Paul seems to quietly say just the right things at the most opportune times...not a big player, and one more foil for the two women but, what a likable guy - what would the impact be if he were not in the story...

Hats - you see the vulnerability of Boise - the girl wanting tenderness and yet, she cannot deny her own strength and courage can she.

Scrawler - little fear - I'm comparing to my own life - trying to remember - because in specific circumstances I remember great fear - starting at about age 5 - I wonder if it has something to do with how we as children feel a seperation and will only feel fear when there is a direct association of danger to yourself or your immediate family. Although Boise didn't feel fear when she saw the German soldiers in town either - her mother had to teach her the danger.

That to me is a pivotal moment in this story - it was one thing to have exposed to a dangerious authority figure your "shoplifting" but her shoplifing the orange was step one in a concealed and elaborate plan - eyes have observed more than her taking an orange - the wink - acknowledging like the eye of God - an all seeing eye - "the light of the body is in the eye" - the whole as in the oval of the feminine and the circle of the male -

That wink - that incredable wink as I think Mal put it - opened the two sides - blended innocense and evil within each - it crossed the lines between the enemy and the occupied, making the enemy a confrere and complicet with the occupied in a shared secret. Yes, feeling a nail in her forehead - like nailing her Theses to the Wittenburg church door or, feeling the nail in her the head as the sign of a condemned man was nailed on the cross. She is marked -

annafair - Wow you have hit something here that I must look up - the market looking for "all the world like a carnival ... A break for everyone, the farmers, the crafts, the odds and ends of things."

Anna there is a whole literary study started by Bakhtin, a Russian who wrote in the 1930s, there is a life-affirming and life-enhancing "spirit" that pertains to carnival and its varied and numerous manifestations including the "carnival-grotesque form."

The bad and the good in one place with potential for something to go awry - that in certain works the serious and laughter coexist and even reflect each other - this can be as in "magical realism" but can also be seen in Rabelais and in holicaust novels - the madness, the terror against the everyday, ordinary. Huh - I wonder - is Joanne Harris using Carnivalesque...?

How exotic your purchase sounds of a copper and brass samaovar purchased at a stall. Oh Anna what can we say...

Yes Boise is typical isn't she of the youngest in most families "...with more freedom than the older ones as a rule, and a determination not to be the "baby" but proving somehow old enough to be allowed the same priveleges as the older ones." But than I think for various reasons older as well as the younger children have this determination - or maybe in some families it is expected without the older even able to recognize when it became important to be more and better - their freedom coming about because the parents had younger children who required more attention. Interesting how children choose to make their mark or not...

Yes - today is Cinco de Mayo

For us the beginning of summer - the kids are only in school because they must pass their tests - the heat has started and air conditioners are drowning out the sounds of a cash register drawer opening...I think we are in for a long hot summer as the cost of fuel hits our electric bills and our excuse to party tonight may be the beginning of a long summer of cooking in the backyard so we can sleep at night without lowering the AC.

And so Mal Chum is still used - learned something that I never heard of before - paté de foie gras - ahhh and what wine will you choose to go with that madame...

Oh my what a wonderful telling of your experience visiting family in France Eloise your description of the room is almost as I would have pictured a northern French farmhouse but it does seem incrediable that was life in mid twentieth century -

And the scars of war - it is so easy for us to forget all of Europe has such deep scares that were passed on to the children that are the ages of our children - yes, one of my next projects is to read some of the Gunter Grass books that show us the mindset of Germany since WWII -

Here in NZ few people have central heating so we wear our outdoor clothes inside on cold days. I even wear my beanie! When you are on a fixed income electricity has to be conserved so turning on the heater is only for early morning and again turned on just before dinner. We use hot water bottles and throws and cuddle on the sofa when the heating is not on. My son after living overseas has installed central heating in his new home as he is too "soft" now to live the spartan life! I think our children will be turning toward heating the whole house as they build new homes and its easy to install.

The old farmhouse we lived in in the country had no heating either. It was a very cold house as there were all sorts of cracks and crannies to let in the wind. I think many Americans would find our older homes pretty primitive. I can imagine the farmhouse Eloise stayed in and also Boise's home.

I was actually horrified at the deliberate way Boise set out to torture her mother. I have not met many children who would do this. Perhaps it was the war which affected her behaviour and she had become hardened as had her mother in some ways. When I was ill my kids were very solicitous and particularly the twins as they had lost their birth mother to cancer and for a long time they worried if I took to bed ( which was only twice in their growing up) I was going to die. One day when I had a particularly bad bout of flu they asked me point blank if I was about to die. Poor little kids. As I said I found it hard to like Boise as she plotted to cause her mother to take to her bed.

Carolyn

This is so much fun Barbara. I just posted a link in La cuisine des gourmets littéraires, about rillettes but I have not translated the recipe. If it needs translation, I can do my best to translate it.

Eloïse

Hi Barbara,

I am enjoying the recipe page. Thank you.

Some of you have found the new recipe site - La cuisine des gourmets littéraires - terrriffic - now when you are at the site - PLEEEAASSE link on to the name of the painting with the artist's name (Joanna shares the same first name as our author) located above the graphic of the chef - this is the artist who is a delight and who gave us permission to use her work - her site has other examples of her work as well as examples of her prints that could be inexpensively purchased.

Eloise I think it is fun that you have shared a site written in French - for a translation that is not too bad all you have to do is go to bablefish and put the URL into the window and volia the entire window will be translated.

Have fun Hats we will be looking for your contribution as well.

Kiwi Such a plotting little girl was just a bit much - ah but how many books do we have with plotting little children - mostly set in those Victorian mansions or ghostly children with vacant or all white eyes - but Boise is a vibrant healthy young girl -

How does the story, in particular Framboise as a child make you feel?
What common emotions does this story arouse - and explain why nearly everyone feel that way.
Does the story affect everyone in the same way?

There is a great difference in lifestyle today isn't there - I too remember no heat and no AC and the outhouse - we all had gardens and when I think of all the preserving, baking and jam making my mother did on that tiny stove with an single oven next to it - it boggles the mind - my family didn't trust canned goods 'store boughten' till after WWII - the tin cans was supposed to be poisonous according to my family...I also remember big barrels of saurkraut and tubes of sausages hanging over the ice box...I've said it before and I say it again - we are just one big mound of memories - don't you think?

At the time, when she is nine years old, Framboise does not feel any real empathy for her mother. She feels only victorious whenever she succeeds in besting her mother. "I felt a sudden stab of fierce exhilaration. At last, in our long, bitter game I had scored a point." But later, when she herself is old and reading her mother's album, Framboise finally understands how she tortured this woman who tried so hard to take care of her children. "It sounds like gibberish, but her voice in my mind is suddenly very clear. It is sharp and plaintive, the voice of a woman hanging on to her sanity with every bit of her strength...Oh, Mother. If only I'd known."

Her mother finally becomes so ill and drug-addicted, she descends into "a kind of madness. I would sell my children for a night's sleep." She is driven to this state partly by the actions of her daughter. On the other hand, the children are forced to cope with a disabled parent whom they must watch warily all the time. Their mother was unstable and unpredictable--"a thing of arbitrary favors and punishments, and her smiles and frowns were the vane upon which our emotional weather turned."

The tension between them builds to a kind of climax when Framboise becomes a woman biologically, having never been told about menstruation by her mother. Framboise sees blood and thinks she is dying, poisoned by the badness her mother keeps telling her is inside her. When her mother finally explains, it is without love or comfort, causing Framboise to turn to physically harming herself.

Meanwhile, the relationship of Framboise to the German soldier is complicated by hero worship and adolescent love. She is becoming a woman and this "aching, desperate joy" she feels for Tomas is going to further complicate her judgement in dealing with the German soldier.

The way the author builds the tension among the characters and the suspense of the plot is wonderful, and I can't wait to find out what happened to the children during the war and what happens to Framboise later on after she has returned to the village.

Barbara, I went to the recipe page, but there was no box to post a message, so I will let you transfer it there:

DONE -- I wonder why there was no box - need to look into that...

Now to my thoughts - as I shared early today this fish has snagged me and is pulling my line taking me and my boat on a long run --

Yesterday in the car, my mind drifted and I wondered what fish stories do we have - couldn't think of anything in the classical past till yes, - Hemmingway - Hemmingway's "Old Man and the Sea" - couldn't remember all the details but of course when I got home I looked into the story - then like all of these books - for every web site analysing a story there is a different opinion as to what is going on and what it means - but the more I read the more I started to see some parallels.

By comparing Framboise's struggle to catch "Old Mother" to Santiago's, an old man's, strugggle to prove himself by catching a Marlin there are were many similarities and I discovered many disconected aspects of Framboise that were not evident to me when I read the book --

Maybe something will kick in for you and allow your thoughts to take off determaning how this story could fit a myth - because that is also what I saw - Framboise is a modern prototype of a French myth...

Her determination to go after "Old Mother" shows her strong and warring emotions - her passions: such as lust, greed, and her desire for dominance as well as, pleasure - the fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent universe. The conflict is "(wo)man against nature" or "(wo)man against himself." The struggle to keep a "veneer of civilization" - despite pressures that threaten to release the "brute within."

It is that "brute within," that is lawless, the tyrant, heartless, the barbaric hunter that we all release as we tear into our steak and cut up our celery, squish or poison insects, catch our fish, dig in the earth for roots.

Nature is indifferent - the serenity of the Loire - "Old Mother" on her own time, swimming the depths of the river, in contrast to Framboise building and seting traps, watching and waiting, discarding those fish that do not matter - collaterial damage --

Framboise, just a child, having an adventure, she doesn't seem cruel, nor treacherous. Than compare her war with "Old Mother" to the Nazi war in France and in particular, to the war taking place in the village as the Nazis set traps, using children and the needs of the villagers as bait to catch what they are after while discarding anyone they do not want.

The forces of the environment affects-- and afflicts-- Framboise waiting on "old Mother" represents how we are all hamstrung by forces beyond their control. From deep within and with no clear explanation, Framboise has the courage necessary to get through the triumphs and tragedies of her life --

Alone with her struggle Framboise exemplifies "grace under pressure." She refuses to submit to any obstacle while waiting and baiting "Old Mother." Just as she refuses to submit to the overwhelming obstacles in her life.

She faces -- the death of a childhood friend, the death of her father, the loss of companionship with her brother and sister, a mother who is not as physically strong as Framboise prefers and yet, she is dependent on this stern women who experiences disablitating headaches --

Framboise needs to prove her greatness which she feels is slipping away when Cassis and Reine no longer play in her world. As Hemingway says in "The Old Man and the Sea," - "Now it is time to think of only one thing. That which I was born for."

More than Framboise's image of the old pike she couldn't let go - "the pike personified the dreams that had plagued her since her father died, her dreams of drowning, of rolling blind in the black surf of the swollen Loire with the clammy feel of dead flesh all around, of screaming and feeling her scream forced back into her throat, of drowning into herself - she became certain that if she were to catch Old Mother, something might happen."

"Its our river, We could." is how this child takes on her challange, her quest - The fish reflects her emotional and physical state.

She goes to war, using all her wit to complete the unthinkable - by staying with her persuit to catch a fish - she stays with her "obligation" to rid her river of this black as mud monster -- this fish that controls death, grants wishes..."A ghost, a murderess, damned to watch the living forever...In her eye, an evil intelligence. In her belly, a treasure of unknown origins and unestimable worth."

Framboise has complete control over death as she pins snakes and fish to stink and rot on the standing stones and the roots of exposed trees while she waits seeking to catch "Old Mother.

Framboise fights her war with "Old Mother" in dignity -- and in doing so asserts her humanity.

Aha a young French girl against great odds - She is like a Joan of Arc enduring and successfully surviving her supreme ordeal, fighting the timeless battle of man vs. fate, with honor by remaining resilient and resolute in the face of triumph and tragedy. Framboise as a child has the characteristics of the French myth in their historical child leader, Joan of Arc.

Why did I climb that big mountain?
Because it was there.

Mal

These are quotes from "The Old Man and the Sea" that I thought were transferable to our story of Framboise while she is catching her great fish in the Loire -

"Why did they make birds so delicate and fine as those sea swallows when the ocean can be so cruel? She is kind and very beautiful. But she can be so cruel and it comes so suddenly and such birds that fly, dipping and hunting, with their small sad voices are made too delicately for the sea" (p. 29)
the birds to me were like the children playing in the beautiful and cruel Loire river

"Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends."
Need I say more -

As an adult, she relies on memories of her youth which gives her the strength to physically and emotionally carry on.

While the river may bring fortune or ruin, the Loire is unitary, a whole. It is not sometimes one thing and sometimes another. The good and the bad, or what people perceive as the good and the bad, are all equal parts of this greater unity.

The good and the bad and the ugly are within the story and within each character - I am getting the message that if you cannot accept a part of yourself then like the characters in the story who do not accept their unified spirit they become irrelevant - marginal.

I'm thinking of Joan of Arc - she was 13 where as Framboise is 9 but Joan is a leader - a slip of a girl who leads an army - in the story, time and again it is Framboise who becomes the leader. Cassis, Reine and Paul hang on her every word - she connects with Tomas more so than Cassis and she plots to get the fish and plots to get what she wants by keeping her mother out of the way.

Like "The Old Man and the Sea" the story shows us: Suffering is unavoidable because it comes from being what you are. -- Suffering is necessary to prove your worth. -- Suffering brings redemption or salvation.

Framboise, in her loneliness learns what she is really capable of doing. -- Loneliness provides her time to think, learn and make her plans.

The story like "The Old Man and the Sea" tells us about evil and how to triumph

The forces of evil in life are both powerful and unavoidable.
Evil can cause harm and suffering but cannot ultimately triumph - courage allows Framboise to prevail.
The human spirit can endure anything and through sheer willpower will emerge with at least a spiritual victory.

Mal, I hear you. Why? Because. It's there -- go get it.

I don't think children really empathize with their parents. I don't think Framboise understood her mother's desperation during those early years after her father was killed -- any more than I understood what it must have been like for my mother during the early years of WWII. We lived in DC until they transferred all the non-war agencies to other cities and my father's office went to Chicago, away from my mother's close friends and brother and sister-in-law.

I was 7, my brother 14. He ended up in the hospital for two months, with a ruptered apendix. My father succummed to the kidney ailment that had plagued him for years, was also in and out of the hospital and died in less than a year after we had moved. For me, as a kid, life just went on, my concerns and needs were met, and I went on doing my kid things. It wasn't until I became single with four children, living out of the country away from family support, that I realy thought of what those two years in Chicago must have been like for my mother. As did Framboise when she began to examine her mother's album.

BARBARA has said:

"Suffering is unavoidable because it comes from being what you are. -- Suffering is necessary to prove your worth. -- Suffering brings redemption or salvation."

Well, I don't see it quite like that. First of all, I'm not sure I understand what it means when I read that suffering comes from being what you are. Secondly, suffering is not necessary to prove your worth. People have said that it is to me before, and I've disagreed with them, and I disagree now. I am absolutely sure that I'm not a better person because of emotional and physical suffering I've had, which began very early in my life.

Suffering brings redemption or salvation. Redemption and salvation from what? Original sin? This sounds as if suffering is a cross we all must bear. I don't believe in carrying crosses, and I don't believe in original sin. I also don't believe people are black and white. I see all of us in shades of gray, from the darkest shade of bad to the lightest of as good as one possibly can be as an imperfect human being.

The older I become, the less sure I am of who the enemy really is. Someone expressed surprise that the Germans in the book were either selling what they took to get money to send home, or they were sending the items home. When you talk to any German who lived through World War II in Germany, like TRAUDE for example, you'll discover that the pain, deprivation and loss these people had was as bad, or even greater, than anywhere else that war was actively fought. We cannot judge and blame an entire people for the atrocities ordered and committed by a few.

We do not really see active war in this book; we see an occupied territory, and we meet both sides. A German soldier says, "I remember an orchard by a river near the village where I grew up. It had the biggest, blackest plums you ever saw. High wall all around. Farm dogs prowling. All through summer, I tried to get at those plums! I tried everything. I could hardly think of anything else." Framboise the child has a fish she can't reach. The German had inaccessible plums, and he doesn't sound like any ogre to me.

No, Tomas Liebniz is not an ogre. He sounds like an overgrown kid. What is the attraction at Mirabelle's farm? Surely it isn't just the children or the fruit or a trip into his childhood?

Cassis and Reine have found the Black Market. Can we blame them for wanting things they couldn't have? Though I wasn't an adult in World War II -- it ended when I was in my teens -- I knew plenty of people (even in my own family) who bought things in the Black Market here.

PEDLN is right. Kids rarely see and comprehend the problems of their parents. Sometimes I feel as if Joanne Harris has put too many adult qualities on the child Framboise, though.

I love the recipe pages. Thanks, BARB and PAT.

Mal

"I could smell soap on her, and in the gloom of the passageway she looked like Lady Macbeth - a tale I had culled recently from another of Cassis's books - her hands rubbing against each other, lifting to her face, caressing, cradling it, rubbing again, as if blood, and not the juice of oranges, were the stain she could not wash away."

This to me was an interesting passage. It's very dramatic but to what purpose? Does Frambroise think that her mother has blood on her hands? Why would she think that? Or is this merely another clue by the author to tell us what happens next in the story?

"It sounds callous now, but all I felt was triumph. There was no guilt at what I had done, no pity for her suffering. I didn't understand it then, had no idea of what a torment insomnia can be."

This passage showed Frambroise in yet another light. I can't feel much for a character that doesn't at least show some piety toward another's suffering. Perhaps, as someone said it was because of the war.

"Somehow the anticipation of pain can be even more troubling, more of a misery than the pain itself. The anxiety that was a permanent crease in her forehead nibbled at her mind like a rat in a box, killing sleep."

Again I am in love with the author's language - "like a rat in a box, killing sleep." I also suffer both from migraines and insomnia and I agree I can suffer more from the anticipation of pain than the actual pain itself.

"Worse now than it's ever been...I lie in bed & wonder whether I'll ever sleep again. Whatever happens can't ever to worse than this.Even going insane might be a relief...Like a clock, I am divided."

This passage gave me a headache just reading it. I know exactly how that feels. You want to die rather than go through the pain. But I'm curious to know what she meant by "like a clock, I am divided." Does anyone know what she meant by this sentence? Does it refer back to the fact that she saw only half of the clock when she had these headaches?

"My intention was not to hurt but to disorient, to fool her into thinking that her imagined attack had been real and that she herself had, unknowingly, moved the objects, arranged the clothes, changed the clock."

I was disturbed by this paragraph. To me this would seem like actions of an adult than a child. But, than again, Framboise was more adult than a child at this time in the story. There are many times that children will go to great length to get what they want, but I've never seen it to this extent. I just don't see how a child could watch her mother suffer so much and not feel anything for her.

"Not because stealing was especially wrong, but because of my mother's unusual for figures."

Now again we see Frambroise "stealing" something not because she was hungry for the orange or that the purse hidden in the treasure chest, was going to buy something that was needed, but only for Frambroise's own pleasure. I realize that their are dark sides to children. You have only to look at the morning newspaper to see this, but I still feel that their must be consequences for her action. Did she really think so little of her family to do this? Especially when she knew how hard it was during this period of time. I'm not sure I like what I see in Frambroise. If she is the heroine of this story, than this is a flaw in her character. Than again maybe she is really an anti-heroine.

SCRAWLER, I wasn't under the impression that Framboise was stealing anything when she took the purse from the Stones treasure chest. There were only a few coins in it, less than two francs. That's not much.

I thought it belonged to all the children, not just one, and that Framboise had as much right to it as anyone else who would dare to do what she did to get it. Page 65: When Cassis asked Framboise how she got the purse she says, "Swum out and got it. Anyway, it wasn't stealing. The treasure belonged to all of us." She got there first.

On Page 100 it says, "We were children. We had our own rules. The adult world was a distant planet inhabited by aliens." The narrator is talking about the Resistance here, but it could refer to anything these children did.

The worst thing Framboise did when she tried to instigate a headache in her mother with the orange scent was to lead her to take more and more morphine. This could lead to very great trouble. An addict will do anything to get his or her drug. Framboise doesn't know this. All she knows is that her mother takes medicine which makes her sleep.

As far as pity is concerned, did Mirabelle show any pity when she refused to let Framboise go to Angers? This is how a child's mind works, and what provokes them to do things like what Framboise did to be free of her mother and authority.

I agree that the careful rearrangement of articles in Mirabelle's bedroom and setting the clock ahead does not sound like childish behavior. However, Framboise very carefully had planned the "game" with the orange and raiding the treasure chest, hadn't she? Perhaps that's the kind of person she is. I don't think it has anything to do with the war.

Mal

Kiwi - looks like you started the ball rolling as you noted that Boise does not feel, much less show, any compassion for her mother's headaches, behavior during the headache, treatment of the headaches. Only when she is a women reviewing the scrape book does she appriciate her mother and her experience.

Several of you, have in one way or the other questioned Boise's chosen relationship with her mother.

Lets look at this - are we reacting to how we would like a child to be prtrayed - that her whole upbringing is too loose and she is too self-willed bordering on sadistic - we would be more comfortable with a child that may not have to be goodie two shoes but was closer to Reine's personality -

Or are we saying that reading about a child that in our value judgement seems amoral than someone must be blamed - the war - the author - the mother's illness which leaves the child on her own too much or that this is behavior too unlike any child we know so the author has it wrong -

I guess I am thinking of the recently published book "Atonement" where because of needing attention from her mother a child lies about the gardener's son's attention to her older sister and accuses him of rape - the young man can not clear his name and goes to prison - sadistic - yes -

than I am reminded of the 1960s book "Lord of the Flies" where some of the children become Satan incarnate -

And so believable - based on other pieces of literature we have to say yes - comfortable - for most of us - no -

And then that is the crux of it - what is the author doing - because if this is how we feel - and it isn't just one of us therefore we are on to something here - if we feel uncomfortable with the behavior of Boise than what is it the author is saying -
Let's consider - Why we are uncomfortable reading about this hardened child - what is it that worries us when we read about her?
What's the worst thing that could happen to Boise or to a child who is like Boise in real life?
What do you hope would occur?
How do you see the behavior that you are uncomfortable with assisting Boise in her present situation and how does it define her relationship to the things that have happened so far?

If you like modern authors or not - yes, children of the nineteenth century genra of literature are easier to read - even if they have a limp, carry a cane and sit by a fire in poverty waiting for their father, or are being brought up in an orphanage - but civil and restrained - and they can appeal to our compassion, where as these modern writers allow children to be filled with the vises and motives more typical of adults.

But why - what role does the fiery sometimes exalted children have in developing the theme of the book - what is the child's behavior foiling or exemplifying?

Let me get this post out so some of you can chew on the questions and I will continue to respond to y'alls posts...

There are several very determined fiery children in my family but all of them small as they are have very kind natures. Maybe its the fact that their parents show them love and kindness as well as boundaries. Boise and her siblings had too much freedom. The mother with her addiction was too wrapped up in her own misery to inquire too deeply about their comings and goings. There was no father figure in the house to enforce discipline.

I am just contrasting Boise with Josh who was the kid without boundaries in our family. However despite this he was always affectionate and really caring. This hardness of Boise'most probably stems from lack of attention and affection from her mother. It is still chilling to read of the cruelty of a child who was only 9 or 10 toward her natural mother. I do think at 10 children know right from wrong. I certainly did at that age.

Carolyn

I've begun to think there's a degree of fantasy in Five Quarters of the Orange. For that reason, I don't think we can judge the extraordinary family in this book by ordinary standards. If I really think about it, there's much here in what we've read thus far that is hard to believe. Because it's an excellent, beautifully written story, I'm willing to believe what Joanne Harris has written without asking too many questions.

Mal

Why did Joanne Harris choose to make these children particularly Boise so cold? Why did she imagine these characters as she has portrayed them. Did she wish us to like or dislike Boise? If its fantasy what was the reasoning behind it?

Carolyn

CAROLYN, Framboise is not cold about everything. She's passionate about catching the fish. She acts normal enough with her brother and sister.

She's not even close to acting cool with Tomas. She's warm with Paul.

As an adult she's passionate about food and she obviously enjoys her grandhildren. She becomes very angry with Laure and Yannick when they pester her.

She's cold with the mother who pushes her away and offers her no affection whatsoever, while putting all kinds of restrictions on her. Who wouldn't be?

It's swimming in snake-ridden water and treacherous current with all kinds of roots to get tangled up in, and diving so deep to get at the treasure chest that I consider unreal. She's only 9 years old, for Pete's sake!

Mal

horselover You really did hit the many points that shows the tension among the characters and suspense of the plot this author is creating.

horselover I am going to include this bit from Prof. Kibel here since it is in a way a follow up to your noteing the author is creating tensions between characters that would be dependent on the actions and intent of a character.

From Enlish Lit text by Prof. Alvin Kibel - If Characters relate to our points of how to act in an admirable way we are saying to the author, "How inferior--I know people/children who are more clever or more honest or more kind than that!" What we are really doing is assuming a superiority - We are implying that we know as much as the author about the depths of life or, we are already too jaded to appreciate these depths.

It is the novel that knows better for the sake of the novel. Not even the author can suppose that because one character is hard, another learns to get the better of his conscience.

We are entitled to believe ourselves to be superior, or, as Stendhal, the author of "The Red and the Black" acknowledges, "what we know and want is usually taken as a mark of good sense-- not a sign of superiority but of weakness or meanness or narrowness. The more suitable task is for readers to discuss the implied strength or weakness of the characters of a novel that are relative to the story."

Mal - the reason why Framboise "climbed the mountain" is explained on pages 45 and 46 her certainty sounds much like a covenant - if I do this God you will do that sort of thing...

Pedln - thanks for sharing your own childhood trauma - so many of us only understand our parents when we are adults ourselves - I remember being so sure I had to take care of myself since every indication was my mom couldn't and my dad wouldn't -

As an adult I realized I was correct - she couldn't but by than I had the luxury of experience and I could view her circumstances with compassion, rather than this silent annoyance that bordered on inner rage that I had held as a child as I more than suspected, I just knew she couldn't.

My anxiety was always about not having the know how, or ability to take care of my sister and I was filled with shear terror for her while I felt such overwhelming inadequacy that I blamed my parents for feeling that way rather than seeing my mother as feeling the same way as I did. We expect so much from our mothers don't we.

And all that comes up when we read certain books - memories...!

Mal - your post has been with me most of the day - I questioned and questioned using your thoughts - I can see the dichotomy but couldn't grab it well enough to put into words - I was thinking it had something to do with choosing to suffer for an end as Framboise versus being in the middle of suffering for something not chosen and uncontrollable -

But that didn't say it either because you are refering to a whole system of values or philosophy that includes your relationship with God - vaguely I remember reading about the philosophy of naturalism and finally I found it. Here are some excerpts that I think fit - because some of what Framboise experiences she suffers because of outside uncontrollable forces and yet, she chooses to take on a childhood challange and later an adult challange that includes her suffering and in the end is her redemption.
System of Nature, by Paul Henri D'HOlbach -- ...Man is born without his own consent; his organization does nowise depend upon himself; his ideas come to him involuntarily; his habits are in the power of those who cause him to contract them; he is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control, which necessarily regulate his mode or existence, give the hue to his way of thinking , and determine his manner of acting.

He is good or bad, happy or miserable, wise or foolish, reasonable or irrational, without his will being for anything in these various states. Nevertheless, in spite of the shackles by which he is bound, it is pretended he is a free agent, or that independent of the causes by which he is moved, he determines his own will, and regulates his own condition.

However slender the foundation of his opinion, of which everything ought to point out to him the error, it is current at this day and passes for an incontestable truth with a great number of people, otherwise extremely enlightened; it is the basis of religion, which supposing relations between man and the unknown being she has placed above nature, has been incapable of imagining how man could merit reward or deserve punishment from this being, if he was not a free agent.

Society has been believed interested in his system; because an idea has gone abroad, that if all the actions of man were to be contemplated as necessary, the right of punishing those who injure their associates would no longer exist. At length human vanity accommodated itself to a hypothesis which, unquestionably, appears to distinguish man from all other physical beings, by assigning to him the special privilege of a total independence of all other causes, but of which a very little reflection would have shown him the impossibility...

All to say that although you do question suffering, as you should, and as D'Holbach concludes is quite appropriate - this story seems to use some of the philosophy at its core that is in-line with the Christian views that includes the suffering Christ as a role model.

And yes, I think many of us now realize the suffering of the German people during WWII - my remark had to do with a personal foreboding while I read, that the children's information would be used for far more sinister reasons than simply a way to gather goods to send back home to their families. When the idea that the children sharing what they knew about the villagers was only to be used as blackmail it was a shock of - Oh thank God and hmmm I never thought of that...most WWII accounts give us a far more horrific view of what happens to folks who break German occupation rules.

And yes, it appears Tomas Liebniz knew how to get what he wanted - the child in him could come out when he wanted to satisfy that need - but I see him like a chameleon which is another example of secrets who like a vampire draws just enough blood each day to keep himself going - which is draining the life blood slowly rather than in one swift swoop. I see the child in him but to me that childlike behavior is as manipulative as the wink...

Scrawler - "Does Frambroise think that her mother has blood on her hands? Why would she think that?" hmmm yes why - my thought was the stories we have of pontus pilot --

You also have a problem with Framboise's callus thoughts as a child - I think it has to do with being a child when your ego is such you believe all the world centers from and around you - that either someone is supportive of you or not, and how they feel requires you have the ability to walk-in-another's-shoes -

I remember in 7th and 8th grade being so annoyed because my classmates could not put themselves in the shoes of someone famous to understand how they could have feelings just like we did - I think it is part of being a kid -

Although, living on your own wits is a lot of pressure and without a father around - her mom not showing she was 100% - and her nightmares scaring her so that she isn't sure she can trust herself - I could see she may have little truck for anyone elses feelings.

I think because Framboise is a child, a girl child at that, it is uncomfortable for us to see this behavior that is typical of anyone who takes from another - this is behavior we prefer to vilify and we do not expect to vilify a child. Children should be innocent!

I am as amazed as you at not only the writing but the depth of this author - the first of her books I read was "Coastliners" that I did not see near the depth as I am in this. she seems to be aware and using all the literary trends of the day while using language as you say magnificently...

Mal - that would be an interesting exercise wouldn't it - what do we each think is the worst behavior that Framboise commits.

One that I have been struggling with is many reviews say that her sin is the sin of Pride - hmmm to me so much of what she does is focused aggression to achieve her desires - is anyone who is ambitious than considered prideful - hmmm I do not know -

Your thought that this could be somewhat a fantasy kind of experience - Joanna Harris playing with Magical Realism European style hmmmm - from everything I read the European version of Magical Realism has been from a basis of surrealism - that half clock hmmmm Dali or not?

Now her diving deep to me is not unusual having grown up on a small Island it is the way we played in summer - it is the pinning up of the snakes till the rotten smell forces her to put a clothespin on her nose that got me - and then what does it mean, she hides the jar of orange peel in the barrel of sardines. We haven't even talked about those fish kept in the house...hmmm lots going on in this book

Amazing to me how when I read the book I missed so much of this and how easily I was brought along -

Yes children should be innocent and I guess war robs children of their innocence and probably war robbed Boise's mother of her ability to nurture.

There is a 2 part article in the Aucklander this week. (I just finished reading it) Its talking about our kids being robbed of their innocence by being exposed to violence and explicit sexual behaviour on TV and computer games. One school principal says he has 10yr olds coming to school dressed like 30 yr olds.

Also violence against teachers has reached epidemic proportions. High school teachers are considering carrying packs with personal alarms and personal defence equipment. The principals interviewed (and we are not talking about people who belong to the righteous right here) said they believed the lack of parenting and setting of boundaries at home plus the use of alcohol and drugs at an early age have a lot to do with the way our kids are behaving in school.

I was horrified to read this article and can understand why my son has his children already enrolled at a very expensive private school. The article is headed "Our kids have lost their childhood" I have to say that I suspect this behaviour may be in the lower decile schools (poor neighbourhoods) as I have not heard of any such incidents from my nieces or at my grandaughters school. They go to high decile schools. (affluent neighbourhoods) However I must admit I did not have any idea this sort of thing happened in ANY Auckland school.

It does horrify me that kids could attack their teachers - one kid set his teachers hair on fire! - makes Joannes characterization more believable in this book we are discussing.

Carolyn

BARBARA, I was raised in a religion which followed the teachings of Christ, but it is much more liberal than most. By comparison to the Catholic religion it is no religion at all.

In this religion there is no hell or trinity, and Jesus Christ is not divine. There is not an emphasis on sin and redemption and salvation. The lack of emphasis on the benefits of suffering in this religion is not typical of most Protestant religions. The only real creed is a belief in the brotherhood of man. It is the religion of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau and the Transcendentalists, as well as some notable Americans and Europeans and some presidents of the United States. I am no longer a member of this or any other religion, but some of what I learned early has stayed with me and is part of my own philosophy.

All of that is lead-in to my saying that I don't see religion or pacts with God in this book. That feeling is magnified by the fact that Mirabelle and her children did not belong to or attend any church.

Different minds, different points of view. I saw nothing unusual in Framboise's hanging the snakes and heads of fish on the Stone. My brother and I did the same thing when I was growing up with fish we caught in the pond across the street, from the house where we lived, and frogs and snakes we caught in the fields. I see a difference between spending time on an island and diving in the water, and defying the Loire River.

Many people preserve fish by salting it and keeping it in a crock or a barrel. In New England and other places it is cod which is salted and put away. It was a perfect place for Framboise to hide the bag of orange peel because the preserved anchovies wouldn't be used until winter.

I think children are far less innocent than we like to think they are. And I think children can be far more cruel than they are protrayed to be. I can give you examples of their cruelty from my childhood as a handicapped little girl among children who were not. I'm not going to do this, however. You'll just have to take my word for it, or the word of anyone who was (and is) somehow "different" as a child.

Mal

It has been hard for me to put this book aside for many reasons. I love the language, the words themselves, the feeling of the characters. Like most of you I have strong feelings about the behavior of this 9 year old.

The mother herself realizes she has not been as loving to her daughter and tries to makes amends..inviting her to go to the movies with her etc but her attempts are rejected.

My own mother never explained menestration to me until she found my panties in the wash. And like Boises mother gave me flannel squares to use. Only by listening to other girls did I discover Kotex and my mother was unaware of them but gave me money to buy them.

When I remember back to my own 9 year old person I thought my mother didnt understand me. No I would never have been like this little girl but I remember thinking I must have been adopted for I was the only girl ( 4th child of 6) and the rest were all boys.

Having wall to wall relatives helped me immensely and my mother was an exceptional cook and seamtress so I always had these lovely clothes to wear ..all good things and yet I still felt she didnt understand me. The mother in this story had so many personal problems, the migraines for that is what they are, the occupation , the lack of a man in the family, so much to try and cope with.

I dont think we can appreciate all that people in that position must feel Putting myself in that position with my imagination I feel great fear and my stomach ties itself in knots.

For me this story brings back my own memories of my two years in France. Druex AFB was in rural France, it was new and base housing were trailers made in Brussels and very inferior to American. The water lines were laid on top of the ground and the first winter there they froze and we had no water for two weeks. The heater did not function well and our 3 year old daughter and I lived in winter clothes all that time. I have never been as cold as I was then, leaning my face against the heater weeping with the cold.

The men were on assignment in Italy and Greece so we were alone ..it was a base where the doctors dispensed the most anti depressent medicines in all of Europe and many wives were returned to the states with mental problems. Everyone including the base commander lived in the trailers, the movie theater was a quonset hut and there was no heat so you dressed like you were at a football game in freezing weather.

Recalling all of that time made me feel as if it was not only a long time ago but another life.

And I understand Boises finally understanding her mother. I loved my mother and we had loving ,caring parents but I had to reach this age before I truly appreciated her. I had no mean things to recall but I can see how she loved us with the good meals, the special gifts, the common sense she dispensed and her pride in our accomplishments.

Of course my brothers had more freedom than I did and I resented that as well ergo she didnt understand me. Thank goodness I was an avid reader and she encouraged that. The review says this book explores the mother/ daughter relationship and it certainly does that.

I cant wait to get to the end and oh yes I love all the description of food...we ate so differently than most of my friends...sweetbreads, brains, oxtail soup, pigs feet and saurkraut, oysters in season, rabbit, pot roast I have never been able to duplicate, cakes made without written recipes, pies and apple dumplings , fruit in season , home made bread, cinnamon toast in the oven, food is as much a part of my past as Boises.

BTW we went to Europe in 53 and there was still a LOT of war damage. Mainz in Germany was in total ruins and the only way you could view it was from a bridge. Many places including London, Rheim-Main, Kaiserslautern and the farm areas of France had warnings about unexploded bombs and the chance of falling debris..they were off limits...

I know this is lengthy but this book affects me in unusual ways. anna

I think sometimes an author exaggerates a particular action of a character to bring home a specific point. It's like hitting us over the head with a bat. What we are feeling toward Framboise is being hit over the head with a bat. I thought she brought home her point very clearly, but as Mal said these are not real children - it's fantasy. In my own family both my children were on their own very young and although I had the usual squables I never saw the kind of behavior in either of my children that came close to any of these children.

Someone asked about a story about a fisherman who was granted three wishes. Well, my antique brain finally remembered that the story was: "The Pearl" written by John Steinbeck in 1947.

"Panting, almost crying with panic, I managed to kick myself in range of the Stone and grabbed the rope that secured the treasure chest to the pillar. It felt weedy and unpleasant in my hand, slimed with the brown ooze of the river, but I used it to maneuver myself around the pillar."

I think with this passage the author is telling us something more than meets the eye here. Could this be more foreshadowing of what is to come? Again the imagery made me feel very uncomfortable.

"She smelt unfamiliar too, a kind of sweetish powdery smell like marshmallow and violets, and she was wearing the red lipstick."

This sentence tugged at an old mememory for me. I remember in grade school when I first realized that some of the older girls were beginning to smell and look differently. In Catholic school we weren't allowed to wear makeup or dress in something other than our uniforms. But when we went to see the football games at the Catholic all-boy school, the older girls were allowed make-up and I also remembered they rolled-up their skirts to make them look shorter. Oh, and they giggled a lot when they saw the football players.

"Perhaps because I was less aware of the scarcity of such items, perhaps because the seeds of rebellion already growing in me pushed me to scorn anything of which my brother seemed overly proud."

I think this might be key to Framboise's action - she was not aware of what was going on in the adult world or didn't understand what was going on. Also I think the seeds of rebellion were growing in her.

"You see how easy it was to take him off balance. Cassis was spoiled in his way, too used to being the great older brother, the man of the house, the first to go to school, the tallest, the strongest, the wisest. His occasional bouts of wildness - his escapades into the woods, his dare-devilry on the Loire, his small thefts from market stalls and shops in Angers - were uncontrolled hysterical. He took no enjoyment from them. It was as if he needed to prove something to both of us, or to himself."

I think, too, this passage was also key to Cassis's character. "...uncontrolled hysterical" was an interesting concept, perhaps as most older brothers he was trying to prove something to the younger children in his family and to himself.

"I could not speak. My mouth felt as if it were full of straw. I would have run, but was not sure my legs would carry me. Instead, I put up my chin and moved toward him."

Could this be just a little bit of fear that we see in Framboise? Again, I don't think she was aware of the dangers that both her mother and brother had preached to her concerning the Germans. Or perhaps she chose to ignore their advise.

Several people have commented on the way this book exposes the capacity for treachery and cruelty in children. We would like to believe that children are born innocent, but in reality, they are born with all the evolutionary capabilities of humankind. We have seen, in our own time, gang warfare and the shootings at Columbine. How much more will wartime bring out such personality failings in those young people who have been deprived of warmth and affection at home. However, along with the dark impulses, humans also possess the capacity for empathy and kindness. Even in the concentration camps during WWII, there were those who saved others by sharing their meager rations of food.

I wonder how many of you saw the PBS program about the Kindertransports during WWII. This story depicts another type of experience that children had during the war and how it affected them then and later on in life. The British agreed to accept only children from various war-torn countries in Europe. So parents, to save their children, sent them away to a foreign country whose language they did not speak. Many of these children never saw their parents again.

The British also sent away thousands of their low income family children usually from one parent families to the colonies after the war and their parents never saw them again. It has been raised as a scandal in recent years. Some of these little refugees were treated cruelly on farms in NZ and Australia. They were used as unpaid workers. There is a book written about this experience but for the life of me the name escapes me.

Carolyn

Virginia Bickel, a WREX writer, has just had published a book she wrote called All Aboard, Destination Unknown about Orphan Train Children in the United States. They were sent away from their relatives in New York City to the Midwest and Texas where they were placed in all kinds of homes, generally used as free labor, though some were lucky. As Gin states in her book, most never saw their families again.

Mal

horselover - and - Kiwi - I thought I saved the link but evidently not - during the war there is a whole group of children who have shipped off and grew up in places like Finland and I think Norway - children who are the sons and daughters of Nazis conceived in the Lebensborn program -

A secret program to create more "pure" Nordic Aryan blood. The program matched German girls with Nazi soldiers and I this is where I am vague, but I do believe young women from Norway were involved in the program that was established in order to give birth to racially pure children, even if the women were unmarried.

After the war started, Germany held most of Eastern Europe where thousands of children were kidnaped who were considered Aryan. These children had to be Germanized or killed because Himmler thought an Aryan populations outside of the Reich was a threat. Estimates are 20-25 million children, mostly Polish, were born. Only a small number were ever returned to their parents.

How innocent children really are seems an open question - we know of many a child who is suspended from school because of their aggressive behavior towards other children.

But for our understanding of this novel, the children are characters who are developing a plot that has a theme. Framboise has just enough characteristics that we can identify with so that she helps to bring us into her story. None of us have become so revolted that we want to put the book down - we want to know what happens --

Mal _ I heard about the Orphan Trains and look forward to reading the book - that is a great service you do for so many writers.

It is so hard not to post our thoughts in La cuisine des gourmets littéraires - but I want to let you know your contributions are wonderful - have you found a recipe for cooking peas the French way yet? on Page 141...we need to list all the recipes in the book don't you think...?

To your earlier post - as Foster tells us - no story is created in a vacuum - "Instead, the mind fluashes bits and pieces of childhood experiences, past reading, every movie the writer has ever seen" - "stories grow out of other stories, and the more we become aware of a text speaking to other texts, the more similarities we will begin to notice, and the more alive the text becomes."

Foster continues to explain that our culure has a collective recognition of basic words or themes from: Shakespeare (eg. my horse, my horse, my kingdom for a horse), folk and fairy tales, myths - mainly Greek and Roman (Odysseus give us four great struggles of the human being: with nature, the divine, other humans, with ourselves) and the Bible or church myth.

The last, the Bible, which compared to many is where I often fall short. I was not raised in a religion with an emphasis on reading or knowing the Bible - we learned a few stories that are in the forefront of most of the minds of those of us who live in a mostly Judeo-Christian society.

Reading a novel, a poem, a play has little to do with the religion we practice but everything to do with connecting dots that an author includes in his/her work --

Some of the Biblical dots that spotlight themes in a story that Foster includes are: garden, serpent, plagues, flood, parting of waters, loaves, fishes, forty days, betrayal, denial, slavery and escape, fatted calves, milk and honey.

From Quentin Tarantino to the James Dean film, East of Eden, connection to the Book of Genesis; to Morrison's Beloved four white men coming in the front gate in the Apocalypse - we know them, and not because she has called them the four horsemen, with one riding a pale horse whose name is death; to Joyce's "Araby" about the loss of innocence - the fall - the forbidden fruit - are based in the Bible -

Foster says about "Araby," "every story about the loss of innocence is someone's privat re-enactment of the fall from grace, since we experience it not collectively but individually..." He goes on to explain - No garden, no serpent, no apple - innocence then it is lost - what more do we need --

Our fruit - an orange -- we have the serpent -- the innocence lost can never be recaptured and for Framboise she lost it in the marketplace as did Araby - but for Boise it was a wink while being observed stealing that sealed her loss from an innocent child.
Another strong symbol - this story is set in the Loire Valley - the place of French Kings who were crowned with the sanction of the Catholic Church - France is still considered a Catholic country - a catholic symbol is the Virgin Mary standing on and crushing the head of a snake - good crushing evil - Framboise crushes the heads and pins up to dry, the snakes caught in the mud of the Loire.

This would fall in line with the knowledge that saints were not pure and good but took risks - and so we have Framboise crushing the head of evil - foreshadowing what is to come.

And finally we have four named German soldiers with one who stays a bit seperate from the others...Foster suggests in his book "How to Read Literature..." with other examples that this is all the connection we need.

annafair your memories of living in France are a delight to read - you sound like you are identifying with Framboise in as many ways as your life experience allows - Framboise is a many sided child isn't she - do you think Framboise is as rounded an adult, showing her aggressive manipulitve side as well as, her adventurous, lonley side with a desire to be accepted as she yearned for companionship from her older brother and sister when she was a young girl. it will be interesting to compare the child to the adult...

Scrawler - exaggeration of characteristics - hmmm - what did we read recently that we decided that was the technique used - was it the Mark Twain book?

And so you see her as not aware of what the adult world was about, that only her rebellion was the focus for her. She did seem to understand some of what was going on though - remember the scene where she talks Tomas out of taking their market produce - and she was concerned about what would happen to Madame Petit whose name she let slip with the story of how she had cloth to sell.

We could almost start a list on Boise - what she knew - what she didn't know or understand - what were typical childhood activities - what seemed beyond her years making her look as Kiwi, you and Mal suggested, as if she was an example of magical fantasy.

Thanks for this reminder - "...uncontrolled hysterical. He took no enjoyment from them. It was as if he needed to prove something ..." Basicaly not a strong well grounded boy - that explains why he is not a strong old man.

Which almost says something about Europe today - grouping together in the EU is economicaly beneficial but it also seems like nations needing one another - as if all these lonely boys, whose fathers either were away fighting or died in the war, now run these nations and they need the comfort from each other that comes with joining a club/group.

"I could not speak. My mouth felt as if it were full of straw. I would have run, but was not sure my legs would carry me..." Fear!?! I would say terror - what do you think...?

I think growing up in a country that is occupied and at war might make a child act in a more aggressive way. The child can not understand why the battles are taking place, but they can feel and see the chaos around them. There is a part of the child that knows he must struggle to gain pleasure or survive.

This is why war is so horrible. It leaves a scar on children and adults. Everyone is fighting to get a piece a bread, to make a friend or just to get a tube of lipstick and a movie magazine. These children are fighting to reach another level in their growth. I think in a time of peace these children would act differently.

Hats - Looks like you are also up late - your statement is so poignent in light of what we see on our TV news channel everyday.

But again, lets look at Framboise as a character that is furthering this story and therefore like a character in a movie - the actor is not portraying who (s)he is - but rather portaying a character that is moving a story along...Framboise is moving our, no Joanna Harris' story and we have the pleasure of seeing the women she becomes.

Tomorrow we start on the next section where the women Framboise shows us her colors. She does seem a bit different than her mother - what do you think?

I found this that I thought was fun - turn the sound up on your computer...

Arletty scroll down and click on --
"le passage du Comme de bien entendu (J. Boyer et G. Van Parys) qu'elle chanta en 1939 dans le film de Jean Boyer (Circonstances atténuantes) avec Andrex, Suzanne Dantès, Dorville, Michel François et Michel Simon:"
- volia she sings...

Circonstances_attenuantes a review or explanation of the 1939 three star comedy and the poster that was displayed at the time.

Michel Simon sings

From your link Barbara,

Elle était jeune et belle,

Comm' de bien entendu !

Il eut l'béguin pour elle

Comm' de bien entendu !

Elle était demoiselle,

Comm' de bien entendu !

Il se débrouilla pour qu'elle ne le soit plus !

Comm' de bien entendu !

She was young and pretty -- Naturally -- He fell in love with her -- Naturally -- She was a demoiselle -- Naturally -- He did his best so that she was not any more -- Naturally

Barbara, I remember listening to Arletty's songs and I saw Michel Simon in French movies when I was allowed to go to the movies at 16. What nice memories you bring up. It's the first time I hear Michel Simon sing but I remember his raspy voice. He was a good actor.

When I was in school English kids used to calls us "French Pea Soup" implying that we ate a lot of pea soup. I don't make it, but I try to have it whenever it is on the menu in a restaurant. It was very simple and nutritious to make. I will post that recipe in La Cuisine.

Eloïse

We are finishing up this section that included the introduction chapters in section one and the childhood of Framboise in section two -

May 8 and we start to discuss the third section -
The Snack-Wagon
Joanne Harris sets-up Section Three,

The chapter opens with Framboise enjoying two of her grandchildren - the author chooses to have her read to Ricot,
"Robinson Crusoe" and his man Friday fight off the Barbarians -

The second choice, by the French Author Julias Verne, Framboise reads, "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea"
about an underwater vessal built in secrecy and a captain who keeps portraits secret of his murdered family, a tortured man, Captain Nemo wants and takes his revenge. -

The Snack-Wagon

How do these classical novels set the scene for Section Three.

What are the similarities and differences between Mirabelle and Framboise.
What significance does their relationship have in the novel?

What are the similarities and differences between Framboise, the child Boise and Framboise as Madame Simon.
What are the similarities between Framboise and her daughter.

Is Framboise in this section more like "Old Mother" played with traps set by Luc -
How was Luc similar to "Old Mother" -
What was similar and what was diffferent about how Framboise went after Luc as compared to how she went after catching "Old Mother."
In what way was Madame Simon's need to protect her crêperie similar to her need to catch "Old Mother."

How is the past and present intertwined in this section of the book.
When Framboise was young she was strong in her resolve to catch her fish where as, when Framboise has a fight on her hands with Luc she is about to give up - what has changed that prompted this difference in her attitude.

What is the significance of so much of Section Three set inside Framboise's home or inside the crêperie compared to Section Two where the Loire was often the setting in the story.

Why do you think Framboise returned to Les Laveuses? Do you think there is a part of her that wanted the truth revealed?
Select. . . a moment or scene in a novel. . . that you find especially memorable. . . .
Identify the passage,
Explain its relationship to the part of the story in which it is found and explain why it is effective.
Does it act as a bridge to connect characters or the plot -
Does it reinforce the symbolism within the story?
Does it parallel the recurring events in the story?

We are discussing Romans in Gaul in The Story of Civilization discussion. The discussion leader, Robby Iadeluca, posted a map of the Loire River Basin. It was a huge image with a long download time, so I changed the image from gif to jpg, lowered the kilobyte size 58% to cut down on download time, and put it on a web page. You'll see it when you click the link below.

Loire River Basin

I have Thomas C. Foster's book, How to Read Lterature like a Professor. It is a scholarly work written in an easy, informal style and is helpful when it comes to nudging memories of books we've read in the past, comparing them to others and seeing things the average reader might not see. It is, however, a book based on opinion -- educated opinion, yes.

It is my opinion that no one can teach us how to read, just as it is my opinion that no one can teach anyone how to write a book beyond presenting rules of punctuation and grammar and telling the aspiring writer to learn them and sit down and write and write and write.

As it has been said in other discussions, we bring our own baggage with us when we discuss books. Each of us has a different background and lifetime experience. Our interpretations of literature, not as literary critics, but as ordinary human beings, are colored by our lives. Nothing we say is wrong in these analyses we do, even when we cannot relate to things other people might say. It is the digging we do on our own in order to understand what an author has written that is important. There can be no rules from anyone else when we do that digging -- guidelines, yes, but no rules.

With that in mind I'll say that Laure and Yannick have declared war on Framboise because she won't give them what she has legally inherited from her mother and bought from her mother's estate. The reason for this war is economic, the most common reason for all wars.

In my mind, the Snack Wagon across from Framboise's creperie is a Trojan horse. In order to fight what's in that Trojan horse and win this battle, Framboise must get reinforcements in the form of Paul.

To me, winning this war is different from trying to catch Old Mother, though the passion must be the same.

Mal

"They used to say that if you caught her and set her free, she'd give you your heart's desire, but if you saw her - even out of the corner of your eye - and didn't catch her, something dreadful would happen to you."

"What kind of dreadful?" she asked.

"You'd die, sweetheart," I told her softly. "Or someone else would. Someone you loved. Or something worse even than that. And any case, even if you survived, Old Mother's curse would follow you to the grave."

"Pistache gave me a quelling look. "Maman, I don't know why you want to go telling her that kind of thing," she said reproachfully. "You want her to have nightmares and wet the bed."

These paragraphs bring up an interesting situation. How much do we tell our children? I thought Framboise was just trying to tell the truth the way she saw it, but her daughter, Pistache thought that the story might harm her child. What do you think? Even if something is true should we tell it to a child? How old do you think a child should be before telling her a story like Framboise told?

"No! Never!" My voice rose like a red kite in the little room, and for a second I left my body and looked down upon myself emotionlessly, a drab sharp-faced woman in a gray dress, her hair down fiercely back into a knot at the back of her head. I saw strange comprehension in my daughter's eyes and veiled hositility in the faces of my nephew and niece, then the rage slammed into place again and I lost myself for a while."

I thought this was an interesting passage. One, for the way the author was able to allow Framboise herself to describe the way she looked. And second, to see not only herself, but those around her.

Sometimes when something dreadful happens we need to step back for a moment and see ourselves for who we really are and also see ourselves the way other people see us.

"My breath tore through me like barbed wire."

Once again the author's words gave us an imagery that is very forceful. There have been several times when the author has used words concerning "war" to gives us a more forceful image.

"What did they mean about a legacy?"

"Nothing. Cassis made out he was a rich man so that they'd look after him in his old age."

Now this was interesting I thought. Framboise was welling to tell her granddaughter what she thought was the truth, but not her daughter when she asked about the legacy. What does that say about the character?

"If she had been Prune I would have put my arms around her, but to see her now, this calm, close-faced woman with her small, hurt smile and sleepy cat's eyes...I thought of Noisette, and how, out of pride and stubbornness, I had made her a stranger to me."

Once again we see Framboise in a different light. She thinks that she would have no trouble embracing her granddaughter, but does not do that to her daughter. One other thought about this scene and that is that we can learn a lot from our children. Whether we like it or not they will show us who we really are. Some well say it to our face, while others keep it hidden, but we can usually tell by their expressions how they are feeling.

"Reine went to...work...in Paris. She...fell ill too. She's in a private hospital in Paris."

Does anyone know why Reine fell ill and went to a private hospital?

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there.

I agree with Mal about reading. Everyone sees a plot or a character through different eyes and of course their own experience of life does color their opinions regarding the piece of literature.

I also agree that the desperation to get Boise legacy taken from her by her relations is indeed pure greed. The NIL was a food writer and wanted to become famous by using Mirabelles recipes in her column and then serving up the food in Yannicks restaurant.

Why did Boise go back to her home town. I think she went back to lay some ghosts to rest. She was drawn back there despite the way that she and her family had to leave after the townspeople had determined them to be traitors and German sympathisers and had set fire to the farm.

Carolyn

Originally I thought as some of you, that the nephew and wife wanted the recipes out of greed, but now I'm not so sure. Did they really want just the recipes? Laure stated that she wanted to "borrow" the album so she could write a book about the infamous Mirabelle D. I guess she's greedy for fame. It would be a real coup for her to have the inside scoop about this cook.

Whatever, their methods and persuasions were certainly contrary to winning one's favor. I wouldn't trust them with a piece of scrap paper. Of course, at this point, we don't know all Framboise has learned from the album. Are there more important secrets there?

The poor woman Framboise. She wants a more loving open relationship with her daughter, but can't break the chains of her upbringing. As she says, "We are people who keep things within us." And now she realizes that with her sharp words and tight mouth, she has become her mother -- or so she thinks.

Malryn, that's a great map. I don't know what the original was like, but this was clear and downloaded quickly with my dialup service.

Fabulous Map Mal - takes in so much of France - was this huge area considered a principality of its own?

I wonder when it became a smaller area - the history of this area would be interesting as an aside don't you think - Like when did the area become influenced by Romans - when was France pretty much the land area we know today - I know the goverment changed many times over the course of time -

Gotta run - be back later - another round of great posts from everyone!

Mal so glad you have the Foster book - we are going to have it as a discussion this fall - all the Discussion Leaders are now reading it so we can better our discussions - it came about as we continually respond to surveys from the readers after a discussion is completed. This particular author is so easy to read and understand as well as the book is an inexpensive paperback - all pluses for Seniornet.

Really must run - late...

Hats, You hit the nail on the head. War is terrible for everyone, but especially for children. It robs them of their sense of security and stability, makes them think of aggression as normal, and makes the struggle for survival their number one priority. As you said, "I think in a time of peace these children would act differently."

Another example of the way in which war blighted the lives of children: After the Vietnam War, there were many children of mixed American and Asian descent, born of unions between American soldiers and Vietnamese women. The military would not allow these children to emigrate to the U.S., and they were ostracized by the Vietnamese.

Scrawler, You asked "Does anyone know why Reine fell ill and went to a private hospital?" I think she ends up in a mental hospital as a result of the rape, or attempted rape, which occurs the night that the three children go to the La Mauvaise Reputation and the old man who tries to help Reine is murdered.

Barbara, You asked, "What are the similarities and differences between Framboise, the child Boise and Framboise as Madame Simon." I think the child Boise feels strong and confident in her ability to prevail. But the elderly Madame Simon feels "shaken and old" when the relatives threaten her and the Snack Wagon appears and begins to destroy the life she has built for herself. As a child, she did not fully understand the danger she was placing herself in. But now she is aware of the terrible choices she faces. "No one should have to make that choice," she thinks. "No one." It is at this point that Paul becomes her aged knight in shining armor, providing the strength and confidence she seems to have lost. The odds have become more even, and we read avidly to see who will finally win this family war and whether the secret will be revealed to us, to Paul, and to the town.

Barbara, we are discussing Gaul presently in Story of Civilization and Robby posted this link you are referring to about La Loire valley but the size was fine on my computer.

Eloïse

Eloise - it is fun listening to the music - I've listened to most of the links and the one "Bach" appear to be doing a comedy routine - but did you find the page that has lots of links to the music for the Follies - great fun - you can almost imagine men and women having a high old time in a large dance hall as the music plays.

Mal - I love it - the Trojan horse - and you see winning the war of the snackbar as different than catching "Old Mother" - tell us how you see they are different - of course the obvius that they are two different times in her life and one is an animated fish while the other an inaminated wagon that is competition to her restaurant - but do you see a diffence in the use of a plan etc. as you say the passion is the same.

I just realized as I am writing this she went after the fish alone and because of her affiliation with Tomas she shut Paul out where as going after Luc she not only includes Paul but leans on him.

Her plan of attack for the fish is conceived in her head while her plan to get rid of Luc seems to be more hit and miss doesn't it - as if at first she has no plan and then she and Paul conceive a plan with Paul even having secrets that will affect the outcome.

I need to look at those pages again - since Paul is included does that mean she is softening and not pulling a protection of hardness around her as she did when she was young - if so than maybe that shield of hardness was her only protection growing up - just musing here trying to see what is the story saying by showing us both age ranges of this women as if they were two characters and we seemlessly go from one time to another - looking back and looking at the present -

Scrawler - "How old do you think a child should be before telling her a story like Framboise told?" That is a hard one - I see a couple of things - whose truth or story is it but then that is balanced by a mother believing they have the right to control what their children hear and learn.

I know this is an issue in my family where I have family secrets and when the grands were very little without it even being a thought in my mind I was told I was not to tell the secrets that the mother's would tell when they believed the time was right -

I've honored that but it also makes me uncomfortable - like giving too much power to the secrets some of which took a long time to surface. And some are my secrets that took place when I was a child. But again, they do not want me sharing any of it...and that is uncomfortable as if my childhood is judged as unacceptable - something to hide - I certainly do not feel celebrated that I managed and overcame so much --

Seems to me the continued hiding of secrets is all about control - in fact secrets are control - controlling certain responses or time to be able to manipulate events -

I thought it was ironic in the national news when Rumsfeld was railing that everyone had camara phones and digital camaras that can take photos that are flashed around the world on the internet immediatly - and all I could think of is that's what citizens have been complaining that the CIA or FBI have been doing so that we have a "Big Brother" society - I just see it as control and the battle for the power as to who does the controlling.

I wonder if we really ever do see ourselves as others see us - I am alwasy shocked when I hear how someone interprets my behavior - and I find it is more often than not interpreted based on how they view life not how I view life and therefore, my intent is far different than their interpretation.

WOw you did find how Cassis shows his colors that in Section Two we realized he was not very strong and did things for the approvel of others - hmmm independent Boise grew up to be herself - she knows who she is...

Talking about Reine we are really needing to be in the next chapter - because I am thinking now, there was more to what went on with Reine than a first reading uncovers - but you know how in Seniornet we do not go ahead - nor tip what happens so that those who have not read ahead still can get the impact of reading and allowing the story to unfold...

And Yes --

Happy Mother's Day

Kiwi - Yes, right on - "Everyone sees a plot or a character through different eyes and of course their own experience of life does color their opinions regarding the piece of literature."

All that Foster is saying is simply that, an author writes with bits and pieces of our culture in evidence and books/stories have words as well as, plot intances and character traits that are a take off of basic common knowledge using; Shakespeare, other books and poems, Greek and Roman myth, Fairy Tales, the Bible -

To add - it is obvious that when a writer chooses a certain setting (the writer can choose any setting in the world or any time in history past or future,) - the author chooses a certain setting for a reason - and that setting often has myth and customs that surround the time and area that we can assume affects the story -

This is all beyond our own experiences - our experiences is what we bring to the read to help us relate, to allow ourselves to relate, but we do ourselves a favor and make the read more fun if we look beyond ourselves to these other associations realizing that stories grow out of other stories.

I love how you worded this - "she went back to lay some ghosts to rest." Wow - while laying ghosts to rest seems to me she is rising out of the ashes like a phenix - but - then - I too am getting ahead of the discussion schedule.

Pedln - You picked up on that - it was about the story of Maribelle's association with the Nazis not the recipes that Laure was after - ouch how painful - this is someone who disregards feelings and reputation as if everyone is only a story written in the pages of a book -

Seems to me that is saying something about our values today - what do you think? - it's what we want from the famous, like Diana - we all were glued to everything ever written about her as if her whole heart and soul was nothing more than family gossip, regardless if we admired her or not -

It's as if we want to be shocked or amazed or in awe everyday and since what we do in life does not bring about the kind of shock or awe that dazzles or stuperfies us, we need to have other's life experiences to astonish us. No wonder the expression - 'Get a Life' --

Your observation of "We are people who keep things within us" and how it affected her relationship with her daughter reminded me of a sentence way back on page 71 -- "My own head had begun to throb sharply and I wondered what she would do if I went up to her and pressed it against her shoulder. My eyes stung briefly."

I am beginning to wonder if the reason to return on the surface was to "lay ghosts to rest" but under that is a quest for love and to be free to give love.

horselover - "Paul becomes her aged knight in shining armor, providing the strength and confidence she seems to have lost" dear Paul - her ballast all that time and she didn't see it - but then fair is fair he was smitten with Reine when they were young. I wonder what happened - do you think it is just age or bringing up your own children without a husband that made the difference between the young Boise and Madame Simone in her sixties - does age sap us of our courage - our ferocity --

At first she does not know Luc is part of a family war - if she had she may have seen it all differently but for Framboise it was like fighting two wars - the one with Laura was always there even though she had determined how she was going to handle it.

I keep going back to that concept of Laura only wanting the story and it reminds me of something said in the book "Atonement" about authors just taking - do not remember exactly how it was said but I interpreted it like an author is about the business of sucking the marrow out of life and spitting it back- which I saw as saying, they take the joy out of the experience from those who live it and from the writer as he writes it, all for the benefit of the reader.

And yes, Joanna Harris does such a great job of keeping us on edge as, "we read avidly to see who will finally win this family war and whether the secret will be revealed to us, to Paul, and to the town."

again - HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY

I have a family where there are family secrets. I resolved there would not be any secrets in our family. I told my kids at a very young age our family secrets. They were not shocked or affected and I think the younger children are told the better they cope. This is providing of course they are at the age they understand what it is you are trying to convey to them. I think that the Boise's grandchildren should not have had things hidden from them - the longer things are hidden the harder it is to be frank in the future.

Carolyn

Your saying Framboise is like a phoenix is a very apt simile, BARBARA.

It didn't surprise me at all that Framboise went back to the place where she had spent part of her childhood. I know many older people who share what I have -- the desire to go back to my roots, despite many bitter, hurtful memories of that place. The geography, the air, the soil, the ocean and granite rocks, the various landscapes, the flora and fauna, the history of the place are all in my blood.

Francoise has resurrected the best part of Mirabelle, her creativity and her cooking. These are Framboise's real inheritance from her mother and what Laure and Yannick want to take away from her.

How is the war between Laure and Yannick against Framboise different from her wanting to catch the fish? Old Mother is not a real threat to Framboise. Laure, Yannick and Luc could rob her of her livelihood and the greatest pleasure she has in life.

People are intrigued by fame, scandal and notoriety. They love to see idols toppled, and they love to idealize what they consider "People Heroes".

About Princess Diana, I kept wanting to say, "Leave that poor. sick, troubled girl alone, for pity's sake!" But, no, people have sanctified her and will not let her have any peace, even in death.

I come from a very open family. Even if they were sometimes whispered behind a hand, our secrets were known and gossiped and talked about by all of us. It truly surprised me to marry into a family where the mother insisted on keeping even the smallest things secret and letting me know about it if I forgot and talked about them even in the confines of her house, where the blinds were drawn day and night to cover what she believed needed to be kept hidden. Most "secrets" are everyday things, common to many,many people, and not worth bothering about, as far as I am concerned.

In some societies Mirabelle's offense was punishable by death. It was something that should have been laid to rest when she was. Laure and Yannick want to keep it alive so they can profit from the notoriety, not just with publication of a book, but with its lure as a means to draw even more people to their restaurant. Second hand fame, I call it, the badge of inferiority.

Old age not only brings a reduction in physical strength, it brings with it the caution learned from the lessons of experience. We become much less comfortable about taking risks.

Mal

Keeping secrets ...well I am such a blabber mouth there are no secrets. If something is true I feel there is no need to keep it secret. And in a large family almost impossible.

There are some things I might hesitate to tell a very young child since it might be outside their comprehension but I have always felt honesty was the way to go.

I have returned my book to the library but I have enjoyed the descriptions , the language is so powerful it just puts you in the story and into the feelings of the characters.

That REine is in a hospital doesnt surprise me. She fantacized as a child, as a young person and it seemed to me she was never able to go beyond that fantasy. But then I think none of these children had what could be called a normal life. So whatever they did was colored by the events of thier life.

I dont know about anyone else but in the area in which I live..not the immediate area but in the community of Hampton Roads which covers several good sized cities ..we have a lot of drive by shootings, where not only is the intended victim is killed but innocent ( and often children ) in their homes are killed by stray bullets. One mother tells of sleeping in the bathtub at night fearful of these random killings. Now I would say children who live in those neighborhoods will be totally different than children who live in a safer neighborhood.

So here we have a whole country under enemy occupation...it has to color everyone's behavior...and I cant help but feel a great sadness for all of them. Just thinking this mother's day ..and how my children have treated and gifted me ...so generous and lovingly ...and thankful a thousand times we were able to give them a good and loving home.

Since last year my oldest son, his wife and 3 small children had just stopped at Pizza Hut in a nice neighborhood for lunch when a masked man with a gun came in and threatened them . Even pointing a gun at my son's chest and shooting at them, the bullet ricocheted from something , missed my son but parted the hair on my daughter in laws head. I am treasuring all of my family more...if that were possible. And grateful for them all.

So truly it was A HAPPY MOTHER"S DAY and I hope you have the same. anna

There's a very symbolic scene on Pages 164-165. Framboise and Mirabelle are making Terrine de Lapin. (I tried to find a recipe for this in one of my cookbooks -- I have over 300 cookbooks -- but could only find recipes for terrine of pheasant and terrine of duck.)

Mirabelle is having a good day, and she asks Framboise if she'd like to go to the movies. She acts more human than she usually does, and Framboise is tempted to put her arms around her and "tell her everything."

Framboise says she saw the movie already. At her mother's reaction Framboise feels "a sudden stab of fierce exhilaration." Then:

"For a moment the bloodstained hands (from the rabbit) remained, beckoning."

Framboise wins a point and leaves her mother with blood on her hands. This is prophetic, don't you think?

Mal

Every family has secrets, even those that think they have none. This is because every person has secrets, sometimes even from themselves. We live with myths about our families and ourselves, and often secrets are not revealed until someone dies. Then, as in this story, papers or letters or photos turn up which bring hidden facts to light. In this book, the children have secrets from their mother and from each other. Their mother has secrets from the children and the town. And most of the townspeople have secrets even in a small town where it is difficult to keep anything a secret. Building toward the revelation of these secrets is what makes this book such an exciting thriller.

Joanne Harris seems to have similar themes in all her books--coming home and coming to terms with the past. Another theme here is the age-old warning--be careful what you wish for; you may get it. People often pray to God and then complain that their prayers are not answered. The reply is that God does answer our prayers, but not always in the way we expect. Old Mother, like Moby Dick, may be a stand-in for God. Like the white whale, Old Mother is the object of Framboise's anger at her lot in life and her conviction that the giant fish owes her the legendary wish. As the suspense builds, we wonder if she will catch the fish, if her wish will be granted, and if she will be happy with the way it is granted.

This is the recipe for TERRINE DE LAPIN My sister serves rabbit stew quite often. I admit I don't make it even if I like the taste. Notice the wine marinade and cloves. The ones I see in grocery stores look more like long chickens.

Eloïse

ELOÎSE, the web site for Terrine de lapin did not open. I will post in our Gourmets littéraires folder.

Traude, funny because it opens on my computer. Thanks for telling me.

It may well be my computer, ELOÏSE! I just posted (at least I tried to) two posts in Les gourmets littéraires, neither was accepted. The monitor said "Error" both times. I'll try again some time.

MAL, would it be possible to indicate the source of Tourture au fromage? I can find no reference to it in any of my cookbooks on French Cooking. Sources are very helpful.

Since I can't post in the recipe folder, may I ask here whether the book has any reference to innards? Disdained here, they are prized there. Veal Kidneys Bordelaise and Tongue with Madeira Sauce are delicacies. Thank you.

Traude, I made a link to Rognons de veau bordelaise but in French in "La cuisine".

Eloïse

Tourteau Fromage
I spelled it wrong on the recipe page. From now on, those of you in the know can carry on. All I ever did was cook.

Many thanks, chère amie. Found and have printed the recipe.

MAL, thank you for the information on tourteau. I was wondering because the term more common in connection with pastries is torte .

I checked the recipes ...and wonder how my mother prepared rabbit. My one brother was a hunter and often brought home a number of rabbits. I am not sure how mother prepared them but I know we had so many friendw were always invited to dine on the rabbit.

Mother used several large roasting pans to bake the rabbit but I have no idea what spices or condiments she used to flavor them. Whatever she used the rabbit was appreciated. Several times we also tried domestic rabbit from the grocers but I think we preferred the wild taste.

Now when I think of the kinds of dishes mother made I realize how different our meals were. Funny at the time they seemed so normal.

In spite of the praise for the cheesecake with a burnt crust I prefer my own. I like just a thin bottom crust and a luscious melt in your mouth cheese cake itself. Mine is very tender with a sour cream baked top.

Did I love this book because of the food? I have several French cook books and like you Mal I must have 300 cookbooks. My husband built a bookcase from the counter to almost the ceiling when we redid the kitchen one year and that doesnt begin to hold them all. They are everywhere since as I have mentioned reading a cookbook is an adventure.

When I read this book about the mother and daughter I wonder if the feelings of rebellion are peculiar to daughters and mothers. My mother and my brothers seemed to have less differences of opinions than she and I did when I was a teenager. And my own daughters rebelled when they were teenagers while the boys seemed to come into thier own earlier and were less trouble when they were teens.

Of course ...what was so delicious we moved to an adult relationship very easily and maintain that. So there was a light at the end of the tunnel ...anna

I have just finished reading this book. I don't want to intrude on your discussion. But I do want to say that I have spent some time in the area of France where this book was set. I lived with a family in Brittany for a few weeks one summer when I was studying French. The son in the family attended school in Angers.

The family took me to Anger to see the sites. I have been back to Angers several times. When someone goes to France with me for the first time, Anger is always one of the places that I take them to visit.

I have also spent some time in the Loire valley at different times. The descriptions of the mistletoe in the trees really brought it all vividly to mind. I have always noticed the mistletoe in the Trees along the Loire.

There is lots and lots of mistletoe in trees beside Rivers all over France. I noticed it on our recent trip. The Loire is such a huge river., in fact it is the longest river in France.

The book was very disturbing to me. I picked it up in Foyles bookstore in London. I always buy at least one book there when I go to London.

I am enjoying reading the recipes that you are posting the other discussion. Thanks for doing that Barbara.

Joan Grimes

Joan, you are not intruding at all. I welcome your comments and am sure everyone else does too. I had never heard of Anger before reading this book. From your comments, it must be very special to you.

I've been enjoying the recipe page, but think I'm too lazy a cook to make any of them. You good cooks out there, what would you recommend as SIMPLE, very simple?

Re Mothers and Daughters -- I don't remember battling my mother (I really grew up with two -- my mother and my aunt) except over my hair. But I do remember being almost 40, newly divorced, and buying a rather expensive sofa. My one concern was whether or not my mother would like it. And I remember a friend from years back, also divorced, who's parents would come to visit frequently. She would get really uptight before those visits because her mother would always want to know what she had done -- constructive -- how much cleaning, how much sewing, etc. Weird.

My middle daughter and I skirmished from the time she was three, but I always said it really took my 25 years to learn that my kids weren't going to do what I wanted them to. That was when the youngest daughter dropped out of college to work for ACORN.

"The next day there were a dozen of them, all youngsters, and a radio playing raucous music at maximum volume. In spite of the day's heat I closed the creperie door, but even so the tinny ghosts of guitas and drums marched through the glass..."

What imagery! I know living in an apartment that this happens to me especially during the summer. When I can hear various folks playing music, sometimes it blends together and sometimes it sounds like just loud noise.

"Eyes that might have done something for me forty years ago, but nowdays I'm too old and too particular. I think that old clock stopped ticking just about the same time men stopped wearing hats."

This passage made me chuckle.

"I was angry, but I tried not to show it. His smile showed that he was expecting trouble, and that he felt confident to withstand it. I gave him one of my sweetest."

I liked the way the author portrayed these two characters with "smiles". It's the opposite of what we think of when see characters angry at each other.

"The words were all right, but I still couldn't shake the thought that there was something wrong, some mockery in the cool, courteous tone that I'd missed somehow, and though I'd got what I wanted, I fled the place, almost turning my ankle on the gravel of the verge, with the press of young bodies against me - there must have been forty of them now, maybe more - and the sound of their voices drowning me. I got out quickly - I never liked to be touched..."

Now this passage builds suspense. Framboise knows now that there is something wrong, but she can't quite put her finger on it. I can imagine how she must have felt, an old woman being pressed up against young bodies. This paragraph shows how we can be fearful physically and mentally - "The sound of their voices drowning me."

"At twelve thirty I heard the sound of motorcyles from the kitchen. A terrible sound, like pneumatic drills in union..."

This scene reminded me of the "Wild One" with Marlon Brando. Again I love the way the author describes the sound of the motorcyle. I agree sometimes the sound can be "unbearable" especially on a hot summer night.

"For some time I fretted uselessly over figures and estimates. I forgot to play with my grandchildren, and for the first time wished that Pistache had not come for the summer...I could see in her eyes that she that she felt I was unresonable, but I could not find enough warmth in me to tell her what I felt. There was a cold hard place where my love for her should have been, a hard dry place like the stone in a fruit."

I think when Framboise acts like this she resembles her own mother. " I was behaving like my mother, I told myself. Stern and impassive, but secretly filled with fears and insecurities." Sometimes it's hard to ask for help, but how much easier would it have been for Framboise to just be able to talk about her problems with someone.

How could Framboise be expected to be any different toward her daughter from what she was? Her own mother never let her in, and Framboise didn't know her, or even live with her for very long in her life.

Not in situations like this but in ordinary ones I find older people to be very suspicious of younger people. They make no effort to talk with them, to listen to their music and try and find out what's going on in their heads.

I remember a very fun Christmas night when my son and I were singing our heads off on the back porch of a house on Staten Island. Some of the younger people there were banging on boxes, pots and pans, whatever they could get their hands on, using them as drums. The neighbors had the audacity to call the cops and tell them we were having a drunken brawl, when not one of us had had anything to drink. We were just having a good time celebrating the holiday. I guess we made the mistake of not asking those people to come over!

Another time a friend of one of my kids came to my house on his motorcycle. I was not very young at the time, but I hopped on, leg brace and all, and had one of the most glorious rides in my life.

Have to tell you that there's a group of bikers that meets every Sunday for brunch at a restaurant in a plaza not far from here. They're all over 40, and quite a few of the graybeards are a lot older than that.

Framboise has reason to be suspicious of Luc. Why, all of a sudden, did he decide to open the Snack Wagon across from her creperie? Why suddenly do motorcycles rev up at 2 a.m. outside her door? Who opened the door of the henhouse?

Paul finds the plate with the registration on the Snack Wagon. The telephone number is the restaurant Laure and Yannick own. Luc is Laure's brother. What kind of battle tactics is Framboise to use now?

Mal

Mal, you bring up a very interesting point. Framboise really did not live with her mother very long. What -- 10 years, ll years at most? She had very little, if any (I don't remember) contact with her after the children went to live with Tante Julia. It's sad that she did not get to know Mirabelle back on her own turf in Britanny. Just how well did she really know her mother?

Wheee Welcome Joan - - please add your thoughts - we are in mid stream here - the middle section of the book -

By The way everyone...! - Has everyone read the entire book - is there any of us who still have more reading to do to complete the book???

I am seeing that for those of us who have read the book we seem to be working backwards - finding things in this section especially that fit what we know is coming -

If we have all read the book - ALL read the book - we may just think of revising the schedule and adding the last two sections to our discussion a bit earlier than Saturday - say add Section Four around Thursday -

Let us hear from you please if you have read the entire book. If so, and especially since we worked so hard last week on two sections that this week the one section seems like such a light weight, we may just revise our schedule to include Section Four as of Wednesday or Thursday and then include all Sections as of Saturday - the last section has so many more chapters but many of them are short -

When I come in tonight I will e-mail everyone to be sure we hear from each of you to know if you have finished reading the book or not, and if we should revise the schedule to include Section Four mid-week...

I will try to respond to everyone now - I only have 40 minutes and then I am showing property again - busy busy two days of Open Houses, preparing information for sellers as well as showing property -

I must say I do not know when last I have enjoyed such indepth posts - this is some book - I thought of Joanne Harris as a lightweight - this book has given me a new appreciation of her work...

Kiwi Good for you -- "the longer things are hidden the harder it is to be frank in the future." I hadn't thought till I read your post - I wonder if part of the reason people have a hard time telling secrets is they have not worked out the issues and do not know how to put it into words - or maybe for some it brings up some ugly memories all over again and they are taking care of themselves by not keeping the memory alive -

Although we have Framboise searching to understand better her snatches of memory with the awareness she had a child's view of her history and there were others creating the circumstances of her family's shame.

Mal - euwww yes, "old Mother" was not a real threat as was Laura and Yannick and now Luc..."Second hand fame, I call it, the badge of inferiority." Good words to remember when we see it in action as we even know folks - don't we all - who like to act like they are in the know about the intimate details of someone elses life who is either in the news or is experiencing some tragedy or some fame...

I think you are right although I hate to admit it "Old age not only brings a reduction in physical strength, it brings with it the caution learned from the lessons of experience. We become much less comfortable about taking risks." I think we or at least I know I shy away from anything I think may bring pain - having experienced pain I think that we prefer not adding anymore painful happenings in our lives.

My word Anna - drive by shootings nearby BUT YOUR SON AT GUN POINT WITH HIS FAMILY!! Oh my Anna - and how long did it take him and his family to get over that experience - I'd almost be fearful of ever going out to eat again...Did he and his family attend some sort of therapy? Amazing -

I remember years ago a gunman came into the hair salon while I was under the dryer - I couldn't hear a word he said but saw that gun waving around and I threw my purse behind the dryers when his back was to us - Than when I did come out from under dryer I was acting so dumb not having heard him that he wanted to take me as his hostage - but he was impatient and I just started to on purpose act even dumber as if I didn't really understand what he wanted -

Well he took off with 8 ladies handbags on his arm - this was located in a residential area - he had his car parked a block away and several folks saw him from their window with all these handbags - so they called the police who got there just as he was pulling away - they had a wild chase through town but caught him and brought him back for us to indentify.

I think the reason it wasn't that traumatic was we stayed and stayed and talked and talked about what happened and how this one wished she had done this or that - this was long before the days of grief meetings etc. - we were simply regular clients that knew each other from the neighborhood and we talked it all out...far different than living day in and day out with that kind of danger regardless in areas within this nation now or in an enemy occupied area during a war.

And with all that - it looks like Anna you have completed reading the book and returned it to the library - therfore you are ready to go on aren't you...

GOOD HEAVENS WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED BUT IT IS 5: AND I MUST SCOOT - I'll be back after dark and get caught up...

BARBARA, it doesn't sound to me as if old age has affected you very much. You're out there selling houses, driving to North Carolina from Texas and back by yourself, and God knows what else you do. Good for you!!

Mal

PEDLN:

Yes, it's important that Framboise lived with her mother for such a short part of her life. I lived with my mother for only the first 7 years of my life. Depression time, and she couldn't afford my illness, so had to give me away to a childless aunt and uncle. My mother lived only 5 years longer after that, and I didn't see her too much during that time. I was left with a terrible grief that has never gone away; have had to harden myself against it, in fact.

Is there terrible grief in Framboise, the adult woman? I don't see much, but I see even more reason for her feeling as if the part of her that is soft and affectionate feels like stone. And I can see even more reason for her wanting to go "home".

Mal

ANNA, my goodness me. What a terrible thing to happen. Is this a common occurrence? Remember I will be 2 days on the road next week and 2 days back coming home 4 days after. I am going to the Virginia Bash. That really scares me. I will pray for our safety down there.

PEDLN, I spend an average of 2 hours a day on meanls mainly because I want to eat nutritious food. Shop, prepare, cook, eat, and wash dishes 3 times a day. I don't cook fancy meals but I certainly want to eat 5 to 10 vegetables a day, think about having enough minerals and vitamins and protein. It paid me to do that.

Eloïse

To all of you who think I'm so wrong, please check Page 119 in your book toward the bottom of the page. You will see very clearly that it says, "Tourteau fromage".

Mal

There now Mal. I had not seen that post of yours, so I deleted both mention of that recipe.

"Tourteau Fromage Soufflé Sponge Cake is an original soufflé cheese sponge cake from the Poitou region of France, Tourteau Fromage has a soft and light texture and a rich, sweet taste. It can be enjoyed at breakfast time or as an appetizer with white wine or champagne. Most often however, torteau Fromage is eaten as a dessert with ice cream. Made from fresh eggs, wheat flour, fromage frais, sugar, butter and salt, this decadent cake is all-natural and simply delicious. Its signature burnt top seals in its freshness and light, airy texture."

Order your Tourteau Fromage HERE

MAL, Tourteau Fromage sounds delicious, but high in calories, cholesterol, and carbos. Something to be taken in small doses.

Why do you suppose Framboise has never seen her granddaughter, Peche, except in a picture? Her daughter, Noisette, "looks more like my mother than me," she says. She describes Noisette as "sly" and "hard, so like myself." Is she estranged from this daughter?

Paul makes Framboise feel good about herself after all these years. "I caught myself looking at my reflection in the mirror...I'm sixty-four years old, for pity sake. I ought to know better. And yet there's something in the way he looks at me that sets my old heart lurching like a tractor engine...It's a feeling which tells me that any woman can be beautiful in the eyes of a man who loves her."

What do you all think about Framboise's romantic feelings for Paul? Are such feelings unusual for a woman of her age? Does the admiration of a man make you feel more beautiful, or is there "no fool like an old fool?"

Please dont be concerned about drive by shootings..since they seem to happen many places. I dont worry about them but am concerned because innocent people are often killed that have nothing to do with the quarrel between the people shooting and thier target.

After my husband died I bought a small car and put 28,000 miles on it in one year. Most of that by myself ..and I never had one minute of trouble or concern. Except when I got out of the car and left the keys inside with then engine running and had to call my roadside assistance to unlock the door. Which he did in less than 5 minutes and THAT REALLY WORRIED ME..how easily he unlocked that door.

My son and his family belong to a great church which offered them comfort and praise for their survival. They were expected at my house that day and were late. I can still recall how odd they looked, subdued and not thier bouyant selves. It was hardest on my son since he is 6'3" tall and powerfully built..he felt he had failed his family and it was hard for him to accept the fact he just stood there. I assured him he had done the right thing. They are resilient and seem to have put it behind them. Still I am sure there is a small fear that wasnt there before.

My daughter in law is an RN and if they had counseling she has never said ...I felt I needed some counseling...it was and still is hard to accept your family can be in jeopardy.

Yes I have finished the book and have hesitated to say too much until all had finished it ...

I can't speak for others but age has nothing to do with relationships. It isnt that as a woman I need a man in my life but if I need a person in my life and that person is male I have no problem with that. Since I grew up with five brothers I have always been comfortable with members of the opposite sex.

Mal I had a great laugh at you and the motorcycle ride. I was a teenager during WWII and dated a young man who had been deferred to help his father on a farm. He and all similiar young men had motorcycles and each Sunday afternoon we would all go riding. Of cours e there was almost no traffic ..later when we were in Europe my husband bought a motorcycle and we would ride on the paths paved just for cycles and go to rallys etc.

After he died I met a widower who had a motorcycle and we would ride together..this time with helmets etc ..Check out cyclists and you will find many are senior citizens. So age has nothing to do with activities ..I am glad for both Framboise and Paul ...their part of the story delights me...anna

Mal - "the bloodstained hands" wasn't that Lady MacBeth who believes that her hands are stained with blood that cannot be washed away by any amount of water -

Lady Macbeth provides the brains and the will behind her husband’s plotting; tracing that women are just as violent and prone to evil as the men, as ambitious and cruel as men.

Is the blood on her hands a symbol of her guilt, like Lady Macbeth - hmmm as you say Mal prophetic.

horselover - "Old Mother, like Moby Dick" - I love it - what a great simile - yes, now the whole sequence of her obsessiveness comes into focus - almost like Ahab riding the whale is how Boise goes after "Old Mother" - the great fish "owes her the legendary wish."

Where as with Luc it is not he that owes her continued success with her restaurant although Madame Simon believes she is playing the game by not becoming too successful and therefore, you get the sense that she in return expected God to grant her success -

Luc comes along not only to disrupt her business, but he is disrupting the order of things as decreed by her upholding her part of an unspoken bargin with God - 'I will give to this community fine food with reasonable prices and by limiting the menu I will not call undo attention to the village - She, Madame Simon should therefore be successfully able to keep her name a secret while earning money to rebuild the farm and comfortably provide for herself.

A covenant with God that Luc is breaking down - Luc is putting a curse on Framboise that will prevent God from acting out his half of the covenant.

God would bring His people (Framboise and family) back to the land - she like Ezekiel receives instructions (Framboise receives instructions from the album) and being faithful to these recipes she will build and makes successful the temple (restaurant temple of food) creating a new Jerusalem, (a new glory and peace with the past in Les Laveuses) at the end of the thousand years. Will Luc be instrumental in assuring the family Dartigan wait another thousand years to take their place in this community...

Eloise - cleaned up the translation a bit and copied the Rabbit recipe in the other discussion - seems to me I have a recipe for Rabbit around here someplace - I think mine is also a stew though - I remember my Nana - my Father's mother, annually had us over for Rabbit and spetzel with good beer from the corner bar several streets away that my father brought back in a little covered tin pail with a handle that all the men in the area owned and used to get their beer.

Traude - I asked Jane to look into why you cannot post in the recipe folder - all those whose name is included in the heading under LES GOURMETS LITTÉRAIRES are supposed to have access - Looks like you and Eloise and Mal worked it all out...

Anna cookbooks and cookbooks - do you still have them Anna - do you use them as much any longer -

I remember it was so special when my Aunts, my grandmother and my mother gave me some of their cookbooks or a favorite recipe or some special cooking tools they no longer were using - but today so few spend much time in the kitchen -

Although, I bet there are still folks who relax or work out their frustrations by spending time in their kitchen it is just that neither my daugher or daughter-in-law spend much time in their kitchens. They seem to cook just to eat but do not spend time experimenting or cooking anything more than what is needed to feed their family.

Joan - you have actually been to Angers - and think it is a special area of France - the mistletoe would make me feel right at home I guess - when winter comes we see these huge mistletoe growths that are at least 3 foot size clumps with some even larger than that in most of the oaks -

Tell us Joan what about the book did you think was disturbing -

Pedln - no rebellion but a decision about a sofa - that is funny how we hang on to our childhood views or a relationship with family members - Pedln what is ACORN - I've heard of it but do not know what they do...

Scrawler - that is interesting isn't it - to be angry and show it by smiling - I wonder if that is what is meant by a frozen smile - and not liking to be touched is like the child Boise alone, not feeling she could put her head on her mother's shoulder - which makes it hard to be in the same space with others if you are holding yourself together without the comfort of being touched.

there is that same reference again as in the early part of the book - "There was a cold hard place where my love for her should have been, a hard dry place like the stone in a fruit."

Those of you who speak French - HELP - is there a translation for the name of the village I just wondered if there was another allusion here to the Village being a stone - since they all have names of fruits then this must be saying the soft outside holds within a cold hardness rather than love that would seem appropriate from the soft flesh of fruit - I just wonder how far this metaphor is taken...

I wonder if she knew or understood what the problems were to talk about them with anyone although she does spill to Paul like a child holding it all in.

This tightly held women really makes quite a breakthrough then when she acknowledges her feelings for Paul - wow that is a change for her isn't it.

Mal - the loss of family does seem to be the underlining sadness in this story - well not really a loss of family but family intimacy of shared memories that include knowing each other's thoughts and dreams - vaguely I am remembering, isn't there something about a family experiencing a break it takes five generations to outlive the aftermath of what happens as a result of the breaking experience.

Bikers and singing aloud while banging pots and pans - sounds like you have some great memories to call on Mal...

Pedln you're right - only 10 years - that hadn't registered when I read it - and then Framboise never does get together with her mom during her elder years...She certainly learned a lot about cooking from her mom at a very young age - to retain that much seems astonding. - more magical realism do you think?!?

Yes Mal it does make more sense doesn't it - "more reason for her wanting to go "home"."

Eloïse - Oh my up to 10 vegtables a day - that is impressive - well you just raised the bar my dear...

horselover - I think I am with Anna on this one - romance between Paul and Framboise - or maybe the idea of romance is always a winner - I must say where I enjoy reading about it - I do not think of romance for myself - I would be so weary of having some of my independence taken or that I would become more about being pleasing than taking care of myself - the work to learn how not to loose myself feels so overwhelming that I would prefer to tackle that one in another lifetime...

Anna - dosn't that commercial for Pop-a-Lock just get to you - everytime I see it I think it is free training for anyone out there wanting to get into the business of stealing cars...

28,000 in one year - whew - where did you go...fill us in please...

Les Laveuses means "the washerwomen" or "laundresses." I mentioned it in a very early post.

All this talk about fruit and stones -- the important fruit in this work is the orange, which has seeds and a tough outer covering or peel.

Mal

Interesting comparison of Framboise's quest to the Bible, BARBARA. I see it another way.

In her particular crusade, Framboise's pact is with herself and no one and nothing else. Restoring the Dartigen name to respectabiity means nothing to her. There are other reasons for her quest.

To me she's like an adult who was adopted as a child, one who never really knew her parents, and who is now looking for her real identity. There's a wonderful story in the Adoption folder in SeniorNet about a man who did this and successfully found his real parents.

Framboise is happiest when she's in the kitchen cooking. The hearth, or kitchen, has traditionally been known as the "heart of the home", and that's where Framboise hopes to find her own heart and free her tightly hidden emotions.

I wonder exactly how much she really remembers about her mother and how much has been imagined? She forgot her father because he died in battle far away. Her mother left her when she was very young and died far away from her. It's possible that she's forgotten who her mother truly was, too, or never knew.

Any portrayal of Mirabelle we have in this book is from the memory of a child. In the 10 years Framboise lived with her Mirabelle didn't let her in. For this reason, it seems to me that the picture we have of her mother cannot be an accurate one.

I was taken from my mother when I was very young, and then five years later she died. My memories of her are probably not true ones. They are what I want her to be. I remember an aunt starting a story about my mother which put her in a negative light, and I stopped her. I didn't want to hear what she had to say because it threatened to tarnish the beautiful memory I had.

So, Framboise is looking for her heart in the hearth of the family home, the feeling part of her. And whether she knew it or not when she decided to go back to Les Laveuses, she's looking for her mother, the mother she never knew, who could never let her in. The journal Mirabelle left her contains a far truer account of what Mirabelle was than any memory Framboise could possibly have. This is a mystery story. Mirabelle's journal contains all the clues and answers. I believe Mirabelle left this book to Framboise because she knew she'd figure them out.

What Laure, Yannick and Luc represent is a huge obstacle in Framboise's solving of the mystery. If she doesn't conquer them they could stop her search, and she'll never find the truth.

It does turn out that Framboise discovers as much about her mother as she needs to know. She can now put Mirabelle to rest for good and be herself. In this process she finds her heart and gives it to Paul. The answers have been unlocked. The mystery is solved.

I certainly can understand Framboise's feelings for Paul, old woman or not old woman. That kind of attraction and need never go away. A friend of mine in SeniorNet was recently married at the age of 74 to the widower of her best friend. They've known each other for years and years. All the romance and love of a younger relationship is there. It's a fulfillment. That's what Framboise and Paul have at the end of this book.

Mal

MAL,

there was no accusation of "wrongness" in previous posts that I could see.

I raised a polite question and made a polite comment, both eminently permissible (and sometimes necessary) in our respectful, often far-ranging exchanges.

I questioned "tourture au fromage" because (a) I didn't find it in my cookbooks (where I ALWAYS go FIRST) and (b) because there IS no such word in my trusted encyclopedic PETIT LAROUSSE. You later amended it to Tourteau Fromage. (There WAS never a question about fromage = cheese.)

There was no "gotcha" (as per William Safire, the NYT language maven), much less a lèse majesté . Let's carry on.

Oh my goodness, TRAUDE. . . .

Well, then, please let me apologize.

Mal

So Far I've heard from two who are only getting into Section Four today but are saying go ahead -

And so to give them a chance to read - (if y'alls weather is anything like ours today, all you will want to do is stay home and read) - let's wait till Thursday afternoon - On the East coast anytime Thursday after 1:00 your time - If I get tied up and do not have the focus question up till later in the afternoon that should not stop any of you from including in the discussion material from Section Four.

Sheesh Kiwi/Carolyn if it is 1:00 in the afternoon on the East Coast of the US what time does that make it in NZ - Are you ahead of say Washington DC and already nightime or behind so that it is still dark morning...

Mal - Oh yes, I do like this - "Framboise is happiest when she's in the kitchen cooking. The hearth, or kitchen, has traditionally been known as the "heart of the home", and that's where Framboise hopes to find her own heart and free her tightly hidden emotions."

Hits it right on - I also struggled till I realized - there is no struggle - back to - Virtually everything in the novel has more than one meaning; The novel works on many different levels.

- This is where Kiwi's reading and relating to literature from our personal experience comes into the picture - because I bet each of us can come up with a way to look at Framboise's quest - I think the one you see is right on - I also see additional motivation and when we get into the remainder of the book I will share the bits and pieces that make me see these other motivations - like all good stories there are several themes and you have hit on a biggie - I also see her return has something to do with putting to rest her sketchy memory of the night they all fled.

I wonder if we all see in a story the aspects of the trauma in our lives - hmmm - maybe not only trauma though - hmmm maybe that is our individual quests that is always just under the surface and so it is easier for us to see that aspect of a story...again, just musing here...

Nice to see whatever it is that you and Traude mis-understood is cleared up...hehehe all sorts of relationships are worked out on these pages...

I'm anxious to take a look at the settings that the various sections of this book feature - I have a hunch but haven't taken the time to look at it - I'm thinking there is more exchanges between characters indoors in this section three than the earlier sections -

That was something I still remember from grade school (back when grade school meant 1-8 grades) that interior settings were symbolic of working out inner conflicts and inner thought patterns.

Without taking that look it seems to me that Boise doesn't share her inner thoughts while romping around the river - hmmm maybe in the club house - I need to look - but Framboise does open the flood gates while having coffee 'inside' her restaurant.

Even as a child though it is Paul that she talks to - really talks - all the others she is trying to impress with how smart or sly or capable or couragous she is...

BARBARA, I got the book yesterday afternoon and am reading like crazy. A few revelations there for me! The delay is strictly my fault, and absolutely no reason for you to change your agenda. Your concern and thoughtfulness for the group is heart-warming. Thank you.

OK Traude - You make three who have not yet read the fourth section - in fact you are just getting started - it is so easy to assume everyone has read the entire book - I am so glad you have the book and will really be part of this discussion - happy reading Traude...

I've read the whole book, so yes by all means go on to section four.

"I knew Luc was behind what was happening. I knew it but I couldn't prove anything, and it was driving me half crazy. Worse, I didn't know why he was doing it, and my rage grew until it was like a cider press squeezing my old head like an apple about ripe and ready to burst."

When I saw this paragraph I thought that this could also describe how a headache feels. Perhaps in some way the adult Frambroise is experiencing the same pain and frustration as her mother did. What is the old saying: "What comes around goes around?"

"The fatigue was like a sparkling gray blanket over everything. His words were a yawning of vowels in a tunnel."

Perhaps it was because of Frambosie's fatigue that she allowed Paul to become a part of her life. He seems to be there for her as a good friend.

"Silence. The truth stretched between us like a string of chewing gum."

I thought this was a great description of - silence. It feels like a photograph - just one moment in time when everything stops.

"Just sharing the problem was enough for me just then; just knowing there was someone else...Of course, the neighbors began to talk almost at once."

I had to chuckle at this. I never lived in a small town, only in large cities. But I understand that in small towns everybody knows everybody's business. I wonder what is worse living in a large city or a small town?

"Their smiles were like piano keys."

This is an interesting metaphor. Before Laurie's teeth reminded me of the wolf in "Little Red Riddinghood". These smiles remind me of the pasted on smile of people who really are not that happy.

"Suddenly I saw myself through their eyes, an old woman in a stained apron, sloe eyes and hair dragged back so tightly it stretched the skin. I growled at them then, like a bewildered dog, and grabbed hold of the doorpost to steady myself. My breath came in grasps, each one a journey through thorns."

What a great description! I wonder if we should give creedance to how these two saw Framboise. Does it really matter how anyone else sees us as long as we feel good about ourself. But, than Framboise didn't feel good about herself and her doubts probably could be seen by others. Paul reacted one way while her niece and nephew acted all together differently.

"You can learn a lot about life from fishing."

I think this is perhaps the whole theme of the book.

"We followed the rules; not the mad rules of our mother's devising but simple rules that even a child of nine could undestand: Keep your eyes open. Look after number one. Share and share alike."

These sound like simple rules, but at times they can be difficult to remember especially for children.

"That's the trouble with heroes," he remarked. "They never quite live up to expectations, do they?"

Excellent remark. No, matter our age - heroes are difficult to live up to - yet some of us keep trying.

"Since the incident with Reinette we had watched her with wary caution of primitives at the feet of their god - and indeed, she was a kind of idol to us, a thing of arbitary favors and punishments, and her smiles and frowns were the vane upon which are emotional weather turned."

I wonder why we tend to do this with those that are emotionally hurt. I would think that this action from others would compound their problem.

"Badness will get out somehow, she would say; and we were full of badness to her, like wineskins bloated with a bitter vintage, always to be watched, tapped, every look and mutter indicative of the deeper, the instinctive badness that we hid."

This was an interesting passage. It reminded me of my Catholic upbringing. When people tell you that your "bad" or have "evil" after awhile you begin to believe them even nine-year-old children.

"I dreamed often of Jeannette Gaudin, of the white gravestone with the angel, white lilies in a vase at the head. "Beloved Daughter". Sometimes I awoke with tears on my face, my jaw aching as if I had ground my teeth for hours. Sometimes I awoke confused, certain that I was dying."

I'm a little confused about why she should be dreaming of dying. Why did she use the orange bag out of spite to get back at her [mother] for Framboise's dreams? Did she think her mother was causing her dreams?

"Delicious tremors went through me, as if someone were playing a delicate bone explophone just above my pelvis, and my head rang with an indescribable light feeling. Today anything was possible, I told myself giddily. Anything at all."

Again I've fallen in love with the author's words. What a marvelous description.

These children were orphans, and that must be considered when trying to understand what part they play in this book.

Cassis to Tomas Liebniz:

"He wasn't supposed to die! He was supposed to sort everything out and make everything better and instead he went and got his stupid self blown up and now it's me in charge and I . . . don't . . . know . . . what to do any more and I'm s-s--sc ---"

Good morning all. As I write this its dark and early morning Barbara. It is also Wednesday 12 May.

Goodness me. All this symbolism. I fear my practical mind sees none of it! However do not fear I hardly ever see symbolism in what I read!

The obsession with Old mother by Boise to me was more that she felt that by catching Old mother somehow everything would become right in her world. This idea came from village legend. Old Mother was somehow magical and mystical to Boise.

Cooking - I have to say I am guilty of cooking for no other reason than to use the art of cooking as some sort of therapy when I am upset. I will cook even if the food I cook cannot be eaten by me because of my allergies. I make cookies for the grands and throw dishes in the freezer to be given out to whatever kid happens to turn up the next few days. Cooking to me is a panacea for the soul. If I feel glum into the kitchen I go! I think there is some sort of order about cooking and when life is in disorder it makes the cook feel somewhat in control to produce a perfect dish!

Those are my very profound (lol) thoughts on cooking!

Carolyn

Kiwi lady do I ever understand your thoughts on that subject. Cooking and sewing are my ways to meditate. My husband once said in 40 years I never made meatloaf the same way twice. When I am involved with cooking, especially a new recipe or sewing I am in another world.

The troubles and anxieties of daily life just disappear for me. I love the smells of cooking..yesterday I did a small pork roast with garlic and rosemary...also did some roasted red potatoes...the whole house smelled lovely.

Do I still have my cookbooks ? Yes as with cooking itself when I am uptight 30 -60 minutes spent reading a cookbook relaxes me. When I read Framboise is reading the recipes and trying them I think she is allowing herself to forget for a time her past, her mistakes, her anxieties.

You cant do justice to a recipe if your mind is elsewhere.....and like framboise I prefer to cook for others. It enhances my pleasure to see family and friends enjoy my efforts. Thank goodness they always expect something different ..and I never disappoint. Dinner at Nana's is special. I use my Lenox holiday plates whenever the family dines here, after all when you are a senior EVERYDAY is a holiday. 3 years ago I bought service for 8 of stoneware with snowmen on it ..and the younger children use those when we have a family dinner..but I have added more of the Lenox plates so as they age they too can eat from them.

There is something in this book that takes you in..the richness of the language...just makes me feel I wish this story would go on forever. I would like to look into Framboise and Paul's life, and see her creperie continue to feed her friends and neighbors. I would like to grow old with them ...and try some of the recipes too..anna

I've got it - here is a link to various cities around the globe and what the time is relative to each - looks like for us Houston will work and it shows 4:41 -- on the East coast DC should work and it is already 5:41 where as in Wellington, which I hope works for you Kiwi - it is already 9:41 tomorrow to us - so it looks like you are 17 hours ahead of where I am here in Austin - - Therefore by starting Section 4 on Thursday at 1:00 Eastern Daylight -- you are on Daylight Savings aren't you Kiwi? -- it would be 7:AM Saturday morning your time -- Tra la - how neat to learn that...

here is the link Time and date world clock

Barbara, I find it absolutely fascinating that we can chat like this in different time zones on the internet. Where my son lives I always have to add 6 hours to my time and make sure I don't call in the middle of the night. Carolyn 16 hours ahead of me and my daughter in California 3 hours behind me. How strange that we can all be talking together but in different time zones. Wonderful internet.

Eloïse

Barbara,

Now we can instantaneously see what time it is ANYwhere! Thank you.

Reading as fast as I can ...

Barbara we have finished daylight saving til October. Its dark until just after 7 and getting dark now at 5.30pm at night. YUKK! I am doing some work for my SIL today so have not been able to come in much. Its lunchtime now and I have taken a break. Luckily I am working at home! Tonight I am having dinner with Ruth ( delicious made from scratch mushroom risotto with the correct type of arborio rice) and then we are going out to the library ( late night in Henderson) and to Push n Shove. ( our nickname for Pak n Save a discount grocery chain) I will probably be back in here after all of you are fast asleep.

Carolyn

Eloise, and on SeniorNet we don't have to worry about what the others are doing right at that moment. Trying to call someone in another time zone can be tricky. If I wait to call my West Coast family until they've finished dinner and baths, etc. I'm too sleepy to talk.

Carolyn, when I read some of your posts I realize how little I know of New Zealand. So it's your autumn season now? Will it get cold? Do you have a change of season? BTW, I'm like you on symbolism. You have to hit me over the head, but once you do, I'm grateful.

Scrawler, I'm glad you brought up Framboise's dream about Jeanette Gaudin and the angel. She mentions that more than once, and the inscription "Beloved Daughter." I think there's a longing there on Framboise's part, not to die, but to be a "beloved daughter." She wants to know that her mother loves her.

Barbara, you asked about ACORN. It's Assoc. of Community Organizations for Reform Now. Basically, its mission is to impower the powerless, help the poor and uneducated deal with city hall, etc. It is not a conservative organization. When my daughter was in college, she had the late Paul Wellstone (MN senator, killed in plane crash) for a class. He brought in former students who worked with ACORN to talk to the class.

Pedln the organisation you describe above is the same as our Citizens advice bureau which also helps those not able to afford professional advice how to deal with Government agencies etc and can put people in touch with volunteer advocates who will accompany people to interviews with Welfare authorities and any other official bodies. They will also help people with preliminary legal advice on consumer affairs etc and put them in touch with legal aid lawyers etc.

Carolyn

Pedln - because we make it our business to know a lot about the rest of the world we are often surprised there are people who do not even know NZ exists. You are only one of the many who does not know much about our small islands. People think often that we are a nation of sheep herders and don't realise how technologically advanced we are here. My son when he went to your country in 1995 was surprised to find there were still manual gas pumps in country areas when we are digitalised throughout the country. We are high users of the net and of computerised banking systems. All the high positions in the land are at present held by women so you can see we are quite an advanced society.

Carolyn

Scrawler - Didn't you just love that sentence Scrawler - "His words were a yawning of vowels in a tunnel" boy is she good - "a yawning of vowles in a tunnel" --

And I never thought of a photograph as a moment frozen in time but again - how apt...

Oh my we could fill pages on that remark - "as long as we feel good about ourself" - I wonder if Framboise had an accurate picture of herself - I know the difficulty when you have not had mirrors in the form of feedback as a child you almost feel like a shadow and of course if you have had shaming experiences then of course you see yourself as lacking in all aspects of your life - it appears to me that as a young girl she and her family were driven off therefore, carrying shame - even as a youngster she had an exaggerated view of herself and what she was capable of...

That is a problem for an adult who experienced shame as a child - they over commit and feel failure if they do not succed accomplishing their over-commitments - hmmm could it be that Madame Simon finally came face to face with reality - learning for the first time that she was not superwomen who could accomplish the impossible which is possibly how she views her responsibility similar to her stated responsiblity as a child when she declared it was her responsibility to rid "our river of Old MOther" --

hmmm simple enough rules but what do you think - the typical rules of a nine year old - "Keep your eyes open. Look after number one. Share and share alike." I can buy the sharing part but a nine year old believing that beyond any adult rules that they should keep their eyes open and look after themselves as the most important number one - hmmm sounds more like a child whose life experience is with danger to me...

I am looking forward to re-examining sections four and five because I am not sure when Reinette became a vegtable in the hospital - as a result of that night but then she was a hooker in Paris as a young women - which adds up but it also says she was functioning. OK OK later when we are in the next section - but questions are front and center...

And yes, Jeannette Gaudin is brought into the book a few times - what is that all about...

Mal - good point to remember that they were children with little to no guidance carrying out adult responsibilities

Kiwi owww great way of saying it - "Old Mother was somehow magical and mystical to Boise" magical and mystical - I wonder what do you think - could the whole fishing experience to catch Old Mother be considered a mystical experience -

Maslow describes a mystical experience as unifying, noetic,(originating within the intellect) and ego-transcending; it gives a sense of purpose to the individual, a sense of integration -

Religious mystics say that enabling a mystical experience involves focusing on empting the mind allowing our soul's desire to unite with a Divinity. hmmm gives new meaning to the sentence Scrawler included in her post - "You can learn a lot about life from fishing."

It sounds like to me your love of cooking could be your means to uniting with the Divine - "Cooking to me is a panacea for the soul." Almost makes our recipe folder a prayer book doesn't it...

Anna - I can smell it as I read it - "pork roast with garlic and rosemary" and yes, it is so much more satisfying to cook for others - that is what I miss - it gets so complicated to cook for friends but easy and a joy to cook for family - that is what I miss the most since my children are scattered - I had dreams...and I am so glad you are living out to carry forth the dreams of many of us...

I love it - "I would like to look into Framboise and Paul's life, and see her creperie continue to feed her friends and neighbors. I would like to grow old with them ...and try some of the recipes too."

time around the world - - and how seniornet along with the internet almost obliviates time - hehehehe the theory of relativity in process on Seniornet...Fun!

Pedln - do you think - sounds good to me - sure gives a plausable explanation for the childs death and tomb brought into the story several times -- "to be a "beloved daughter." She wants to know that her mother loves her."

I wonder if her quest is to find that mother's love and in the process she finds her ability to love awakened - that finding love is the by-product - she was certainly shut down and closed off from love as a child - we get the sense she wanted to connect with Cassis but he was incapable of making such a connection just as her sister in a different way was incapable of making any connection. And so of the group of them as children it is Paul with whom she makes the connection. The ying and yang united...

Thanks for explaining ACORN - Paul Wellstone - wow - I still wonder at his death...

Kiwi I think a good thing would be to get someone to listen about the idea of making a comprehensive documentary or travel video that gives us a picture of NZ - it successes and struggles and a view of a few of its cities as well as rural land and its wilderness. Maybe get Rick Steves to visit and make a travel aid that would be shown on PBS - I think most of us think of NZ as those islands off the coast of Australia with as much importance as the size of the islands in comparison to Australia.

Hopefully y'all have received the e-mail with the revised schedule that is also in the heading above...it appears we are pushing a few but they are game and this is grand - this book is such the page turner it was the hardest story to stay within the bounds of only discussing the bits in each section but we are doing great

How about checking the focus questions and see if there is any aspect of Sections One Two and Three that we have not touched on yet...

In my mind Old Mother was as much a mystical experience as the garbage Framboise probably had to take out and bury for Mirabelle. Old Mother was an aggravating mote in Framboise's eye she had to get out. Until she did she'd be irritated and frustrated by this fish just as she would have been by a speck of dust in her eye that she was aware of day and night.

Children who are alone most of the time learn fast to take care of number one. It is an instinct of survival.

Framboise was less a daredevil than she appeared to be. Just as she studied every move Old Mother made and knew where she fed and what it was she ate, she knew every mood and fluctuation of the river at the spot where the lookout was and where she could safely swim.

She knew all the roots under the water and where it was safe to dive. What she couldn't predict was the current and the snakes. It is the unpredictable that makes her think of Jeanette, the same unpredictable she wishes would take her when she is tired of the constant lone vigilance and the fight.

She is like this about every facet of her life. Everything she does is carefully planned. There's very little, if anything, impulsive about Framboise. What she watches for constantly is the unexpected, what she can't predict.

It is this unpredictable element that disturbs her about Yannick, Laure and Luc. In a moment of weakness she nearly gives up, then Paul, whose mind is much like hers, scouts around and finds the phone number and discovers the relationship between Laure and Luc. When Framboise and Paul put their minds together, it seems to me that they cannot lose.

Mirabelle's headaches were unpredictable. Framboise made it so they weren't. Now she knows exactly what to do when she wants some respite from the hold her unaffectionate mother has on her.

In many ways the methods Framboise uses are those of a scientist. We forget sometimes that cooking is a form of chemistry. The girl and then the woman had the kind of analytical mind that gave her the means to turn unrelated ingredients into cake in every aspect of her life.

Mal

As I am reading - and I hope to be where I should be (and possibly all the way through) by this evening - I am registering some decidedly mixed feelings about the narrator. I will elaborate when I am farther ahead.

Since I joined late and did not read all the preceding posts, I don't know whether there was ever a question about "Backfisch", Tomas's name for Framboise. The German term is used ONLY figuratively to describe a teen or a gangly preteen, never as an appellation, which Tomas mockingly does.

Mal,

I love the way you have written about Framboise's feelings about Old Mother.

"Old Mother was an aggravating mote in Framboise's eye she had to get out. Until she did she'd be irritated and frustrated by this fish just as she would have been by a speck of dust in her eye that she was aware of day and night."

I have just finished reading Part IV. This part made me feel more emotional. I wanted to jump in the bushes and drag Reinette home. She seemed so innocent and childlike. Innocence seems to slow the feet and thoughts down at the wrong moment. It's almost like being stagestruck.

A lot went on that night at the La Mauvaise Reputation. I am a little bit confused about what all did go on. What was Tomas' part in all of it? Did Mirabelle and her need for pills have something to do with that night? Did she understand what had happened to Reinette that night?

After that night, Mirabelle seemed to become more maternal towards Reinette. She moved her bed in her room, etc.

For some reason it wasn't until Part Four that I clearly understood Mirabelle's addiction. She had a very heavy or strong addiction. I didn't feel comfortable with Mirabelle giving pills to Reinette.

I think the whole family is touched by that one disturbing night.

Hi Truade,

I hope it is alright to post about Part IV. Don't want to spoil the chapter readings for others.

Mal wow - unpredictable versus controlled and planned like a scientist - yes, I can see that now that you point it out - stands to reason in an unpredictable world you would try to bring order out of the chaos - the death of her childhood friend is not within her control - the unpredictable - your thesis makes me now want to go back and re-read where ever Jeanette is mentioned and see it as a reference to the unpredictable nature of life and death.

INteresting how it is so much easier to see how she learns and knows every twist and turn of the river system and that is what is happening with the preperation of foods - maybe because it is not described in the same adventerous way - there are so many things I do in my life that are all about the adventure - to watch and see how things happen - but I have always looked at the preperations of food as having to have the perfect final product - hmmm talk about doing only to please some inner judgemental voice - no play here - wow lots to think about...

Hats - one more day and we are off onto section Four - we hope to give our readers till Thursday afternoon - I had receieved e-mail from two and then Traude shared here - so that is three readers we are giving just a bit more time so they can be a part of us having read through or at least most of Section Four - so a bit more patience Hats...

Let's use your questions as some of the focus questions to uncover the Section...our readers may want to read with your questions in mind...Great Questions Hats...
A lot went on that night at the La Mauvaise Reputation. I am a little bit confused about what all did go on.
What was Tomas' part in all of it?
Did Mirabelle and her need for pills have something to do with that night?
Did she understand what had happened to Reinette that night?

Traude looks like several of us all got on the computer at the same time - oh my the glory of this technology still amazes me - looking forward to hear your comments - and thanks for the bit about Tomas' nickname for Framboise --

Talk about a pointed put down - on page 120 - I laughed when Framboise suddenly answers "Sewage" AND she says it pleasently - I love it - I can never think of those quiet stabs when needed - Since Angers is up stream the sewage is coming from Angers which can also mean Laure and Yannick are part of that sewage -

But Laure and Yannick are not near so subtle with their aggressive put down of Framboise - clods in comparison.

Barbara and Pedlin thanks for your welcome. I finished the book several days ago and do not want to ruin it for others.

Pedlin, you said that from my post that Angers seemed very special to me. All of France is very special to me. I remember vividly standing on the ramparts of the Chateau in Angers and looking out over the river.

Barbara you asked what particularly disturbed me about the book. I am horrified at the idea that a daughter would do something to bring on her mother's migraine headaches. Having suffered from migraines I cannot imagine ever trying to cause anyone to have a migraine. My mother is my best friend. I would not hurt her deliberately and cannot understand how anyone could do such a thing. I am not saying that my mother always understands how I feel about things. She definitely does not. However I do not have the kind of relationship with my daughters that my mother and I have. I really come closer to that kind of relationship with my sons.

I will not say more about Framboise because I do not want to give anything away.

Hats that scene at La Mauvaise Reputation was confusing. I read it over several times.

I will say that the book helped me to forget about my illness for awhile. It sure did capture my attention.

Joan

I'll add another question to consider about Sec. 4 -- to go along with Hats' "What was Tomas' part in all this?"

Why did Tomas suggest to Framboise that she tell the others to come that night to the Mauvaise Rep? Was he including her, or did he mean just the brother and sister? I had one innocent theory, but now I'm not so sure.

Traude, glad you brought up "Backfische." It hasn't been discussed that I remember, but no doubt many of us have wondered about its meaning.

I think it's true that very, very few, if any of us here, had a mother like Mirabelle. There was no love shown by her to her children, and she rejected any sign of love from her kids. She cooked well for them when she felt like it, but food wasn't what they really needed. Her behavior was erratic. She neglected her children, but didn't hesitate to make them aware of their "sins" and punish them for them. She made them very aware of her bitterness and scorn.

Which of us had a mother who pushed us away and didn't want us around? Or whipped us so hard with a rope that our legs were covered with bruises and welts?

When I said earlier that these children were orphans, I meant they were orphans when their mother was alive and they lived with her. There is no real way we can compare our mothers with Mirabelle. . . . Unless we didn't have a mother.

Page 188:

"My mistake was thinking children were like trees. Prune them back and they'll grow sweeter. Not true. Not true. When Y. died I made them grow up too fast. Didn't want them to be children. Now they're harder than me. Like animals. My fault. I made them that way."

Mal

JOAN, your being here with us is a great gift.

I came to the discussion late myself, but then I had not committed beforehand. But things have changed.

In my previous post I mentioned "mixed feelings", yes indeed. And one has to do with my horror at the calculated cruelty Framboise inflicts on her mother, more than once. It made me gasp. Your post, JOAN, resonated with me for that reason.

At this point in my reading I am unconvinced of the author's belated, adult rationalization. Is the reader really expected to like Framboise? Why?

Also, I think that, for the fuller understanding of the American reader, several points need to be clarified about the history of World War II, which began in Europe in 1939; about the French résistance; the German occupation of- first- the north of France; the role of the collaborateurs (men and women) and their punishment. That might help us to better analyze (if not understand) Tomas.

But I can't do any of that until I have finished the book.

Reading as fast as I can.

No matter what you can say about Mirabelle's neglect and mistreatment of her children, she did do her best under very difficult circumstances, and she did fiercely love them. "Anyone messes with my children, and I'll kill the bastards," she says. And she means this literally.

This book is definitely a thriller with all sorts of surprises revealed near the end, and the usual tying up of loose ends for the reader at the finish. Of course, we find out about the horrible scandal hanging over Framboise. I won't say any more about that until we get up to it in the schedule.

In addition to the mystery of what happened years ago, this book also provides an interesting portrait of how elderly people can reinvent thier lives and achieve success late in life. The way in which Framboise comes home, starts her business, and fights to make it a success is an inspiration to me.

The people of the village, along with the reader, do not find out the whole truth until Framboise finally reveals it in the end. The townsfolk believed that Mirabelle was totally responsible for the disaster that befell them. The reader knows different but does not find out the nature of the disaster until Framboise tells her story. Telling the truth finally does make Framboise free of the past, and free to live the rest of her life in peace.

The truth shall set you free indeed! That is such a true sentence. Paul loved Framboise all her life and to his joy she came back and he was able to quietly watch over her.

Carolyn

We must remember that Mirabelle is a drug addict. Her behavior shows it throughout most of this book.

One minute she'll say, "Anyone messes with my children, and I'll kill the bastards," and the next minute she's pushing Reinette into a swarm of wasps or writing in her journal, "I would sell my children for a night's sleep."

When a people are addicted to drugs, they can only love one thing -- their drug of choice. Mirabelle doesn't rule her life or that of her children, morphine does.

Mal

Addicts still love their children even though it may not seem so. That is why so many have pulled themselves together and got clean. That is why Mirabelle hugged Boise to her fiercely that day and offered to take her to town. She also made sure that her eldest daughter had as pretty a wardrobe as she could muster even though it was a very meagre one. The drug of choice however takes away their ability to show that love. Yes the drug comes first and that is the tragedy of addiction. I have pity for Mirabelle as I think the loss of her husband and the hardship of the Nazi occupation were the catalyst that caused her to turn to morphine to ease her migraines which probably were the result of just too much stress. There but the grace of God go I. When my husband was slowly dying if I had not been allergic to alcohol I may have been tempted to drown my sorrows and as my dad has been a lifelong alcoholic I may have been in her shoes. Two of my siblings are alcohol dependant. One is dry and the other is in denial. So there but for the Grace of God go I.

Well, CAROLYN, as you probabably know I've worked with many, many people who have addictions to alcohol and other drugs, and know whereof I speak because I have been a recovering alcoholic for many years. Yes, it is possible for people who are active alcoholics and drug abusers to love their children, but impaired judgment causes them often to neglect or behave badly to their kids (and everyone else.) The drug always comes first.

No loss or stress, even as severe as war, can cause the disease of addiction. A person who does not have this disease will not abuse any drug under any circumstances or conditions. Someone who has this disease always will.

Mal

Oh dear let me get in here - I have had migrains the kind that lasted three days - the pain so bad you can't see and finally you upchuck and sleep - I have gone to the optician where I was told to watch a video on migrains that eminate from you eyes and that fit me as well - Years ago there was either no help and caring for your babies was just feeding them and making sure they were in a safe place so they would not hurt themselves till their father came home and could give them the attention they needed - to finally Fiarenol (spell) was given which is a narcotic - at least the drug gave relief in 6 to 8 hours till now there is help that can make a difference in two or three hours --

Maribelle was alone - no husband to help - no mother to help - no sister or neighbor to help - she was alone with these children as well as having to run a farm like a women today a single parent earning a living and taking full care of children without any day care - a migraine would be devistating and any help would be sought -

I have learned since my doctor and I was concerned about addiction - that real pain like any physical disability will use the medication it needs - now if you use the medication when you do not have the pain than there is problems - but limit it to relief from pain that is infrequent and random there should be no addiction - unless you have had this problem it is easy to imagine this is simply like a headache that you can function but with difficulty...it isn't - you just cannot function - you cannot walk straight - see clearly - your mouth does drool - your shoulder, back and arms cramp up with the pain in your skull.

And so I guess I understand the panic Maribelle would have about trying to keep safe her children - and the fiercness of her statement says more to me about determination trying to prove to herself and the world that she can and will do this regardless it is so difficult - that pain is so great that she would become like an animal and wouldn't care what others thought in her effort to take care of her children. Because during a migraine you feel like an animal.

I also think that it must have been debasing to know that because of enemy occupation and war she could not get her needed medication that enabled her to cope with the monster war that took her husband and left her alone to protect her children while earning their complete means of food, clothing, shelter, health care etc. It must have been humiliating to have to get her medication on the black market that for this drug seemed to be in control of the very enemy who killed her husband - regardless how much love they shared - they did share the care of these children and the management of the farm that Maribelle is now doing alone, with no help, while disabled with these random headaches.

yep - I think I can step in the shoes of Maribelle -

I had those headaches for years, BARBARA, from the time I was a child. Later, because my husband travelled and we lived so far away from family, there was no one to help me with my children and nothing to turn to when I was sick in this way except some kind of drug.

You apparently don't have the disease of addiction. I do.

As Joanne Harris portrays the character of Mirabelle in this book I see symptoms of addiction. I am the last one in the world to criticize anyone for this, even a fictional character, but in this book addiction certainly seems to be there.

Mal

Well, I finished the book at 3 a.m. Now to ponder it in context. For me there are left-over questions, and they do not pertain to addiction.

The meaning of the "five quarters" of the orange is revealed, too, as I knew it would be.

I see addiction too. I think it would have been impossible for Mirabelle to show any true and effective love towards her children. An addicted person is dangerous simply because their view of the world is hazy. During this time, I think the children clung to one another for support.

If Boise had felt any love from her mother, I think it would have been impossible to give her the orange. When you receive love from a person, you don't want to harm them. Boise did such a harmful thing to her mother because she did not know her.

While the children's father was alive, he seemed to fear for their physical safety.

"I sneaked into her room later and found my father taping waxed paper over a broken windowpane. There was glass on the floor from the window and the face of the mantel clock, now lying face-down on the boards....after that, my father kept our bedroom door locked and our windows bolted at night, almost as if he were afraid of something breaking in."

I think the statement in Mirabelle's journal is very chilling.

"Out of pills. The German says he can get some more, but he doesn't come. It is a kind of madness. I would sell my children for a night's sleep."

On Page 94 Framboise says:

"But Mirabelle Dartigen was not a sweet woman. She was rock salt and river mud, her rages as quick and furious and inevitable as summer lightning. I never sought the cause, merely avoiding the effect as best I could."

Mirabelle said she felt divided. This is what addiction to drugs does. There is the Mirabelle who is actively taking the drug, and there is the Mirabelle when she is not taking the drug. It's like two different people, since the drug controls behavior when it takes over.

A person can be an addict and not take a drug every day or even every week. There are binge drinkers and binge drug users like weekend drinkers or people who use drugs only every few months. This does not mean they are not addicts. An addicted person can go to work every day and do his or her job unless he or she is debilitated to the point of stupor by the drug.

Morphine is an opium derivative and a very powerful drug. It takes at least 30 days for alcohol and narcotic drugs to get out of the system when people stop taking them. It may be even longer than that with morphine. Even without taking the drug, if it's in a person's system there can be erratic behavior. Even if Mirabelle took morphine only once a month, the drug was still in her system, and her behavior could not be the same as if she had been sober and straight all the time.

I've known very few medical doctors, including psychiatrists, who understand the disease of addiction. Those who do are specially trained in this area or are recovering addicts themselves.

It's interesting that Framboise uses the word "mud" as a metaphor for her mother. Pike are bottom feeders. They feed in the mud. Old Mother was a pike.

Mal

I agree with Mal. Even though I am only thru part III there are rampant signs of addiction here in "mama."

These children are living a life of abuse, even though there is little physical manifestations of it, the abuse is powerful. The saddest part is there are no winners when a family has to suffer the elements of an addictive mother. As resilent as children are they learn to assuage their pain and torment in very creative ways.

Hi, ANDY! It's good to see you!!

Framboise on Page 166 - 167

"I make no apologies. I wanted to hurt her. The old cliché stands true: children are cruel. When they cut they reach the bone with a truer aim than any adult, and we were feral little things, merciless when we scented weakness. That moment of reaching out in the kitchen was fatal for her, and maybe she knew it, but it was too late. I had seen weakness in her, and from that moment I was unrelenting. My loneliness yawned hungrily inside me, openng deeper and blacker galleries in my heart, and there were times when I loved her too, loved her with achy, needful desperation, then I banished the thought with memories of her absence, her neglect, her indifference. My logic was wonderfully mad; I would make her sorry, I told myself. I would make her hate me."

I think what Framboise is saying here is that she would make her mother notice her and begin to act like a mother.

Mal

These questions will be added to or re-arranged late this afternoon -

Why did Tomas suggest to Framboise that she tell the others to come that night to the Mauvaise Rép?
Was Tomas including Framboise, or did he mean just the brother and sister?
Is there an innocent theory.

What is different about La Rép as compared to the market in Angers?
A lot went on that night at the La Mauvaise Réputation. What did go on.
Where are the opposites - where are the polor opposites - the extremes of behavior - where are we transfixed by joy and at the same time horror -

what is celebrated in La Rép that night -
Is this night of revelry a celebration of the death of something? Is Framboise needing to be present because this night is the twelve o'clock hour of change that affects all those in the story of this village during WWII --

how does the celebration in La Rép change the order of things - not who caused the order to be changed but rather what changed -
Is the change a renewal or something going awry - slipping from the acceptable or is this the acceptable from another place entering the village.
How will change affect all those in the village -
How do the villagers react to change -
what actually changes -
The death of the old is regeneration - is there ambivalence on the part of the villagers - do you as a reader feel ambivilent about this regeneration?

What are the triumphs and for which characters are there triumphs in Section Four - what fears are conquered -

What is different between the carnival nature of the market in Angers and the carnival nature with lots of characters in La Rép -
what does the carnival nature of WWII La Rép have in common with the La Rép of Framboise, Paul and Luc...

What was Tomas' part in all what happened at La Rép
A wink sealed a relationship between Framboise and Tomas at the market in Angers - what sealed a relationship between the villigers and the Germans?

Did Mirabelle and her need for pills have something to do with what happened the night at La Rép?
Did she understand what had happened to Reinette that night?

The forces of evil in life are both powerful and unavoidable - is evil among our characters unavoidable and if they are how could the characters heal if they choise to rid themselves of evil.
Does Framboise experience a futile attempt to exercise free will during her childhood thus revealing free will as an illusion.
Are there forces larger than all of us that influence our choices in life and therefore survival is our main concern?

During the years of the war all of our main characters have a flaw - which character do you think is the best of the worst and which character do you think is the worst of the worst. (we may all have a different opinion here - but let's hear who and why you think a character is the worst or best of the worst)
Is there any similarity between Luc and Tomas?

The color yellow - yellow ribbon, yellow teeth, - what does the repetition of the color yellow mean - is it simply the color of joy that is the opposite of most of what this chapter is all about?
Is there power in secrets?

Be back this afternoon - yep, work again...

I found the Innocent Theory question intriguing. I didn't understand it or see a reason for its being asked, so I did a search. This is what I found. What these quotes say, of course, is that there is no innocence. I don't buy it, but there are people who believe in Original Sin who do. I wonder what Evolutionary Geneticists think?

"David wrote in Psalm 58:3-5, 'The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies. Their poison is like the poison of a serpent: they are like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear, which will not hearken to the voice of charmers, charming never so wisely.'
"In Psalm 51:5 David penned these words: 'Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.' "

Survival is the greatest instinct we have, regardless what forces are on us.

"Best" and "worst" are extremes. I see all of these characters as imperfect human beings, who have weaknesses and strengths. Paul is probably the most circumspect of all of them.

The similarity between Luc and Tomas that I see is that each of them does what he does because of someone or something else -- Luc for Yannick and Laure. Tomas Liebniz for the German government as represented by the German army.

When secrets are used as fodder for blackmail, they are very powerful.

La Rep was the seat of the Black Market. The other market is legal.

Mal

In my opinion the author of this book falls down in this section. I see it as the weakest part of the story, thus the confusion the reader feels.

First:~ The children have a great need for Tomas Liebniz, whose home was in the Black Forest. They see him as one of them, a man who understands the country, and is recklessly brave enough not to let it and nature defeat him. Liebniz is a playmate, friend and father figure rolled into one. The children trust him implicitly and do not question what he tells them to do.

Framboise has started to grow up. "The curse come early," her mother said. With it came feelings which are not those of a little girl, especially her feelings toward Liebniz.

Did I miss something? Where in the book does Tomas tell Framboise to go to La Mauvaise Reputation with Cassis and Reine? Is Framboise lying to them because she wants her time with him to go on "forever and ever"? Am I to believe that these children went that distance alone in the dark of night?

This is, of course, Harris's way of introducing the French characters who will be shot by the Germans to avenge Tomas's death. The Mauvaise Rep scene is a literary device to show the good guys and the bad guys "sharing the same bed" as preface to the execution. Some are shown in good light; some are shown in bad, and it's not always clear who the enemy really is, or the résistance, for that matter.

In my mind the high point of this scene is when some of the Germans pull out musical instruments and start to play. It is pleasant, and it is surreal, almost a fantasy. Well, the whole scene is surrealistic, including the sex scene with a prostitute and two soldiers and the rape of Reinette and the accidental murder of Gustave which follow. I find the Mauvaise Réputation scene hard to believe through Framboise's eyes, but, of course, it or something like it was necessary if the author is going to resolve her plot against Mirabelle and the Dartigen family.

Mal

"I'd had my day, my one perfect day, and already my heart was boiling with rage and dissatisfaction. I clocked the sun. Four hours. An impossible time, a whole afternoon, and yet it wasn't enough. I wanted more. More. The discovery of this new appetitie within me made me bite my lips in desperation; the memory of the brief contact between us burned at my hand like a brand. Several times I lifted my palm to my lips and kissed the burning place his skin had left. I lingered over his words as if they were poetry."

This shows that Framboise is growing up. And no at this age or any age it is never enough.

"Where are you? Where are you hiding? My voice sounded hoarse and shrill, like my mother's. The air sizzled with my fury. Come out and show yourself! Dare you! Dare You!"

Now this paragraph shows Framboise as she reverts back to acting like a child. I don't know about you but I notice that the author uses "rage" and "fury" a lot. I'm not sure that this is what these children are feeling. It seems to me that "rage" and "fury" are too much of an emotion for a child. I can see it in a man and even sometimes in a woman, but not so in children. I can see them being angry, yes, but rage?

"When Y. died I made them grow up too fast. Didn't want them to be children. Now they're harder than me. Like animals. My fault. I made them that way."

I would say that this scene was a normal scene for a mother who blames herself that her children had to grow up too fast after her husband died. Speaking from experience I know that this feeling can be true. It depends on the personality of the children and the mother.

"And it wasn't so much the smile as something behind the smile - a look, a kind of searching, wry look - that my my heart beat faster and my face flush with something more than the heat of the fire. If I told him, I thought suddenly, that look would go from his face. I couldn't tell him. Not ever."

Here we see the emotions of Framboise about Paul. And once again we can see the effect of what "secrets" can do. If only Framboise could have told Paul earlier in the story. Unfortantely, we are all different in temperament and some people can accept "secrets" and other people can't. Framboise was getting close to Paul, but she still feared that if her secret would be revealed he would not accept it or her. I have to say I don't know many men who would have been as patience as Paul was.

"What are you staring at now?" she cried at me, stabbing at the air with her hands. "What are you staring at, damn you? What is there to see?" I gave another shrug. "Nothing. "That isn't true." Voice like a bird's, sharp and precise as a woodpecker's beak. "You're always staring at me. Staring. What at? Thinking what, you little bitch?" I could smell her distress and fear, and my heart swelled with victory. Her eyes dropped from mine. I did it, I thought. I did it. I won." She knew it too. She looked at me for another few seconds, but the battle was lost. I gave a tiny smile, which only she could see. Her hand crept to her temple in the old gesture of helplessness."

These paragraphs show a woman in distress and fear, but is it because she is on drugs or because she senses one of her headaches coming on? Also, we see Framboise at her worst. I don't see that she has won anything, except to see her mother suffer. I'm not happy with this character when she acts like this. I don't see the mother as vindictive at all, but I do see Framboise that way.

Mal asks "Where in the book does Tomas tell Framboise to go to La Mauvaise Reputation with Cassis and Reine?" He doesn't. He says, "Tell the others to come by La M R this evening. Might be some fun."

My earlier questions were why did he want them there, and was he including Framboise? Surely he knew her well enough by then to know she wasn't about to get left behind. But why even suggest that children go to such a place. My "innocent theory" about that was that he thought they might enjoy seeing and hearing the musical instruments, especially since no one could listen to radios any more.

Now I'm not so sure, although I don't see him as a cruel man who would deliberately try to set up a 12-year-old girl to be raped. So why did he want them there -- to pass more contraband, pass pills to Mama? Also, has Framboise told Tomas what she does with the orange peel, or does he bring her oranges just to be nice?

Good grief, I'm going to be looking at everyone for ulterior motives. But, what kind of a man is Tomas? Or is he still a boy?

Yes, Mal, these children neededthe charming Leibnitz. He appealed to Boise's sense of adventure initially. Reine was bewitched by this country boy. Cassius equated himself with Tomas, as he tried to impress him. He was the first adult the kids had met that still acted like a kid himself. " He was one of us,he played by our rules." "The adult world was a distant planet inhabited by aliens. We understood little of it."

I believe he actually felt sorry for these kids and was careful to remind them to keep quiet about their meetings. Was the mother passing on information to the Germans? Did she have an affair with Tomas or was it merely her drugged induced libido on over-time?

I find myself wanting to go back and reread this novel to sort out questions tha remain dubious.

I don't know Scrawler about your belief that rage is too strong a word for a child's emotions. I've seen plenty of enraged children. They may act it out differently than an adult but it is evident in their relationships with others. They may merely be sullen and uncommunicative or obnoxious and flail out at anyone. Rage is not inherent, it is a learned behavior and these children had plenty of reason to be enraged, IMO.

ANDY, I think Mirabelle had sex with Liebniz so he'd get morphine for her. As I said (and as you well know from your career as a nurse) addicts will do anything to get their drug of choice.

Mal

Sorry folks - I need to catch up with you -

Found a wonderful house for this young couple I've been working with and we had to compete with 3 other offers - my time has been gobbled up - they got the house! - Yea - their offer was good but the seller only had the house on the market for 7 days with 9 showings and out of those nine showings he received 3 offers - one offer in fact was a cash offer but my young couple were willing to close in two weeks and so he countered on the price and they got the house - we're in the home stretch now...So I can start to breath again...we agents get so caught up in trying to make the dreams of those we work with come true...

In between trips in the car to deliver offers etc. my mind was going back to our book - there is something very unsettling about this Fourth Section isn't there - it happens in the night and like the dark with lights from windows and doors opening and closing that is how I get bits and pieces of what is happening.

All of a sudden it hit me - we are all so concerned about understanding not only the plot but the motive for why certain characters acted as they did - that says to me we are trying to make a personal judgement as to who was acting inappropriatly or back to the question as to who is the worst of the flawed characters.

What hit is - it does not matter who acted inappropriatly or why anyone acted as they did - This is the story - the story is telling us something - what is really going on here - we know that the focus of any story is not on opinions but the reasons behind the opinions.

Where are the similarities - did you notice the use of the color yellow - yellow ribbon, yellow teeth, - what does the repetition of the color yellow mean - is it simply the color of joy that is the opposite of most of what this chapter is all about?

Where are the opposites - where are the polor opposites - the extremes of behavior - where are we transfixed by joy and at the same time horror -
A literary quote from Jung - "Between all opposites there obtains so close a bond that no positioncan be established or even thought of without its corresponding negations, so that 'les extrêmes se touchent.'...True opposites are never incommensurables; if they were they could never unite."

what is celebrated in La Rép that night - how does it change the order of things - not who caused the order to be changed but rather what changed - is there a renewal or something going awry - slipping from the acceptable or is this the acceptable from another place entering the village.

What are the triumphs and for which characters are there triumphs in Section Four - what fears are conquered -

How will change affect all those in the village - how do the villagers react to change - what actually changes -

The death of the old is regeneration - is there ambivalence on the part of the villagers - do you as a reader feel ambivilent about this regeneration?

Is this night of revelry a celebration of the death of something? Is Framboise needing to be present because this night is the twelve o'clock hour of change that affects all those in the story of this village during WWII --

There is certainly more to the difference between the carnival nature of the market in Angers where a wink sealed a relationship and the carnival nature with lots of characters in La Rép - what does the carnival nature of WWII La Rép have in common with the La Rép of Framboise, Paul and Luc...

must leave again - but promise I will be back tonight and get caught up with everyone's post for the past two days - I think this is probably the most difficult section of the book for most of us - and I think we will find we do all share a different understanding of the many levels in this book - we already have opinions that differ - if Maribelle had an addiction or not - and that is OK - we are bringing to this read our own history to relate to the characters, the plot and we are coming away with a variety of themes...See you later...

Joanne Harris is a calculating writer. There is very little in this book that hasn't been thought out and well-planned before it was written.

I have already mentioned that the scene in La Mauvaise Reputation is the means Harris uses to bring the Germans (enemy) and the French (resistance) together. These are the opposites mentioned in your quote, BARBARA, who are bonded by war. I don't see this scene as a celebration of anything. I see it as a deliberately written, pivotal part of the book.

Mirabelle's migraines and her use of morphine are in the book for two reasons I see. The first reason is to explain why the children are so free, undisciplined and able to do what they do, like go to La Rep, for example. The second reason is to link Mirabelle with the Germans. It is mentioned several times in her journal that a German is supplying her with the pills.

The children's link to the Germans is, of course, Tomas Liebniz. Through him the reader ( this reader, anyway ) begins to soften a little toward the enemy, to see these Germans as people and not Nazi monsters.

The fish is there for more than one reason. It reveals the tenacious nature of Framboise, as seen in her soliloquy on Pages 187 and 188, .

"I thought of Jeannette Gaudin then and the water snake, of the long brown bodies hanging up against the standing Stones and the feeling I had had, earlier that summer a million years ago, the conviction . . . . It was an abomination. A monster. No one could make a pact with a monster.

No one could make a pact with a monster. Framboise cannot make a pact with her mother, who in her eyes is an untouchable monster like the fish, and she can't make a pact with a fish that refuses to be caught. But she has unwittingly made a pact with the monster enemy as represented by Liebniz, by saying she'll get Cassis, Reinette and herself to La Rep.

Mal

The lead-in to the bar scene is beautifully planned out and done. It is later that Harris fails, in my estimation.

She has congregated all the important characters in the remembered part of the book in one place, except for one . . . Mirabelle. It is with calculated deliberation that Harris does not put her there.

Framboise, a 9 year old child, is inadevertently responsible for the rape of her sister, just as she is at least partly responsible for what happens later to Liebniz and her mother. And it is these things that do not ring true.

Cassis does not want to go to La Rep. He could have convinced Reine not to go, and Framboise either would have had to go alone or stay home. In either case, the book would have been different.

When they go to La Rep, the question that arose in my mind was, "Why didn't they go inside?" Tomas invited them there. He would have welcomed them and persuaded the others that it was all right for them to be there. The author decided this was not to be. Framboise was to be the outside narrator, witnessing what was going on inside and around her, but not really a part of it. It is here that this section takes on a surrealistic, almost fantastic, dream-like quality for me.

The motives of the characters, their actions and reactions, and our opinions and responses to them are all important. I'm not interested in which character is "good" and which is "evil", best of worst, or who acted inappropriately in this story, nor is it my aim to judge any character in this book. I want to understand why these people behave as they do. Mirabelle is relatively easy. Framboise is not. Our ability to understand either of these women and the rest of the characters depends entirely on the author's facility as a writer. Sometimes Joanne Harris is superbly capable. Sometimes she's not. There's more I see in this respect, which I'll point out when we examine the last section of the book.

Mal

First a note on the name, if I may:

1. It is LEIbniz, not LIEbniz. The German pronunciation of words with "ei" differs from that of words with "ie". "EI" sounds like I; e.g. "Eis" means and sounds like ice. The "IE" in the word "Lied" (song) for example sounds exactly as in the English word "lead". All German nouns are capitalized as a matter of course.

2. For the sake of completeness, and as a matter of possible interest, I'd like to add that a famous man bore that name: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646-1716, philosopher, mathematician, and leading figure in the German Enlightenment. He was knowledgeable in all branches of the sciences known at that time and influential in all of them, too.

We should understand that the bulk of the story is told by a precocious, perpetually resentful, disgruntled nine-year old. There are definitely parallels to Harriet in Donna Tartt's The Little Friend, but she, Harriet, was twelve, as was Nabokov's Lolita , and neither was that deliberately cruel, perpetually resentful and disgruntled. The 65-year old Framboise retains the same prickly temperament. As SCRAWLER said, she was lucky Paul stuck with her.

It is not altogether easy to keep a grip on the story because the narrative jumps back and forth between the past and the real time of narration, which is the author's prerogative. Hence, it is up to the reader to unravel and make sense of the events.

We get the first closer look at Mirabelle in chapter 6. It also sheds light on the superstition about Old Mother. As Mirabelle reports in the album, Yannick did see her and ran home, leaving his fish behind, in fear that bad luck would now befall him.

The meaning of the second passage from the album (page 30) is unclear. What caused the falling-out of love? "Y. stays for the sake of the children."

By that time the children know that something is wrong with their mother who "every six months or so would suffer a really serious attack."

"When I was very young ..." (how young?), Framboise reports on pg. 31, "she collapsed on the way back from the well ..."

How old was Framcoise at that time? Three? Four? Believing her mother dead, she "felt relief, hope and an ugly, primitive joy." in addition to feeling hard inside, frozen.

The father mentions "bad spells"; there is later blood in the sink; the father sleeps in the kitchen during spells; he is concerned for the children's safety and locks their door. None of this is fully explained. The fall by the well is not necessarily a symptom of an approaching migraine.

I will return to my concerns and questions later.

I'd have to agree with Mal and Pedin on this one. Although I love Harris's style of writing and the words and phrases she uses, I some times get tangled-up with the plot. And one of those times was the scene at the La Mauvaise Reputation. I have to ask myself if she was portraying Tomas as a hero even though he was a German. He was a hero in the eyes of Framboise. Then why did he want these children to go to a place like that? Was it just as pedin said that he just wanted the children to hear the music. I just can't help having that feeling there is something missing from that particular scene. Like the author left something out. Oh well, enough already. Barbara is right - it's not our place to change her story - we'll just have to write our own.

"She had a peculiar hatred of drunkenenness, of dirt, of loose living, and the place epitomized all of these to her. Though she was not a churchgoer she retained an almost purtianical view of life, believing in hard work, a clean house, well-mannered children. When she had to walk past the place she would do so with her head lowered protectively, a scarf crossed at her chest, mouth pursed against the sounds of music and laughter from within. Strange that such a woman - such a self-controlled, order-loving woman - should have fallen victim to drug addiction."

Strange indeed!

"Like the clock, she writes in her album, I am divided. When the moon rises I am not myself. She went to her room so that we would not she her change."

Does anyone know what she meant by: "when the moon rises I am not myself"? Does this refer to her drug addiction?

"Drunkenness, she told us once in a rare moment of confidence, is a sin agaisnt the fruit, the tree, the wine itself. It is an outrage, an abuse just as rape is an abuse of the act of love."

This passage sets up a later scene, but I still find it hard to believe that she became a drug addict when she felt this way about drunkenness.

"No, my mother went to La Mauvaise Reputation out of need, simple need, because that was where most of the trading took place. Black market trading, cloth and shoes and less innocuous things like knives, guns, ammunition...Everything had its place at La Rep, cigrattes and brandy and picture postcards of naked women, nylon stockings and lace underwear for Colette and Agnes, who wore their hair loose and reddened their cheekbones with old-fashioned rouse so that they looked like Dutch dolls, one high crimson spot on each cheek and a round bud on the lips, like Lillian Gish. - But that is where she got the pills."

If Framboise knew about the black market and she also knew about her mother geting the pills at La Rep, than why did she want to go there? Just because Tomas asked her. Or was he not really asking her, but asking for her brother and sister?

Here I want to join the conversation and have yet to speak to all the previous posts - with a lot of good stuff in the them...

Ny thoughts as to her addiction -
There are sentences and ways that some see as signs of addiction - and it is true there are even critics who call addiction - but the author doesn't say addiction - we do not know how often she takes the pills - 30 pills is that for a month or two or for a week - we do not know except based on our own history - as to sentences being typical of the kind used by those addicted - that can be true and yet, we know many folks who can find words to support most behavior in the Bible -

And so I think we cannot examine and understand this section by using addiction as the base for understanding - it is us bringing to the story what colors a story - and again I think that is looking for cause and affect in the story -

When we read anything about group scenes that includes violence side by side with joyous celebration, the understanding is found in the concept of Carnival -

We have music - girls and boys having a good time - drinking - aS the joyous celebration - we have a disgruntal villeger at the bar we have children in the alley where the garbage is thrown and we have violence that dark night -

we not only have resistence and Germans mingling but we have the innocent and the brutal - we have tradition and new sounds - I need to re-read to list all the opposites - it is those opposites that Carnival is all about - and Carnival is about death and renewal.

But look at the list you have brought to our attention Scrawler - talk about opposites --
Black market trading - sleezy but the itesm are the everyday items required by the average cloth and shoes and then also we have the weapons of aggression guns, ammunition...

Cigrattes - brandy - picture postcards of naked women, to titilate but all products that are part of relaxation or party going - Along those lines are the nylon stockings and lace underwear for Colette and Agnes, who wore their hair loose and reddened their cheekbones with old-fashioned rouse so that they looked like Dutch dolls, - Dolls inanimated pleasing looking dolls!?! - one high crimson spot on each cheek and a round bud on the lips, like Lillian Gish - Lillian Gish Who was known to play the innocent young women in need !?! - OPPOSITES ALL -

And those pills can be a danger if misused but also, the means that allows Maribelle to funciton with her handicap in this nightmare situation the war has put her in.

I have read The Spirit of Carnival by David K. Danow and own a few other books that I have only flipped through - on the internet I know there are some web sights that further explain Carnivalisque because it was on those sites I got my first knowledge of this way to better understand a story - this thinking was first brought to our attention by Bakhtin as he unraveled Crime and Punishment

My thinking is that the way to sort through this chapter is not by cause and affect but by following the opposites -

And what is all this with the color yellow - look how often the color yellow is mentioned in this chapter - at least 7 or 8 things are said to be yellow...

Sure, BARBARA, we can dismiss drug addiction from analysis of this book if you want to, but the fact remains that on Page 195 of this book, after talk about Mirabelle's "suppliers" and how she paid them, it says, "Strange that such a woman - such a self-controlled, order-loving woman - should have fallen victim to drug addiction."

I don't speak from the viewpoint of a person who has the disease of addiction here, I speak as someone who has studied it and found out as much about it as I can so I am able to work with addicts and hopefully help them. I'm sure Andy speaks from the knowledge her profession requires. I leave real estate law and procedures and such things up to people like you because you are more knowledgeable than I am. However, there are some things I state because of knowledge, not personal experience or opinion.

Before I put that topic aside for good, I'll say anyone can have the disease of addiction. It doesn't matter if you're self-controlled and orderly or if you're impulsive, "slack" and don't give a damn, it can happen to anyone in any walk of life.

I'm not sure I know how to discuss characters in a book without talking about cause and effect. I'll think about opposites, and I'll think about yellow. We did a lengthy study of the color yellow, which is mentioned often in this book, in the discussion of "The Yellow Wallpaper." Guess I'll look in the archives so I can remember what we said.

Mal

BARBARA - before I continue with my first thought expressed in # 246, let me reply to three points.

(1) Addiction. The fact that Mirabelle was addicted is clear and indisputable. An addiction to any habit-forming substance manifests itself in the desperate craving and the absolute preparedness to do anything to satisfy it. It cannot possibly be shown any more clearly.

(2) The market at Angers, a provincial capital some 15 kilometers from Les Laveuses, was a regular event. To this day markets are held in several towns I have visited over the decades in Switzerland, as well as in German cities and towns. Such markets were and are serious business, no carnival is associated with them. Because, you see, carnival has its own separate special season in Europe (and elsewhere in the world) that extends in Europe from November to the following Mardi Gras, Mardi Gras being its culmination .

In the time I remember, a big FAIR was held every fall in some large cities.The fairs included an expanded market with vendors from all parts of the country, and amusement for the young.

In sum, with a war on and German soldiers watching over the proceedings, there could not possibly have been a carnival atmosphere in Angers on that market day. Framboise was away from Les Laveuses for the first time. She was beside herself with delight, but she had no earthly idea what the Occupation meant and what it entailed. That's how she and her siblings fell into Tomas's trap.

(3) The Black Market was operative in Europe not only during but also after the war, in fact until 1948 in Germany, when a Monetary Reform was undertaken under the auspices of the American Occupation with every soul receiving exactly forty (40) Deutsche Mark of new money; the bundles of the old Reichsmark were worthless paper.

The Monetary Reform effectively ended the reign of the Black Market. Without it the so-called Eeconomic Miracle in Germany in the early fifties would not have been possible.

On collaborating with the enemy.

It must be remembered that countless wars were fought over centuries in continental Europe and in England. During the 30-years war, marauding soldiers of every stripe marched across Europe many times over from 1618 to 1648, pillaged, burnt, and ransacked. In all those wars, a little "army" followed the soldiers, they were the camp followers who provided services of all kinds, often only for their own benefit, indifferent to the outcome of battles or the fate of the combating armies. Women were also "recruited", a (nasty) practice remembered by the Japanese when they hired Korean "comfort women" to see to the needs of their soldiers in WW II. It remains a sore issue between Korea and Japan to this day. And no wonder.

I have to stop here but will return with more comments.

Before I continue with my train of thought I'd like to comment on Part II of MAL's post earlier today.

MAL, La Rép was a pub, a public house. For adults. A child, even an adolescent, would neither be expected nor tolerated there. In that time of war, it was a place were people, men and a few women, congregated. They drank, played cards, flirted, ogled, leered.

Mirabelle had forbidden her children to go there, with good reason. She herself went solely to replenish her reservoir of pills.

I visited my paternal grandfather several times with my father when I grew up; each time against the wishes of my mother who stayed home. He lived on a farm in the country but she deemed the village "too primitive". He called her Madame (she was of French descent). My father and I were visiting there one year, I was 5 or 6. My grandfather sent my cousin Henry and me to the pub one mid-morning to fetch beer. The pub was open but we had to use the back entrance. I remember licking the wet brown bottle, imitating Henry. I fell and cut my hand (rather badly) on a shard. Henry ran inside, Grandfather and Father labored over me. I will not describe my mother's reaction when we came home. The next time we all went together for Grandfather's burial. (My mother had come with us twice, I remember, once when the family honored my father for some reason, and the next time when grandfather had pigs slaughtered, and one was for us. She told me not to look (I dind't) and held my ears when the pigs squealed endlessly. That's where "primitive" came from.

Back to La Rép: Even someone in authority, which Tomas was not, could or WOULD have been tempted to defy local custom by allowing children darken the door of a pub, because the custom, almost a taboo, was exactly the same in his country.

I don't recall that the children had any idea musical instruments would be brought in that evening, what those were or sounded like when played. It is possible that Tomas thought they'd be interested in and pleased by this unusual display. His intention may have been sincere. By contrast, Gustave's death was no accident.

What Tomas really is will not be apparent until the end. And clouded even then by Framboise's precocious infatuation. Despite appearances, a nice guy he is not. As for "having sex" with Mirabelle ... well it was really more than that, wasn't it?

In my above post I said "congregated" but should have added "relatively freely" but still under the eyes of an ostensibly harmless charming man.

What else was there to do for the men and women? There was no entertainment in small villages. To listen to the radio was forbidden, the nearest cinema in Angers.

If any villagers WERE résistance fighters or sympathizers, which is by no means clear-cut, they are to be admired in the face of such intense scrutiny. For the Germans are nothing if not thorough in whatever they do.

On page 21 Framboise remembers

"Wasn't there that business in Angers a few years ago, when an old woman was found locked in a room above a top-floor flat? Her parents had shut her there in 1945, when they found out she'd collaborated with the Germans. She was sixteen. Fifty years later they brought her out, old and mad, when her father finally died."

Women in Paris (and in Rome,too, for that matter) who were associated with the Germans had a high profile. After the defeat of the Germans, the women were openly scorned and had their heads shaved.

Mussolini had a violent death: As the Americans made their way up from the south, he tried to flee Italy with his mistress, Clara Petacci, whose head was on one of the coins in circulation at the time. They were caught close to the border with Switzerland and both hanged, upside down, by the partigiani (partisans).

OK Mal and Traude - This is sort of in response to your recent posts - there will be more real response as I pick up on everyones posts for the past two days -

First let me say a bit about the carnival - the European fairs you speak of Traude can be Carnivalesque - but......

The Carnival that is used to explain literature is not just a time and place but a system of thinking that grows out of where ever there is interaction between opposites - where the magical side of a fair-type-carnival is evident, OR, the grotesque-death-embracing without rebirth of the holocaust - where the only way to handle fear is to laugh - where there is an exchange between people or between animals and people -

In otherwords to look at what is - as if an isolated painting/photo in the time right after the big bang - the chaos of behavior and morality - rather than time in a station on a railroad line of events.

Places to consider when considering the principles of Carnivalesque are street markets, prisons, restaurants, the army, political figures, jungles, fantasy, dances/dance halls, court rooms -- Places where opposites mingle - places where joy can occur or where things can go awry - there is a bit of magical realizm in carnivalesque and this web of ideas is particularly associated with WWII Europe as well as, Latin America.

Since Joanna Harris' book Chocolat is considered an example to the study of both magical realizm, like One Hundred Years of Solitude - Chocolat is also considered an example of Carnivalesque, as is Rabelais and The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, - Chocolat, her first book in her food trilogy is held as an example of these literary insights, we can take for granted that Joanna Harris is familiar with the genra and can incorperate the principles in any of her books. Therefore, we can turn to these literary techniques to help us better understand some of the themes captured in her story.

As to the Maribelle being addicted to Drugs - she could be and there is certainly many who agree that she is addicted - there is support coming from the opinion of other's in the story who say she is addicted which is what you Mal and Pedln and I think Traude also point out -

There are ways to read this, and some do, that does not say addiction - only a need for medication that can only be purchased on the Black Market and the frantic feeling of not being assured that the medication will be available or that she will have the means to arrange to get the medication along with gossip from villagers since she does not mingle or they have seen her and do not approve of her going to La Rép or they have seen her trade with the Nazis.

There are readers who see this issue as you do and there are some readers who are feeling unsure if they should post since they are seeing no addiction -

what I am saying is let's consider it as a none issue - she is buying and there is a conflict within Maribelle that surrounds where, how, and from whom she buys her medication - why not see if we can dope out her explanations of half clocks and feeling different at night - again we may all come up with a different explanation but that is OK - it only adds color to our imagination as we read this book.

WE will each bring to this book our own understanding - and that is what is so great about reading as a group - the thing we must watch is that any of us assume we are trying to nail one view that we will all agree upon.

We can learn from each other - there are readers who have different views and from a few e-mails they are feeling intimidated because their views are not matching what is being shared in our discussion -

I understand - if a view can be supported by sentences in the book you would think it had full agreement - again, it is how we read and interprete these sentences - what life experience we each bring to the plot and behavior of these characters...

We want to hear everyone's thoughts - we really do - but our mantra for this book is:
Virtually everything in the novel has more than one meaning; The novel works on many different levels. and as in any book we discuss
The focus is not on opinions but the reasons behind the opinions.

I must say for us to become so wrapped up in a book is saying an lot about this author's ability to pull us in - that is how I am seeing this discussion - the posts are fabulous and please if you have another view let's hear it - we will only grow if you will add your thoughts - Thanks

Joan - So pleased you added some of your thoughts to the discussion - yes the idea of a child, a daughter adding to a migraine is cruel just thinking about it - and yet, in some ways she seemed like a child pulling tricks on her mother to have the freedom she craved - looks like later in her life she had understood what she had done to her mother doen't it - this tough little girl grows into a women who softens and yet she still holds onto a toughness - what do you think - were you suprised that Paul knew who she was from the time soon after she came back to reclaim the farm?

Pedln - Those questions you had - Good questions - they were incorperated in our focus questions for Section Four - have you figured out yet why you think Tomas told Framboise to come that night?

Mal - They say what you do comes around - are you equating the mother's behavior with Framboise's childhood behavior to her mother by any chance - because she is rough with those children isn't she - a thought though - I wonder if she would have been as rough if her husband had still been around to help and if the war wasn't right there scaring her that her children would be harmed?

Traude - you questioned if we were to like Framboise and why - have you come up with a justification for yourself in order to like the child Framboise or do you still feel her cruelty made her an unlikeable character?

My own thought is that we can like her and not at the same time - I certainly admire her spunk and she has a steel trap mind - I also see she was used by Tomas - but I also agree there is that streak of cruelty, that is even evident when she hangs the dead snakes and fish to dry in the sun. That mixture of horror and joy of life is what is an earmark of characters in The Spirit of Carnival and so I am seeing her more as a character that is in the first steps of dealing with fear that will culminate in death to part of herself so that she will be reborn.

horselover - sounds like the roadsigns in the state of Texas doesn't it - Don't mess with my children - Don't mess with Texas - hehehehe - but she was adament wasn't she - and the concept of this as a thriller mystery - great way to describe the story - this is one story I could never have imagined on my own - how about your horselover - is this anything like any movie or book you ever have read?

Kiwi - Hate to use the word lovely - but it is lovely to read how Paul is there for Framboise in their older years isn't it - and yes, that is almost a platitude - the truth shall set you free - the fear Framboise had about sharing her truth was powerful - and the shame she had about her childhood behavior that she didn't want Paul to know - when you realize what kept Framboise to herself and distant from even her children you just have to wonder what was some of the secrets that kept Maribelle as harsh and distant a women as she was other than simply her headaches, managing without a husband, having to alone earn all the basics for her family and the war - without knowing French history before WWII I wonder what hardships Maribelle lived with that is not brought into the story but could have influenced the person she became.

Mal - Great insight how a person addicted to drugs would be towards her children - a good explanation why she is so harsh and distant.

Kiwi - Yes, Carolyn you do bring out the mixture of an addicts personality - I think you may also be touching on that all important issue that no matter how our parents behave bottom line we want their love and will see love in the small ways they are able to share it - I remember from ACOA that all alcoholic and children of alcoholic's characteristic behavior can be a millstone that drags us down and at the same time allows us to accomplish things that others cannot accomplish because they had not shared in a similar experience. Behavior as two sides of the coin...

Mal - as you say - impaired judgement can play its role and no outside force can make an alcoholic...only one day at a time...and you also experienced the migraines - remember when Doctors didn't take you seriously and said it was either your monthly cycle or stress - sheesh - well finally they have not only listened but except for the price there is some great medication on the market.

Traude - 3:AM - wow - Traude was it a rush to finish or a page turner that you could not stop reading?

Hats - Good thought that if Framboise had felt some love from her mother she would not have played tricks on her in such a cruel way with the orange - and your other thought that the children clung to each other - I can see that -

Even when Cassis and Reine left Boise at home to go to school in Angers there was this banter between them that you just knew could only be among siblings who needed each other.

We had a good picture of how Cassis felt alone and abandaned by the death of his father but we really do not have a rounded picture of Reine do we - she is there but we never get inside her thoughts well enough to indentify with her -- I am not sure what her role is telling us - do you have any ideas about Reine?

Mal - oooww yes, mud - Old Mother feeds on mud - I wonder if the fact that so little was known about addiction to morphine during WWII has anything to do with the story - what was that children's medicine that they finally stopped making just before the war that had morphine in it - I remember taking it for sick stomach - not headache but something and I just cannot remember - wasn't there much written about the soldiers in WW I who were regularly given morphine while they recovered from their wounds -

I just wonder if the regular use of morphine in that time in history has anything to do with this story - we know today how the drug affects the system but then those affects would not have been common knowledge.

Alf - when you bring up that the children were living a life of abuse I wonder how much that was typical of so many children brought up at the time - not only because of the casual use of morphine but also because of what the war did to families...

But over and above that - this characteristic lifestyle is in a novel and so it represents something because we know an author doesn't just write things - there is a plan for what is included in the plot of a story so that a theme will imerge - Alf what theme are you seeing as you ponder these children's childhood...

Mal - you see Framboise as acting out so she would be noticed and try to change her mother to be the mother Framboise desired. I wonder if she just wanted to feel loved - what do you think...

Wow that quote from David in the Bible is powerful - "the wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies." That sure doesn't leave much room for the bad and the good within each of us - and more and more literature is showing us both sides of our character - I still wonder if we are doing ourselves in by damning the bad within - certainly it leaves little room for ambiguity or the chaos theory much less rebirth.

And yes, the surreal nature of the scene at La Rép - that whole scene is worth another read - at least I need to read it again - so much going on there that I want to take it apart bit by bit - my head is still seeing the night with the lights in shapes from the windows and angles of light from doors opening that all remind me of "Film Noir."

Scrawler - she is growing up but is she young for these feelings - maybe not - we imagine innocence and forget there is a feeling of attraction that is not as mature as later in life but is every bit as strong -

Scrawler I wonder if they children are feeling rage and fury but wouldn't have those words to describe what they are feeling - I know there were many strong feelings I had as a child and never labeled them till I was past my middle years and revisited some of those feelings - I used to tie them in my mind to events or other experiences that made me have similar feelings - I had to sort of educate myself to what I felt as a child and I must say rage, horror and terror were the names of some of those feelings.

And yes, Paul is especially patient isn't he - almost a dream character.

Pedln - the motive for Tomas asking Framboise to tell the others - have you come any closer to figuring it out - like you I need to read that all again - I've already read it twice but it is still not clear - even the rape is vailed and yet you know that is what happened -

Alf - You also want to re-read - I guess I have this concept that charming men simply lie - although the story doesn't say Tomas is a lier -

I do think the age difference between him and the children is enough to suggest there is more to his friendship with them than simply kids with whom he can have some fun...the most benign rational is they feed his ego so that he can feel the older, gift bringing, sir bountiful sharing advise that wouldn't go over among his fellow soldiers or for that matter among women. And if as Mal suggests he is having sex with Maribelle than why befriend her kids...war or not how many ninteen year olds do you know who befriend a nine or twelve year old...

Mal - hmmminteresting - the morphine as a devise to bring Maribelle in contact wth the Germans - and the children soften the Germans - so we can see another side of them - they are not the objects of horror and terror but are a mixture of dance and music, playful although the enemy who take their food and provisions.

You are noticing links between Old Mother and Maribelle - the mud and that a pact cannot be made with either - hmmm and she get the mother that night she stared her down at the diner table almost as she caught the fish - besting both the monster fish and her mother - conquering both - a war that uses all her craftiness and is won - hmmm what does it mean - a child winning a war over her mother and symbolized by her catching a monster, mythical fish that grants wishes or death -

Do you think they did not go inside because they were caught between pleasing Tomas and pleasing or fearing their Mother whose wishes would include not going inside - certainly Philippe Hourias would have told their mother if they had come inside --

Traude - thanks for the spelling for Tomas - what was interesting earlier in this conversation we did share a link to Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and one site had it spelled 'ei' and anthother 'ie' and so now we know that 'ei' is the correct German.

Interesting that you see Framboise as really a very young child when she has her attack in the Garden - I need to re-read - was the father still at home when she had that attack - all this time I was thinking it took place when she was about eight since she was helping in the fields -

Lots of questions not clarified - really none of the men are well rounded out are they - even Paul is a shadowy figure - we do not know what he thinks only what he does and what he says to Framboise - oh yes, we learn what Farmboise suspects he thinks when Paul is young and she suspects he is in love with Reine. All the men are described through the eyes of Framboise where as even Laura is a character that acts seperate from Framboise's discription of her actions.

Whew - It has just gotten too late - couldn't sleep and so I had a great time responding to your posts BUT my eyes are closing - I just need to finish this up tomorrow - no that is really later today isn't it -

One of the things I want to do is take apart this bit when they are in the alley - in fact what happened that night - sentence by sentence and see what can be made of it - it certainly has some of us by the tail trying to make heads and tails of the whole episoid.

Be back later - up to post number 247

Whew, BARBARA, I'm glad you came in and posted what you have. I've stewed about the fact that people might be staying away because of things I posted here. What I"ve never been able to understand is why people write to the discussion leader when they feel uncomfortable about posting because of someone else's posts instead of coming into the discussion and saying, "Look, I don't agree with you, Mal, and this is why." Nobody will jump on you if you do, or tell you your ideas are wrong, for goodness sake! It is different viewpoints and opinions that make a discussion interesting and keep it going. Without them there is no discussion at all. So, come in and talk to us, please.

Late last night I was working on building a web page. Two of my magazines are due to go on the web right after I return from the Virginia Bash, which is next weekend, so I want to get them ready now. I began to have the jagged colored lights in front of my eyes that precede a migraine headache sometimes, and I began to think they're catching, even from a book! I haven't had such an experience for many years. It was the day I was to fly to Maine to visit my sister and her husband, and I sat on the plane doing every relaxation exercise I know to try and ward off the headache which had already started. Got there, and my grown-up nieces met me instead of my sister. My brother-in-law had been rushed to the hospital with an aneurysm. He survived the surgery, and now many years later, he is fine.

Well, that's a different story, which has nothing to do with Five Quarters of the Orange. BARBARA, what the doctors told me about my headaches was that I was "hysterical". Hysteria was the most common and overused diagnosis for any complaint a woman had for years and years and years.

I'm going on to another post because I want to say something about the book. Don't get scared away, anybody. I'm not an ogre; I'm an ordinary human being trying to make my way in this life just like everyone else, and I certainly won't jump on anybody for having ideas which are different from mine. I welcome them, for heaven's sake! ; )

Mal

BARBARA, I hurried to finish the entire book because I wanted to see the ending and the explanation for the mystery. Reading and discussing in stages was especially difficult this time and I wanted to eliminate possible misconceptions and idle speculation.

Case in point, the "5th quarter of the orange". There was no subliminal message, no numerical comparison with anything; the simple literal explanation is found in pp. 183-184.

Morphine was used, some say to excess, by Baudelaire for one. For some well known writers absinthe was the potent drink of choice and in some cases also their killer. The term" addiction" is of more recent vintage.

The French called the Germans "Boches" (=blockhead) also in World War I.

On the basis of Mirabelle's reaction to the SS soldier at the market that day convinces me that she would never ever have volunteered information to the Germans. I also feel strongly that she must have met Tomas at La Rép where she went solely to get the pills. The album describes what she traded and whom she paid (except in one instance).

The children on the other hand were gullible and- because of their circumstances- vulnerable. Moreover, they adored him. Psychologically very interesting. But I have grave personal reservations about Tomas.

BARBARA, many things were not known in this country then; many historical aspects are still not fully understood. Also, we have never been good at geography either, even of our own country. I remember the tumult some years back when a college student couldn't locate Miami on the map. How little we know - or even care to know - about Latin America on THIS continent was painfully obvious when we discussed One hundred Years of Solitude.

Do we realize that below the equator the seasons are reversed?

Another things strikes me as unlikely : How could one woman handle a farm with horses, goats, chickens, rabbits in addition to tending to the fruit as it ripened; put it by, and scrub the house without any assistance other than her children? Then scribble for hours into her album in tiny script despite recurring migraines AND insomnia? It strains credulity. Was that humanly possible?

Yes, BARBARA, Framboise was "very young" when Mirabelle fell. She was seven when the father died. But what was Mirabelle's and Yannick's history? Why did "things change" after C was born (see album excerpt)? Was it then that the migraines started? Why might Y. have considered leaving? He wouldn't have been missed, says the album entry.

The Loire, the largest river in France and a life force, is a real character, a presence, in the book, I think, and rightly so. The scenery is vividly, credibly, authentically described. That the story hangs entirely on a nine-year old I find much less credible. That a child can knowingly, blatantly inflict such pain on her mother is unnatural IMHO and simply beyond belief.

I know that the attribution of migraines is almost always a psychological one but I have another theory because I used to suffer from migraines starting as a child worsening around the age of 45, then tapering off until now when I know exactly what will trigger a migraine. For me, if I eat cheese I know I will have a headache even today, but at least now I know. The French eat a lot of cheese plus wine with it.

Life invariably brings stress especially during the war. But stress plus something your body can't digest well is a bad combination.

I am enjoying this discussion immensely and I keep reading here. I am taking lessons from it. Thanks everybody.

Eloïse

Gosh, there is a significant omission in my #251, the word "NOT". I hasten to correct the omission.

Even a German in authority would NOT have been tempted to bring children into a pub. Moreover, how could the Germans have violated the curfew they themselves had set??

A PUB, as I've said, is not to be confused with a BAR as we understand it here. They are not synonymous, they don't even look alike on the inside, they simply cannot be compared.

Now I really must be off.

Barbara, your idea of Carnival is right on the number. I'm reading "Chocolat" now and can see it clearly in that book. Here it is more in the background - you don't really see it unless you're looking for it. I'm also reading Anne Rice's book "Cry to Heaven" and there is a scene in which during Carnival they try to kill off the main character. I was so startled by it that I had to go back and re-read the passage. The reader is having such a great time at the Carnival that it sneaks up on you.

"You never give up, Framboise. You never did." Patience. His patience, kind and stubborn enough to wait out a lifetime. "That was then," I told him without meeting his eyes. "You haven't changed so much, Framboise." Maybe that's true. There's something in me still, something hard and not necessarily good. I still feel it occasionally, a hard cold something like a stone inside a clenched fist. I always had it, even in the old days, something mean and dogged and just clever enough to hang on for as long as it took to win..."Perhaps I ought to change," I said softly. "Perhaps I should."

I think Framboise is beginning to have doubts about herself. She doesn't feel very good about herself. I think she finally realizes that you don't always have to WIN. That it is okay to have played the game and not won. It is almost as if Paul is drawing her into the real world and that he is telling her that it is okay to be there.

"My anger exhausted me, but my fear kept me awake throughout the night, so that my days were broken glass and my head ached all the time. It was more than simply the fear of exposure; after all, I was Mirabelle Dartigen's daughter. I had her spirit. I cared about the restaurant, but even if the Dessanges put me out of business, even if no one in Les Laveuses spoke to me ever again I knew I could fight it out. No, my true fear - kept secret from Paul, barely acknowledged even to myself - was something far darker and more complex."

Here Framboise compares herself to her mother: "I was Mirabelle Dartigen's daugther - I had her spirit" in a good way. It is interesting how when we hold on to our fears they become "darker and more complex".

"Perhaps I still needed to win, just as I had that last summer at Les Laveuses. Perhaps it was my mother's harsh, unreasonable spirit in me, refusing to be beaten. Give up now, I told myself, and her sacrifice would have been for nothing. I fought for both of us, and thought that even my mother might have been proud."

Perhaps this is why she had to win, not for herself alone, but also for her mother. All this time and she was wanted her mother's approval: "and though that even my mother might have been proud".

"And nearly always in silence, the comfortable silence of long intimacy, the simple silence of friendship."

Aren't these words beautiful. It gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

"As the rain soaked into the collar of my good autumn coat, creeping slowly into my hair and dribbling cold fingerlings between my breasts, I had pleanty of time to realize that no, I hadn't really changed all that much, after all."

Even though she might protest, I think Framboise has changed, but they are small changes. For one thing she is waiting in the rain for Paul. I don't think she thought of Paul earlier in the story the same way that she thinks about him now.

"Hauer glared at Tomas for a moment. I could see his eyes narrowed to cuts in his thick cheeks, like slices in a piece of bacon rind. Then Tomas said something else and he relaxed, laughing with a troll's roar above the sudden renewal of sound in the taproom, and the moment was over. Gustave shuffled off into a corner to finish his drink, and everyone went over to the piano where the boxes were waiting."

Now if Tomas had other motives for asking the children to LaRep why than did he stop Hauer. I think the situation just got out of control and Tomas was just as suprised at what happened to Gustave and Reine as evryone else.

Bakhtin's Carnival-Carnivalesque

BARBARA, what you are calling Carnivalesque I've been calling Surreal. To me the Mauvaise Reputation scene is a danse macabre. To a visual kind of person the scene hypnotically attracts at the same time it repels. The whole book is like this.

For me as a reader, Five Quarters of the Orange draws me to it while I hate reading a lot of what's in it and often don't much like it at all. The only real stability and sanity in the book is the mention of food, which I said before is the thread which holds it together.

Talk about opposites -- what about the love-hate relationship Mirabelle has with Framboise and the love-hate relationship Framboise has with her mother?

I agree with TRAUDE that there's much in this book which is unbelievable. This is what I referred to as fantasy early on. A great deal of what happens in Five Quarters of the Orange is simply impossible to believe.

Since I've finished reading the book, I did a search to see what others think about this book. I found several reading groups who were discussing the book, including this one. In one a person posted that Paul is a destructive influence as well as a positive one. This is something that has bothered me. No doubt we'll discuss this dichotomy when we talk about the last section.

This morning I posted and deleted a message about how people can become addicted to medication. Self-dosing is extremely dangerous with medicine like morphine when there is no supervision by a medical doctor. It was Mirabelle who prescribed her dosage, no one else.

You can read what I quoted about how she obtained the pills on Pages 197 and 198.

I ended this post by saying some people might think I don't have sympathy for Mirabelle. This is wrong. She was a widow trying to keep a roof over her own and her children's heads in a village occupied by an enemy to her country. She was afflicted by illness, which I believe was more than just headaches, and she suffered the effects of the medicine she took as well as the aftereffects of withdrawal. I finished by saying Mirabelle had a hard, hard life and that I'm certain she found it easier when she stopped taking morphine.

Mal

Wonderful Mal - Wow we are posting at the same time and I just saw you thoughts on danse macabre - Let me catch up the other posts and then I will be current

Thanks for posting the link - here is another site that gives the background - from what I'm reading few of the web sites give us all the information as to how Carnivalesque is adapted as a literary genra - what blew me away is how it is the literary tool and mirror for those in the Camps during the Holocaust -this understanding of Carnival certainly better explains books like Catch-22 and even Slaughterhouse Five.

As I've shared, I have a copy of the Spirit of Carnival by David K. Danow and just the other day my order came with my paperback copies of both Gargantua and Pantagruel - Rabelais and also my used copy of Bakhtin's Rabelais and His World for only $1.49 - marked up but that sometimes makes it easier to find the major points -

After we read One Hundred Years of Solitude I became facinated by this genra - I ended up joining Oprah's discussion of 100 Years... and what a difference - she evidently consults with educaters because that was where I really began to understand the book which is based in Magical realizm. Only since we started reading Five Quarters... did I learn that Joanna Harris' Chocolat is considered such the example of both genras.

OK here is another site that helps to give more understanding of this way of understanding a piece of literature.Carnival

I wondered whether Mirabelle had some sort of mental illness from earlier descriptions of her "turns". The migraines were real I think and maybe stress induced. If my mother gets upset she will have a severe migraine and my childhood is full of memories of Mum being in bed,vomiting - taking in iced cloths and having to care for ourselves as well as try and be quiet. (five kids from 0-11) I had a lot of responsibilities as a child because of this and other problems. My mum had chronic depression too.I had an alcoholic father too. I think my childhood ended before I was five. I know by the time I was three I had no trust in my father and never believed a word he said. One of my sisters was cruel to my mother. I thought about this as childhood memories came flooding back. She was also the greedy child and the child who minded the most that we were poor.

The children knew they should not have been anywhere near the bar. During wartime these bars were very rough. Bars were rough when we were kids. Mostly men patrons or what our parents called "loose women who were ladies of the night in a lot of cases" The children took advantage of their mothers illness to do as they pleased. In fact it suited them for their mother to suffer.

I believe that Mirabelle could have run the farm with only the kids to help but she would have been worked to death. No wonder her temper was short. The poor woman must have been exhausted physically and mentally. Over here many families ran large dairy farms with no outside labour. The kids all went to the milking sheds before school and helped to milk more than 100 cows. They also had large farm gardens and feed crops to grow. I can see its entirely possible for Mirabelle to run a smallholding.

This book is fascinating because it makes us take a look at the side of life that is unpleasant and painful to contemplate.

Carolyn

Just a quicky - if any of you are more interested in reading books using either Carnival or Magical Realism some of the authors that are considered major contributers to these genras are:

Eli Wiesel - The Gates of the Forest - Legends of Our Time - The Town beyond the Wall
Mario Llosa Vargas - Conversation in the Cathedral - In Praise of the Stepmother - The Real life of Alejandro Mayto - the Storyteller - The War of the End of the World
D.M. Thomas - The White Hotel
Alexander Solzhenitsyn - Cancer Ward
Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel
Israel Rabon - The STreet
Juan Rulfo - Pedro Paramo
Jerzy Kosinski - The Painted Bird
All of Gabriel Garcia Marques
All of Italo Calvino
All of Dostoevsky
Anita Desai - Baumgartner's Bombey
All of Alejo Carpentier
Isaac Babel - Red Cavalry Tales
All of Aharon Appelfeld
All of Isabel Allende
ILse Aichinger - Herod's Children
Kuznetsov Anatoli - Babi Yar

Quite a start-up list - the library may have some of these authors and it seems to me I saw Babi Yar avalable to read on the internet. Although not printed anywhere I would think a good example of Carnival in the movie would be Cabaret with Joel Grey and Lisa Minelli.

Hi everyone,

Just visiting. I've been having a good time reading this discussion although the end of the semester prevents me from reading the book.

Barb--I'd say that Carnivalesque (which is, of course, an adjective) is not a genre but rather an element one might find in a novel or short story. Mal has posted a good brief link to the elements of Carnival which Bakhtin noticed. It's also important to note that Bakhtin was a critic in the 1930s whose work later became very popular with lit crit folks.

His starting point was criticism of Rabelais and much of what he wrote has to do with what Rabelais wrote.

I think it's always important to keep in mind who came up with an idea and what writer the critic was originally working with.

That's because frequently the literary theory works best with that particular author.

Anyhoo, I do think that Barb and Mal are looking in many of the same places to come up with the descriptions of "carnivalesque" and "danse macabre") Another word I'm pretty sure someone used here was surreal.

Yep, surreal would fit too.

Maryal

Scrawler - you are also tangled up in this section - still have not had that chance to go through this sentence by sentence but that is next on my agenda after I catch up with everyone - she sure had an aversion to not only drunkeness but to all that La Rép represents - another thing we forget is how much easier it is for a women today - it was only yesterday and yet if feels like a 100 years ago that women did not walk around freely or go to restaurants alone much less a place like La Rép where drinks are served and music is played.

La Rép reminds me of an British Com that was popular a few years ago that took place during the war with the owner hiding his affair with the young bar maid and these awful comedic attempts at hiding Allied soldiers from the Nazis who frequented the small bar.

Mal - Good point - "It doesn't matter if you're self-controlled and orderly or if you're impulsive, "slack" and don't give a damn, it can happen to anyone in any walk of life." In fact as I understand it often women who are perfectionists are addicted and the perfectionism is really more an obsession.

Traude - WOW - one great and informative post after the other -

I hear you on the addiction - the other view is that anyone who has adiabilitating illness like migraines will also go to any lengths for relief - I remember waking up in the middle of the night with a migraine that started in my sleep so that it was full blown when I awoke - no drug store opened at 4:00 in the morning and pain so bad I couldn't even cry - begged for my ex to help me, which he did by rubbing the back of my head and neck but he fell asleep - I tried to get to the living room and fell in the hall - so helpless and enraged I threw a chair - woke up the whole house - it was drama - but thank god the fury unleashed caused me to upchuck - in those days that was the apex of the migraine - afterwards I was insistant, even needed the input of my ex so that the Doctor prescribed more than 5 tablets at a time, with easy renewal so that I never ran out again.

What we all thought was ironic - my favorite Aunt also had migraines and when her son, my cousin developed them he often blacked out with them - well for years my Aunt sought help to no avail - but when my cousin went to the Doctor all of sudden every test known to man was performed and it was not blamed on his hormoines or emotional well being.

OK enough said my dear about Carnival which does not include a Carnival atmosphere as we know it today - they are really talking about a time and place where people come together and can experience either joy or the grotesque - the good and the bad - the innocent and the depraved intermingling.

"she had no earthly idea what the Occupation meant and what it entailed. That's how she and her siblings fell into Tomas's trap." Yes, and you also see Tomas setting a trap - I never thought but yes, he could have been that calculating couldn't he...

And so Monetary Reform ended the Black Market - interesting...along with camp followers - you have to wonder if there had been camp followers or local women available in Iraq if that would have let off some of the steam we are viewing in these current photos. However the need is satisfied matters not - no one likes to accept the need is there to give respect to these women with their cheeks and lips painted so they looked like Dutch Dolls as was the fashion of the day.

Ah so anything that was what we now call "gross" was considered "Primitive" - is that in a nutshell what you are saying Traude.

I think you are saying that Tomas knew it was Taboo for children to enter a pub but they would hear live music that would be a treat. The only instrument I remember in the story was the neighbor's Violin that he convinced the German not to take.

Aha you are saying As for "having sex" with Mirabelle ... well it was really more than that, wasn't it? that is where we are all confused I think - can you tell us more or give us some sentences that spell out what the relationship was between Maribelle and Tomas - pleeeaaaase Traude...

That was an important bit you posted about Framboise remembering the women locked in her Paris Flat - it goes to the depth of her fear of being outed as a collaberator if her crush on Tomas was ever revealed. And that is the basis of her not wanting her mother's album to get into the hands of Laura nor for anyone to know who she Framboise really is other than Madame Simon.

Thanks for the clarification of Carnival as related to literature, Maryal. I've always had the same scary fascination with a carnival atmosphere as I've had about clowns -- the attraction and repellence I mentioned earlier.

Mal

I really enjoyed this book, but it does have some of the typical flaws of the thriller genre. We meet all the characters and become involved in their lives. Then the story builds toward a climax which here is the night at LaRep and the horrible events that follow. And then all the loose ends get tied up in neat package, and we find out what actually happened during and after the murderous events. Finally, there is a kind of epilogue when we find out what ultimately happened to all the main characters. Thrillers depend to a great extent on coincidences, and we certainly have no shortage of this here.

In this story we have a romantic ending in spite of all the bloodshed and cruelty. Paul turns out to be the strong, silent type. "He kissed me then, on the lips, not a shy old-man's kiss but something else altogether, something that left me shaken, indignant and strangely hopeful." He then presents her with a necklace of crab-apples, and they toast their future together. Sounds like something out of a romance novel, doesn't it?

Long before the end, however, Framboise learns that the larger-than-life characters in her life are just flesh and blood after all. She sees her mother at last as an overworked woman "shaken and old." And even Old Mother, when caught, is just "the remains of a big fish, which was already beginning to stink." This is how children grow up. The people and places that loom so large in childhood seem smaller as we get bigger, and the true nature of events slowly becomes clearer.

Mal - Thanks for being so gracious that others are not as comfortable saying something if they think they are disagreeing with what appears like a strong statement - we all have a different way of expressing ourselves and being conscious of that is hard when we only have words to read without seeing the other's body language.

Traude - and so Baudelaire used morphine - was that the drug of choice for Sherlock Holmes - I do not remember - I remember when we studies certain artists in school we got the lecture from the nuns of the depths of hell that using absinthe would bring - I knew it was a drink that I thought as a child was only available in Paris and it was green and you would turn purple drinking it hehehehehe - but to this day I do not know what is used to make absinthe - is it an herb or what - do you know Traude...

ahh so she was seven when her father died - yes I remember now - therefore she was young when her mother fell in the garden - as a character she certainly had a push me pull me relationship of wanting love and hating her mother from an early age - her characterization does sound like Mal's "dance Macarbe" --

I've never when visiting Europe made an effort to visit places that center around the royalty of any nation and that was one of the impressions I had of the Loire Valley - but reading this book is giving me a new appreciation for the area - and after Joan's post, I looked it up learning what an important educational center Angers is - that was a real eye-opener.

Eloise - good point about how stress affects nearly any weak spot in our body -

So yours is cheese - one of the four Cs - mine is Chocolate and cheese - I can tolorate small amounts of citrus but Lemons do me in everytime - so many juices are now more lemon juice than whatever flavor they have on the label so I no longer drink commercial juice and now after a few headaches from Jam - sure enough even many of the European imported jams have moved up the amount of Lemon juice they are using to prepare the jam in addition to the usual citrus to help set the jams.

The other things that kick me off is when we have a norther blow in without rain but that delightful full breeze that drops temps as much as 20 degrees in an hour - bango unless my forehead is covered - and then from the time I was a child and had what was then called sick headaches the smell of tobacco in a closed space like a vehicle - does me in everytime. As a child heavy perfume used to set me off but folks do not bathe themselves in perfume any longer like they did in the 1930s...

Scrawler - so you are reading Chocolat - I still need to find a copy - that and the Blackberry one are both on my list after this read - I am so impressed with her as a writer. I am anxious to read how the use of Carnival is in the story - if it hadn't been for Oprah's reading of 100 Years... I would never have realized the importance of this kind of writing and the vast number of books that incorperate the system, as David Danow calls it.

You are seeing Framboise doubt herself and realizing the hardness within - I just wonder if this is the beginnings of her rebirth - that uncovering the mystery of the album is almost like going to therapy as she remembers and shares with Paul as much as she has -

Oh yes, how I agree with you on this one - "It is interesting how when we hold on to our fears they become "darker and more complex"." To this day I still do that - become fearful of some aspect of my life that is either difficult or that I cannot control and then I end up procrastinating big time till I can look upon it as an adventure rather than requiring a complete perfect product or happening. It is like being subject to all sorts of outside influences - as if you give yourself away and must work extra hard to hold on to what is left - that is a real message from this book for me...thanks for bringing it up.

interesting thought - she has to win not only to be pleasing enough for her mother but to win for her mother as if her mother is not the winner she wants her mother to be.

"creeping slowly into my hair and dribbling cold fingerlings between my breasts" -- "a troll's roar" - you really have brought us such gems Eloise - you spot the wonderment of her use of words...

Mal - someplace I read that surreal is a good way to describe the European version of Carnivalesque -

Had no idea others were reading the book - looks like back to Google - interesting Paul as destructive - Looks like we need to review again pages 197 and 198 - but again Mal just breath out and in - folks can only understand what they read based on their experience and we do not all share similar experience or knowledge - regardless, I really do not think the story only hangs on if the mother was addicted or not -

One of the elements of Carnival that Danow brings up is the ending or death that leads to rebirth includes fire - I do not think we will be disappointed as we read how that all takes place and how other influences can be traced to a number of events, addiction or not...

Kiwi - interesting that you think of mental illness - the folks who know about addiction will explain that a full blown addiction appears as mental illness and the biggest problem is that no addiction is really the problem it is the behavior that surrounds the addiction so that once the addictive person stops using that behavior that appears like mental illness does not go away until the person gets treatment - and that behavior along with the addiction to whatever the substance stays dorment so that even 25 years later the person can use again and they are full blown as if they never stopped for the 25 years -

But with all that - that is common knowledge among those who know about addiction and that can be intimated in the story or not according to how you count and who you believe as a credible witness - and you also know what it is like to live in a home where a caretaker has migraines - there are more folks experiencing these headaches than the world of medicine liked to admit I think.

Yes that is a great way of putting it Carolyn - "This book is fascinating because it makes us take a look at the side of life that is unpleasant and painful to contemplate" and here we are not only comtemplating but trying to sort it all out...The behavior of Framboise as a child seems so difficult for most of us to accept that we are looking at every way from Sunday to explain the behavior as a literary element.

Deems - Welcome - so glad you dropped in - yep we are learning a lot about Carnival - looks like Oprah really opened the doors when she choise One Hundred Years of Solitude as one of her book club discussions and that seems to have opened pandora's box since the two "elements" are coming to the attention of the public at approximatly the same time and most of the authors that engage in one are using the other system as well.

I also found a used copy of Magical REalism by Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris editors - are you familar with the text - haven't cracked the book yet but quite a tome published by Duke...

Hope you will add more of you thoughts as we go along - we will be on the last section starting Monday - it has been quite an experience...

Mal - I love it - here come the clowns are they laughing or are they going to scare you - reminds me of alligators - are they smiling or are they going to eat you - and one of the more poignant songs -
Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground
And you in mid-air
Send in the clowns
Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around
One who can't move
Where are the clowns? Send in the clowns
Just when I stopped

Opening doors
Finally knowing the one
That I wanted was yours
Making my entrance again
With my usual flair
Sure of my lines
No one is there

Don't you love farce?
My fault, I fear
I thought that you want what I want
Sorry, my dear
But where are the clowns?
Quick, send in the clowns
Don't bother
They're here

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer?
Losing my timing this late
In my career?
And where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns
Well maybe

Next year

horselover - Don't you just feel good reading a book when all the ends are tied up - and in a neat package at that - I think it takes a good read to realize Joanna Harris is not a romance novelist - I think she has been borderline plagued with that reputation and after reading Coastliners I was about to agree - This simple May selection turns out to be quite the read -

I am so glad it was chosen from the group that was selected. Which by the way I purchased a copy of Bingham's The Chestnut Tree that was neck in neck with this choice - who knows we may do that one as well, later in the summer.

Ok I am off to dissect this section of the book and see what questions come up and what I can get out of it - till later -

Absinthe is a strong herbal liqueur distilled with a great number of flavorful herbs like anise, licorice, hyssop, veronica, fennel, lemon balm, angelica and wormwood (the flavor of anise and/or licorice, at least in contemporary forms of the liquor, tends to predominate).

I heard so much about that in France and I sipped it just to know what it tasted like and it does taste mostly of anise. The French are very fond of it.

ABSINTHE

Eloïse

aha - thanks Eloise - I would think it was the wormwood that would be poisonous -

Ok while we have your attention - this may be beside the point - but what author to the French made as important a literary contribuiton as Shakespeare did in the Endlish language and Cervantes to not only the language but thinking of the Spanish culture.

Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Rimbault, Rabelais, Molière, Lamartine, but I have not studied literature, only enjoyed it and Traude would be the one to know I believe. Mal too. I remember my brother who was studying with the Jesuits bringing home books that I devoured but my schooling was a shambles and I was a poor student. I loved to read Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand.

I am sure that I read that there were orders of monks who originally made absinthe. Am I dreaming it?

Re the mental illness. Often people with mental illness become addicted to alcohol or other substances its a way for them to sink into oblivion and to numb the anguish the illness causes them. It is very common. The addiction in this case is not the cause of the mental illness.

Carolyn

BARBARA, just a brief comment now.

"Having sex" was a quote from MAL's short # 242 = an answer to ALF's preceding post. Because it is a quote, I put it in quotation marks.

As I've said, I believe that there was much more at play in Mirabelle's case than the raw mechanics of "having sex". But the term is perfect to describe what took place outside la Rép that night.

In my humble opinion.

Will write more later.

As I was reading both "Five Quarters of the Orange" and "Chocolat" I realized that both had interesting relationships between strong-willed mothers and daughters. I was curious to know what relationship the author had with her parents.

This is what I found:"Harris joked on Amazon.com that the book is her revenge on parents' imprecations against horror stories: "I made up for that later by writing what my mother still refers to as 'That Awful Book,' a vampire novel called "The Evil Seed"."

"Reinette didn't mention what had happened, and I pretended I'd run off at the same time as Cassis, so she didn't suspect what I'd seen. But she had changed in some way. She seemed cold, almost agressive. When she thought I wasn't looking she would touch her hair and face compulsively, as if checking for something out of place. She avoided school for several days, claiming she had stomach ache."

I guess this passage is our answer as to why Reinette ended up in a hospital later on in the story.

"Surprisingly, Mother indulged her. She sat with her, mixing her hot drinks and talking to her in a low, urgent voice. She moved Reinette's cot into her own room, something she had never done before for either me or Cassis."

Now this passage made me wonder if the mother had had the same experience as Reinette. It seems she does a 365 degree change showing compassion for Reinette where there was very little before.

"Silence. In silence our wills fought each other, he with his years and his experience, me with the weight of my knowlege."

Once again we are involved with "secrets". How difficult it is to know a secret and not be able to tell it.

"I watched him, feeling wretched but not showing it, staring him out in my old insolent way. "We can't tell anyone," said Cassis in an altered voice. "Not anyone. They'd want to know how we knew. Who we'd been talking to. And if we said" - his eyes flickered away from mine - "if we said anything - to anyone -" He broke off suddenly and turned back to the book. Even his fear had gone, replaced by a wary indifference."

I thought this was interesting how this serious subject was portrayed by the author and how she showed Framboise as trying to understand and caring what happened not only to her sister but the old man, but in the end being insolent as always. And the way she showed Cassis as being fearful and than that being replaced by a wary indifference. These characteristics show up in their adult lives as well.

"Woke at six this morning, for the first time in months. Strange, how everybody looks different. When you haven't slept it's as if the world is sliding away bit by bit. The ground isn't quite in line with your feet. The air seems full of shiny stinging particles. I feel I've left a part of myself behind, but I can't remember what. They look at me with such solemn eyes. I think they're afraid of me. All but Boise. She's not afraid of anything. I want to warn her that it doesn't last forever."

This is an interesting scene. It's almost like when you wake up the next morning with a hang-over. I like the way she decribes it: "When you haven't slept it's as if the world is sliding away bit by bit. The ground isn't quite in line with your feet. The air seems full of shiny stinging particles".

This scene also makes me wonder if Framboise and her mother were really very much alike in nature. Her mother wants to "warn her that it doesn't last forever" as if she too had been unafraid at one time and was just as insolent as Framboise.

"It was a village, after all, and in a village no one can keep a secret for long."

There is irony in this sentence, because "secrets" is what this family did keep for a long time.

Perhaps it's possible that Reine inherited the weak gene her mother has, leading her into madness. Certainly the stress of what happened at La Mauvaise Réputation and things that happened to her later in her life could aggravate that weakness.

Somebody asked about Framboise's daughter, Noisette, and the grandchild she'd never seen. Noisette lives in Canada, a long distance from Les Laveuses.

Mal

"Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

Tolstoy's one liner is certainly appropriate here. In today's language we'd say the Dartigen family was dysfunctional and the children at-risk. But even a dysfuntional, perhaps drug addicted mother can love her children. I think that's why Mirabelle said "no more" to the pills. After the Mauve Rep scene she knew her family was falling apart, that she needed to stay aware of what was going on.

Is the incident at Le Mauve Rep the turning point of this novel -- Mirabelle stops the morphine, Framboise gives up (buries) the oranges -- knows she won't use them again, Tomas stays away.

I've been mostly lurking. Have finished the book and don't want to inadvertently spill the beans.

Sherlock Holmes' drug of choice was cocaine.

With respect to the famous Tolstoy quote, there is another quote which it is said could describe half the novels ever written (and some of the non-fiction as well): "My mother was crazy, and then she died." Of course, it's difficult to make good news or happy families interesting to the reader.

Absinthe History
Absinthe was the drink of choice among artist and writers in the mid to late19th century. It inspired poets and appeared in works by Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh. It was drank by the scandalous playwright Oscar Wilde, the eccentric Toulouse-Lautrec, the poets Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe, and the famous 20th century author Ernest Hemingway, just to mention a few.

By the end of the 19th century, the use of absinthe was widespread, and in France, it was as popular as wine. In the cafés of Paris, the cocktail hour bacame known as "L'Heure Verte", the Green Hour.

As its popularity grew, so did public hysteria over its mysterious effects. Absinthe was the subject of many studies into alcoholism, at the time it was referred to as Absinthism. Its use was even considered a ticket to the insane asylum. In August 1905, Jean Lanfray, a Swiss farmer and known absinthe drinker, shot his entire family. The story made headlines around Europe, proclaiming that he was under the influence of absinthe, and ignored the fact that he had consumed several bottles of wine and other spirits during the course of his day. Absinthe was eventually banned in many countries around the world. Commercial production in Switzerland ended around 1910, and in 1914 for France. The Pernod plant (pictured below) at Pontarlier in France was sold in 1917 after 110 years of production.

For more about Absinthe, and also how to buy some original recipe Absinthe if you are so inclined:

http://www.absinthebuyersguide.com/history.html

BARBARA, Shakespeare was a giant and he is universal.

But yes, the French have their own literary legacy, and ELOÏSE has already named some luminaries. There are others, and among them is a woman, Madame de Staël.

You have already mentioned François Rabelais who lived in the same century as Shakespeare. Then there is Michel de Montaigne, French humanist ad scholar. The standard bearers (if I may call them that) of the Classical Period were Pierre Corneille, a writer of classical tragedy (greatest success Le Cid), Jean Baptiste Racine , who took on biblical and classical subjects, and the truly immortal Molière, famous for his comedies, ( Le misanthrope, 1666, Tartuffe, 1664, Le bourgeois gentilhomme = The Would-be Gentleman, 1670, and, possibly the best-known, Le malade imaginaire = the Imaginary Patient.)

The most eloquent voice of the Age of Enlightenment belongs to Voltaire. During the 19th century, various literary groups emerged in France --------- I'll stop here and tell you more later.

Between Absinthe and French Authors - we sure filled up the pages - hehehehe - great information though on the French authors - I knew voltaire was a giant as well as Victor Hugo - and really there are several aren't there - I was hoping we could identify that one - the one that wrote the seminal piece of literature that captured the French spirit - another who I always enjoyed is Dumas.

Ok I did re-read sentence by sentence this Fourth Section - what amazed me was how much my mind schemed as I read it the first time - didn't read closely - wanted to just get past it -

And so picking it apart - first thing I noticed is that this night took place in October - there were several references to that fact and the scribble in Maribelle's album shows she had received the 30 tablets in September - which on the surface almost makes you fear a set-up.

I think especially based on the concept of Carnivaleque - that circumstances came together that night - I do not think Tomas was the kind who planned things out - but rather, out of every situation he found the weak spot and like an ant eater - quick as a wink he took advantage of what ever happened. Asking Framboise to let her brother and sister know and saying it to entice their presence, I think was just his way of adding to the pot -

Now for Maribelle - something is not fitting - every time there is mention of her going to La Rép it is followed at first with references to all sorts of sales that hint more at sex than to the black market for her morphine which is mentioned later, almost like an afterthought - somehow I get the impression that the buying and selling of sex is part of her darkside - her need that comes upon her at night -

We do know that her headaches are more frequent that summer - up to three a week - and so 30 tablets would be 10 weeks of relief - Since she gave Reine two tablets at the end of her ordeal I just wonder if the headaches and pill taking were somehow tied to Maribelle's need after dark, possibly satisfied at La Rép - that is conjecture on my part - trying to dope this out...Because this is where I do feel the author has not given out enough clues as to what the clock or Maribelle's change at night is all about.

I have not found any classical symbolism for a clock but there is for a circle - the whole - the whole of the universe - half of a circle reminds me of Yin and Yang but that is not the same as good and bad - I am thinking Maribelle would consider it more the light versus the dark or the good versus the bad rather than any thinking that would be similar to Yin and Yang which is neither good nor bad but more like passive versus active.

Continuing - I followed each of the men and cross referenced them against the notes in Maribelle's album that are written in Italics in the book.

looks like there are the card players who also drift over to drink the fine - Of the card players (risk takers - gamblers) it is Jean-Marie who arranges something with Tomas that appears to be the opportunity to watch Schwartz and his women - Not sure Tomas had arranged for Schwartz to put on his show rather I think Tomas just knew what Schwartz was likely to do after a certain amount of liquor.

With the amount of liquor consumed by all of them I do not think this night could be choreographed - but again I do think Tomas kept his head and took advantage of every thing that happened.

Reading about both Magical Realism and Carnivalesque one of the major uses of these expressions of writing is in the literature of war - "disjointed elements and dislocations occupy its own space and time" - Wiesel writes, "The man who chooses death is following an impluse of liberation from the self; so is the choice of madness...The choice of madness is an act of courage." and Vargas Llosa writes, "What did he think, that war was like a carnival...crazy with joy, drunk dancing and feasting..."

"The repetition of political events affording a sense of commonality, if not universality..." Garcia Marquez says, " Common idiscretions and infidelities within the private sphere are publicized through anonymous lampoons posted at night in a generic sleepy little town, where 'nothing ever happens,' resulting in corresponding explosions within the public domain. In effect, a series of dynamic correlated shifts from peaceful to explosive, from ordinary "sleepy" to carnivalized - the only thing that excites them is like carnival. They could care less about politics, so start the music and dancing and give me another beer."

Vargas Llosa says, "It is easier to imagine the death of one person than those of a hundred or a thousand...When multiplied, suffering becomes abstract. It is not easy to be moved by abstract things."

Appelfeld writes of the horror and guilt someone feels having deserted his family - "Why did I run away? Why did I have to run away? I abandoned them all and ran away. God will never forgive me"

Wiesel again - "Grotesque Realism: when the sense of isoloation is perhaps nowhere greater than when a survivor returns to the town of his birth to confront emptiness and ghosts. Ghosts, thronging up from the depths of history, Fearful, silent ghosts where madness lurks."

Kosinski - "They joined the Germans who permitted them to loot and rape, enjoying the war as brutally as they could." - "In the absence of speech that pervades their world, the child still seeks the possiblity of human communication...without her, without her mouth, her tongue, the word would smash against a wall of silence and die forsaken...The case of silence like some old, forgotten animal from the beggining of time, silence towers above the puny world of noise...the power of silence to create speach."

Neher - "Silence used by the Nazis to describe the policy of secrecy and concealment surrounding the concentration camps...without a name there is no existence..."

I see all of the above in this section of the book - some symbolism that I came away with - Reinette's blouse is white - the author could have chosen any color but white was chosen - the rape of the innocent wearing a white flag of truce - as Vichy France established a truce with Germany and regardless the Nazis rape Vichy France of all it's honor and inner self just as Schwartz rapes Reinnette while Hauer holds her down.

Not Tomas but Gustave who tries to stop it - the old France trying to protect its young and is being killed off in the process.

Tomas is not outraged - he only tries to calm everyone down - in German, Tomas says to Hauer, using his Christian given name, "Very good - He is dead." And so Tomas sees the death of Gustave as 'very good' he sees Hauer having hit Gustave to cause his death as 'very good.'

Gustave, "a stooped dark figure with the glowing bowl of his pipe making a red rose on his face." - The rose a flower of perfection - the red rose symbol of charity, martyrdom and grows from the drops of Christ's blood on Calvary.

Tomas plays sax - a new instrument as compared to a drum or a trumpet - the new age German - not the traditional German just as Heinemann also plays a new instrument, the clarinet and together the four of them play jazz, united in a new musical form - representing a new Germany of loose traditions.

Now why would Tomas and Raphaël both come to find out what the children knew or said = interesting both men were above the fray so to speak almost like ring masters - but what could Maribelle say and to whom - would Tomas actually get into trouble with the SS or his comander in Angers? That seems unlikely - even Cassis realistically although for other reasons explains how trapped they are about saying anything.

The only thing I can think of is that Tomas arranged for the 30 tablets by paying Jean-Marie off with the peep show - the night got out of hand with Gustave dead and Reinette having been raped, so now Jean-Marie has something over Tomas.

And gossip in the Village about what happened in La Rép could make it appear that Raphaël collaberated with the enemy -

I think Maribelle realized her need for morphine set in motion a series of events that includes the rape of her daughter - she realizes now, the ONE thing she was about - the whole of her - no matter how ill - over her dead body no one would touch her children - and her girl-child was touched.

Giving Reinette the two tablets so she slept so long was sort of killing her off as a now un-necessary character - what was necessary in all this was that Maribelle could not protect her children - it is up to us as readers to determine if, coming of age in a time of war, was it possible for Maribelle to protect her children - can we assume if it weren't her need for morphine it would have been something else. They were living with a struggle for power amid chaos. Framboise was foiling the struggle for power among the old and young national traditions just as the events that night.

"I told you much of what she wrote was lies. Whole paragraphs of them, tangled into the truth like bindweed into a hedge, further obscured by the mad jargon she uses, lines crossed and recrossed, words folded and inverted so that each one is a struggle of my will against hers to extract meaning from the code."

Once again I'm in love with the author's words. But also have to wonder why Framboise thought that her mother wrote lies. Perhaps in her mother's mind she really believed in what she wrote, not in the literal sense but symbolically.

"Sometimes dying seems better than this. At least I wouldn't have to worry about waking up, ha ha. I keep thinking about the children."

Now this is interesting. Framboise's mother from this passage sounds like she's very much in pain, but despite everything she is still thinking about her children. Unless, this really means she was thinking about her trees as children - again the symbolism.

"This sweetness scooped like some bright fruit..."

I wonder if we judged Framboise's mother too harshly. After all isn't everyone entitled to love and afection even if he is a German. I think this poem represents the inner child that even her mother possessed.

"Remembering her face, the sour turn of my mouth, the hard lines of her cheekbones, the hair scraped back into a knot at the back of her head, even the story of the kite woman seemd more likely."

I don't think children really see their parents clearly. They think as children do, and can't really imagine their parents doing anything like having sex with each other or even with another person. Sometimes it isn't until they grow up that they realize that their parents were just as human as they are now.

"At sixty-four, surely I've passed the age at which I could decently think of such things. But the severity of my inner voice fails to convince me. I brush my hair with greater care than usual and pin it back with a tortoiseshell comb. There's no fool like an old fool, I tell myself sternly."

I don't know about fool business. I think you are as young as you feel.

"Of course, there's no way I can know what she felt. But I feel closer to her now than I ever was, almost close enough to hear her voice from the brittle pages of the album, a voice that tries so hard to hide its true nature, the passionate, desperate woman behind the cold facade."

I think Framboise finally is beginning to understand her mother not through a child's eyes, but as an adult.

"Perhaps I am more like her than I would like to think. Perhaps she knew it that, and leaving me the album was her way of trying to make me understand."

Yes, I too think that leaving the album too Framboise was her mother's way of trying to make her understand. They were very much alike in so many ways.

"Oh, we longed for him. All three of us did - love is not something that you can turn off like a tap, and we were already trying in our way to excuse what he had done, what he had abetted."

I think this is very true. You can't turn off "love" like a tap. No, matter what that person has done or hasn't done.

"Anyone messes with my children, and I'll kill the bastards," spat my mother in his wake, and I saw him wince as if her words were poison. "Kill the bastards," repeated my mother, even though Raphael was almost down to the gate by then, half-rnning, head lowered as if against a strong wind."

These words by Framboise's mother I think shows that she did have some affection for her children in the way that a tigeress has for her cubs.

In the book on Page 129 Framboise says:

"On one page my mother writes 'R-C fully rcovered' under a pressed marigold and a recipe for wormwood tisane. But I've always had my suspicions. Could the pills have been some kind of purgative, in case of an unwanted pregnancy? Could they have been the pills to which Mother refers in her journal entry? And was T. L. Tomas Leibniz?"

Wormwood tisane is often used to induce abortions.

On Page 216 there is this quote:

"T. L. came again. Said there had been a problem at La Rép. Some soldiers got out of hand. Said R-C might have seen something. Brought pills."

Framboise says:

"Could those pills have been the high-dosage morphine tablets? For her silence? Or were the pills something else entirely?"

Did Tomas bring a purgative for Mirabelle to give to Reinette? The journal entry earlier says:

"September. T. L. Bottle 30 high-dosage morphine tablets."

I don't think Mirabelle gave her daughter morphine. I think she gave her pills that would bring on her menstrual period.

The day and night change easily could be related to morphine. Mirabelle can't sleep. Insomnia is one of the symptoms of withdrawal from morphine. Night could bring a craving for the drug, if only to bring Mirabelle some sleep.

In psychology a ticking clock means a sense of urgency.

I do not think Mirabelle's dealings at La Mauvaise Réputation had to do with sex. Though not particularly religious, Mirabelle was an extremely moral person who had a strong aversion to sin. I think her sexual encounters with Leibniz were in the nature of a swap for morphine. Mirabelle had run out of things to use to pay for morphine to which, whether she admitted it or anyone here admits it, she had become addicted.

And I do not think the rape of Reine-Claude was planned. It just happened. Leibniz didn't know they were there until he saw her, did he?

Reine's blouse was made of white parachute silk that Mirabelle bought from Agnés Petit. Parachutes were always white in those days. I don't think the color has any significance beyond that. If parachutes had been made of blue silk, Reine's blouse would have been blue. If they had been made of red silk, the blouse would have been red.

There are always power plays in war, even in the direst circumstances. Ever read King Rat by James Clavell? It is the story of a prison camp where one soldier makes a lot of money selling rats he catches to other prisoners to use for food.

War is always surreal.

Mal

Barbara says, "Tomas is not outraged - he only tries to calm everyone down - in German, Tomas says to Hauer, using his Christian given name, "Very good - He is dead." And so Tomas sees the death of Gustave as 'very good' he sees Hauer having hit Gustave to cause his death as 'very good.'"

It's interesting how we can "hear" the printed words differently. I interpreted the "sehr gut, Franzel He's dead" as saracasm -- meaning "oh smart, now we've got a dead body to deal with." As he said these words with cool contempt I don't think he thought it was good at all.

Oh My - Today is when we are scheduled to share our thoughts on the fifth section - It crept up on me folks - it was such a struggle to really get the juice out of Section Four -

Please share at will - I have appointments tonight and in the morning - I will try to get the focus questions up late tonight but if time flys it could be tomorrow afternoon.

Scrawler you have added two wonderful posts - especially like your thinking that children do not and cannot relate or understand their parents untill they become adults - aha Pedln hears sarcasim - what great posts - I need to get back to everyone's post -

Everytime I think I have caught up it appears I immediatly fall behind - our Real Estate market has taken off after a plummeting and dead market last year - as well as, I am called on as a facilitator for brainstorming - this time it is a department after my own heart - The National Park Service Rivers, Trails & Conservation Assistance and now National Institude of Facilitators is having a gathering this week as well - well I have been saying for a few years now - I'll sleep long enough when I am dead.

OK back later -

MAL, I agree with you. I don't think Mirabelle's visits at La Rép had to do with sex. She was driven there by her need for morphine. And yes, I think TL is Tomas Leibniz. You have proposed a plausible theory concerning Reine Claude. Gustave's death was a complication but I don't think it was an accident.

By 1942 everything was rationed in Europe, food, clothes, footwear, you name it. Unfortunately there was often no merchandise in the stores and the ration cards were useless. Hence the black market !

As to parachute silk, I believe it must have come from British or American airmen shot down over France by German flak. Here is a timeline :

On September 1, 1939 Hitler's army invaded Poland
on September 3, 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany
The Polish resistance broke after 18 days.
Russia occupied part of Poland.
On April 9, 1940 Hitler overran Denmark and Norway; they resisted, with French and British support.
On May 10, 1940 began Hitler's offensive in the west.
The Dutch army, but not the government, capitulated on the 5th day.
The King of Belgium capitulated for the Belgian army.
The British/French army in the north was surrounded at Dunkirk and retreated to England with heavy losses of materiel; the majority of the troops made it safely out of the harbor.
On June 14 the Germans entered Paris without fight.
On June 22, 1940 the Vichy government represented by Maréchal Pétain signed papers of a truce at Compiègne, the very same place where, on November 11, 1918, the armistice was declared that ended World War I.
The south of France was initially not occupied. Many Jews fled there.
Italy, an axis country, declared war against France and Britain, and a new theater of war opened in North Africa.
One year later, on June 21/22, 1941, Hitler's army marched into Russia. Nobody knew it then, but that was the beginning of the end.

Madame de Staël, 1766-1817, was born Anne Louise Germaine Necker. Her father, Jacques Necker, was French Minister of Finance. She was married to Baron de Staël-Holstein, Sweden's ambassador to France.

Her famous salon in Paris was attended by the leading literary and political figures of the day. She was admired for her charm and her vigorous mind. An outspoken critic of Napoleon, she was exiled from Paris.

Some critics hold her writings to be the first modern, feminist romantic novels. Corinne ou l'Italie, Corinne or Italy, 1807, is considered her masterpiece. Her influence on French Romanticism is undisputed.

The 19th century: Chief of the early Romantics was Alphonse de Lamartine. The most productive and most militant of the movement was Victor Hugo . Other luminaries were Alexander Dumas, père, and the poet Alfred de Musset .

Next came the Realists, first and foremost Honoré de Balzac with an unbelievably large body of work (e.g. La comédie humaine = The Human Comedy). Also Stendhal (Le rouge et le noir = the Red and the Black, La chartreuse de Parme = The Charterhouse of Parma), and Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary).

Then came the Parnassians and Symbolists. Among the latter were Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Naturalism as a fundamental principle and literary method was adopted by Émile Zola (Nana, Germinal). As a writer of short stories in this period, Guy de Maupassant was unsurpassed (Mademoiselle Fifi, Contes des jours et de la nuit = Tales of the Days and of the Night).

The 20th Century The names will suffice; of course, the list is not complete.

Marcel Proust

André Gide

François Mauriac

Jean Cocteau

Jules Romain

Guillaume Apollinaire

Paul Claudel

Playwrights Jean Giraudoux and Henri de Montherlant

and Colette (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette). She was enormously popular (Chéri, Gigi) and very prolific; her work comprises more than 80 volumes.

I don't like to leave things "half-baked" and will finish what I started another day. Thank you for your indulgence.

Thank you, TRAUDE, for the timeline and the mention of French authors. They are very helpful.

Though I'd thought about her age it still came as something of a surprise to read on Page 229 that Mirabelle was 30 years younger than Framboise when the remembered incidents take place. How can this pinch-faced widow with her hair pulled back tight, all dressed in black with a gray apron on, be only a vital 34 years of age?

Many of Harris's characters sound much older than they really are. At one point I was wondering who the Résistance could be when all the men and women sound so old. Leibniz has enough vitality to seem relatively young, maybe 30. Luc seems young. Yannick and Laure do not.

Even the kids seem much older than they actually are. This is part of the inconsistency I find in this book. At 9 years old age Framboise does things most 9 year olds would not do, and it is not the war that's making her that way. She's playing her games at the Loire just as she would have if there'd been no war, but she's playing them like an 18 year old. This includes her rebellion toward her mother and the crush and flirtation with Leibniz.

Framboise says her mother's journal is full of lies, or the truth is so mixed with lies that she can't tell what is truth and what is not. She says about her mother on Page 226:

"Besides there's no apparent purpose. ( For lying. ) Perhaps it was her illness talking, or the delusions of her addiction."

Ah, yes, the delusions caused by the addiction. The addiction to morphine could make Mirabelle look and act older, too. Add being alone, the stress of the German occupation, and I'd say the result is one mixed up woman who has lost her youth long before she should.

Framboise mentions Mirabelle's "distaste for anything that reminded her of bodily functions" and the intensity of "her hatred and rage," which might have arisen from a "betrayal or a thwarted love." ( Or deprivation? ) Her sensuality and any ambition she might have had were poured into creating recipes, her fear into cooking food.

Could this be a bright woman who has been frustrated by the fact that she lives in a village where nothing ever happens and nobody can get out of the rustic rut he or she is in, a place where nothing ever gets any better than it is? Did she once have hopes and dreams for herself that went beyond marrying young, having her life dictated by first her father, and then her husband, and no chance for a future beyond raising kids and tending the farm? I wonder. I've known so many beaten-down, angry, unhappy women who had physical and emotional problems like Maribelle's, which they tried to subdue with drugs, that I think it could be a very real possibility.

Mal

MAL, indeed. There we have the word clearly spelled out on pg. 226 : addiction.

I concur with the logic in your reasoning and have no quibbles. There's someething I'd like to add, though, and will do so (or try to) in the afternoon on my return from a meeting with our local live book group.

Have we ever discussed here the information the children provided and how Tomas processed it? To whom did he furnish it? It seems to have been acted upon in the case of the unfortunate Mrs. Petit, who was Jewish and simply disappeared one day.

I will join you later.

Mal, you're hearing these villagers being described by a 9-year-old, albeit a precoscious one. They would sound old. As for Mirabelle, I think you've said it -- beaten down by her responsibilities, the worry, the addiction -- she probably looked 10 years older than she was.

At the very beginning of part 5 Mirabelle describes a dream, of a woman flying a kite made of crates and oil drums. This sounds very much like a new fish trap to catch Old Mother that Framboise describes somewhere in that section (can't find it right now.)Is there a connection? I can't believe Harris would put that dream in for no reason, but it eludes me.

No, PEDLN, I am not "hearing these villagers being described by a 9-year-old", I am reading what a 64 year old woman thinks she remembers about her childhood. Not I or anyone else who reads this book knows what in those memories is true.

Framboise herself says about what she's told us about her mother and Leibniz on Page 230:

"You understand that this is merely speculation."

I think it is more than that. I see an author who did not write children as children, and who made most of the adults in the book seem much older than they were. If her intention was to give the impression that this was what the child saw and thought, then none of the remembered adult characters should have been drawn as if they were young. Speaking as an editor, I see this as a flaw in the writing of the book.

I interpret the kite-flying as a hallucination Maribelle had. And she had them, according to what I read. On Page 296, she says to Ramondin about Tomas:

". . . . I killed him! I was his whore all right, and I'm not sorry! I killed him and I'd kill him again if I had to! I'd kill him a thousand times! What do you think of that? What do you fucking think of that?"

Maribelle didn't kill Leibniz; nobody did, he drowned in the Loire River. But Maribelle believes what she says.

This is what Framboise saw and heard the night the villagers burned Maribelle's house down. The scene is so shocking that I can't believe what Framboise says is not the truth and how it happened.

Maribelle here is showing what the morphine had done to her mind. She wasn't taking it at that time, but she had been when Leibniz died, and she was obviously unable to tell what was real and what wasn't when she was on the drug.

What interests me about the kite-flying is that Mirabelle drew a diagram in her journal "which might represent anything", but which looks like a stick figure standing on a swastika to Framboise. (Page 226) That's a pretty strong symbol with all kinds of implications. What does it mean?

Mal

While I was reading "Chocolat" by Harris I came across this comment: Mirabelle is a yellow plum. I wonder if this has any significance as to why the author gave Framboise's mother that name.

"The gendarme was in full uniform, his usually vague and pleasant face wearing an expession of almost military indifference. There was an object in the grass beside the wagon, something that looked like a child's trolley."

I enjoyed this passage and the ones that came afterwards. How wonderful it would be if we could act out our frustrations rather than holding them inside.

"And as we watched the Snack-Wagaon began to tilt forward, ever so slowly. Almost imperceptibly at first, then with a sudden lurch that brought Dessanges out of his gallery quicker than a ferret.

"The awning hung askew and the trailer had tilted drunkenly, like a shack built on sand. I saw the look of calculation come back into his face, the careful, sharp look of a man who not only has aces up his sleeve, but who believes he owns the whole pack."

Louis only smiled. "Windy night last night, sir," he observed gently, with another touch at the hydraulic jack at his feet. "Whole bunch of trees got blown down over by the river."

"We saw it in a kind of inevitable slow motion. The Snack-Wagon, perched precariously on the edge, swung back as its support was removed. There was a crash as the contents of the galley-plates, glasses, cutlery, pans - were suddenly and violently displaced, hurled into the far side of the wagon with a splash of broken crockery. The wagon continued to move backward in a lazy arc, propelled by its own momentum and the weight of its dispalced furniture. For a moment it seemed as if it might right itself. Then it toppled, slowly and almost ponderously, onto its side into the grass of the verge with a crash that shook my house and rattled the cups on the downstairs dresser so loudly that we heard it from our lookout in the bedroom."

Throughout the book the author has gently swung us from the past into future and back into the past again. But the above scene seems to stop all together - a moment in time as we watch in slow motion the Snack-Wagon crash. But this crash will have consequences for Framboise. It seems to me that this crash finally brings Framboise out of the past and into the real world.

"Paul and I pretended to work for the rest of the afternoon. It was a Sunday, and the restaurant was shut, but there was still work to be done in the orchard and in the vegetable garden. I hoed and pruned and weeded until my kidneys felt like hot glass and sweat ringed my armpits. Paul watched me from the house, not knowing I was watching him. Those twenty-four hours. They itched and fretted at me like a bad case of nettle rash. I knew I should be doing something, but what I could do in twenty-four hours was beyond my ability to decide."

Don't you feel this way when you are trying to decide on how you should proceed in a solution to a problem?

"No one should have to choose between a life and a lie. And yet she had, Mirabelle Dartigen, the woman in the picture with her fake pearls and shy smile, the woman with the sharp cheekbones and scragged-back hair. She'd given it up - all of it, the farm the orchard, the little niche she had carved for helself, her grief, the truth - buried it without a backward glance and moved on..."

If only the world would leave us alone to our little niche, but all to often like Mirabelle Dartigen the world intrudes on us and we must make a choice between living a life and living a lie. It would seem simple, won't it, but if are trying to protect our family than it may not. Once again we seem to accept if not the truth than half-truths and perhaps an out and out lie. Perhaps if society would accept us who we are than the lies won't be necessary. But like Mirabelle Dartigen that is often not a choice we are given.

"Even now I can feel her - hear her, like the wail of wires on a windy day - that shrill, confused treble which is all that remains of my memory of her. No matter that I never knew how much I really loved her. Her love, that flawed and stony secret, drags me with it into the murk."

It's interesting that Framboise now realizes that after all these years she really did love her mother and in her own way Mirabelle loved her. If only we could accept each person as they are and not make them into something we would like them to be.

Oops! I see that I changed Mirabelle's name in Post #294 from "Yellow Plum" to "Pretty Marie". Wonder why I did that?

Mal

SCRAWLER, I can see plenty of reason why Framboise would want to change Mirabelle into a loving, affectionate mother.

Mal

There's yet another question in need of an aswer:

In the last paragraph on page 281 we read "The last call was long-distance. I left a message, struggling with the unfamiliar accent, the impossible words ..."

Whom did she call?

Also, it is the album entry on page 228, "His hands were softer than I expected ...there is something about his gentleness. Even for a German. ..." that gives me pause.

It could have been no other German but Tomas. Is it possible that there was a genuine attraction? Not just sex? (That is my theory.)

I still cannot fully understand Tomas's other extracurricular activities. Did he simply engage in the black market business to accumulate money and feather his own nest?

But what did he do with the political tidbits he gathered? They must have been passed on to some higher authority to be acted on so promptly, for he certainly was an underling.

Is a puzzlement.

TRAUDE, I think Framboise called her daughter, Noisette, in Canada.

I don't think Mirabelle felt affection for Tomas Leibniz. She's a relatively young woman, and it's been a long time since she had been with a man. The fact that Leibniz was gentle with her must have made this woman, who probably was as starved for love and affection as her children were, relax about doing this difficult thing she was compelled to do, and possibly even feel good.

Your last question will take some thought.

Mal

Traude, I think Mal is correct -- Framboise called Noisette, in Canada. P. 301 --"At last I feel I can talk to you nwo, my wild Noisette, my sweet Pistache. P. 302 -- "Noisette returned my call late last night."

MAL,PEDLN, yes I see that now. Thank you both. Noisette, the favorite, ... how very sad when parents play favorites, and when the kids know it. Pistache, the "good" one, docile, like Reinette...

PEDLN, the reference to the oil drum trap Framboise made to catch Old Mother is on Page 256.

Mal

On Page 251 Paul says about Mirabelle:

"You're a lot like her, you know . . . . . Too much like her for your own good, or anybody's. . . . . Set herself aback everyone with her stubbornness. Never knowing they'd have helped her if she said."

Very telling words, but this question remains in my mind: Why did Paul paint "whoar" and "C" on Mirabelle's property and send the letters to her if he knew it would harm her and her family, especially Reine-Claude on whom he had a crush? Because he wanted to get back at her for calling him a cretin? Was that the only reason?

The harvest scene and what follows later when the crowd of villagers comes to get Mirabelle reminds me in ways of Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery."

"It's never too late to come home. All you have to do . . . . is stop moving away."

Mirabelle moved herself away from everyone. Framboise tried, but couldn't quite make it thanks to many things, but especially Paul.

Mal

Does Framboise show the human spirit can endure anything through sheer willpower and thus emerge with at least a spiritual victory?
Does the manner in which Tomas dies make him into a mythical figure?
Does Joanna Harris prove the point that people need and depend on each other; without each other, we cannot survive -- or does she make a point that -- when others act based on gossip, your only protection would be to collaberate with whoever has the power to harm you or who ever has the power to provide you with what you need - is collaberating seeking help in an un-attainable situation.
Does the story show us that Love is the most powerful of forces?
Is a life lived close to nature, both simpler and richer than life in a technological society?
Life is harsh and unjust; like so many people before and after, Maribelle does not receive the due reward of her labor.
Paul is loyal, loving, and caring. Is Paul too loyal and dedicated to be believable?
Maribelle as teacher: what has she taught Framboise?
We read that Paul as a young boy was just as free to run loose as Framboise and he didn't even go to school as Maribelle's children did - and he didn't plot how to hurt either of his parents and so why do we believe Maribelle was not giving her children appropriate care taking into consideration the difference in children's freedom to run and play alone in nearby woods, rivers and lakes 50, 60 and 70 years ago --
Does Paul and Framboise give us an example that old-age can bring life's greatest triumphs?
Do we see old-age filling us with a richness of experience and wisdom?

Not even a hello, BARBARA? How are you???

Mal

I've finally been able to get those last few focus quesions up - decided to bring salad in for supper Monday night - I like the Manderine chicken Salads at Wendy's - I should have guessed since the chicken had an unusual smokey flavor but I ate two of the manderine orange sections and they were far more bitter than should be - so I removed them but continued to eat the salad - yes, you guessed it - the worst part is there is nothing you can take for the headache that accompanies all this misery - stomach is still bloated but at least I can do something other than the usual that goes with this misery.

So pleased you continued - let's get caught up - this is not only about Section Five but an overview as well of the entire story.

Scrawler - trees as children and Maribelle thinking of her children when she is feeling so ill - yes, interesting bit of symbolism -- especially when we consider the traditional symbolism for trees being the axis mundi joining the three worlds and making communication between them possible - the tree rooted in the earth in contact with water the tree growns in a world of Time adding rings to show its age -

The tree of life and knowledge - the "Singing Tree" on the Sacred Mountain with the serpent guarding the tree putting out both good and evil fruit. The Christ is crusified on a wooden cross...

"I don't think children really see their parents clearly." That is certainly revealed when we see how Framboise struggles to accept that her mother was sexual. Only at this age of 64 can she wrap her head around the fact that her mother was not only a sexual women but she had a Nazi lover -

It appears then that Raphaël and Tomas have two issues that gave them control over Maribelle. Her visits to La Rép to satisfy her sexual needs as well as barter on the Black Market. Maribelle could intimidate Raphaël but Tomas was like a loose cannon who even 'used' her children.

What a conundrum for us - and maybe that is what the author intended - I was about to agree that it was all about addiction -- justifying it with the judgement given in the book from Framboise who is at 64 is trying to understand her mother with the memory of herself at nine - than I thought that if this issue was to be questioned as coming from an unreliable witness than we would have to discount everything she tells us about during the entire story.

With that said it appears in the last chapter she was very much into sex - I counted sentences and I did everything to discount the issue of sex driving Maribelle to La Rép and possibly explaining her change at night but we cannot avoid it -

If we are to take Framboise as a reliable witness we than must also accept that Maribelle going to La Rép was for more than to buy on the Black Market - when we read the way she wants the children to scrub and she scrubs when La Rép is brought up, it is easy to see her mixed feelings over satisfying her own sexual needs with a German -- and she may have even smoked some of those "sweet cigarettes...The kind they used to have in the jazz clubs, way back."

She needs to keep Raphaël quiet when she tells him, "That's over, do you hear? Over. And if I even suspect you've said a word to anyone--" followed by his saying you have to please the Germans and his saying, "How can you say that? You were pleased enought yourself at one time--" - that is not suggesting pleasing Germans as a barter for morphine but pleasing Germans because he is saying they, the Germans must be treated like anyone else rather than he calling her a collaborator.

And so the Conundrum - or visious circle - if we read and try to understand the plot from either one view or the other we are missing out on half the story - it appears that both were a driving force for Maribelle. And for us the half clock comes into play - half sex needs satisfied and the other half pain needs satisfied with medication that becomes addictive.
"You can't turn off "love" like a tap. No, matter what that person has done or hasn't done." which sums up doesn't it how Framboise feels about her family, the village and those who were part of her life when she was a child. Typical of why so few understand how children living with abusive parents still love them and although they want them to stop, they do not want to be removed to another home.

Mal - I didn't know that "Wormwood tisane is often used to induce abortions." Ah yes - the timing yes, those pills Reine take aren't the morphine - I wonder what kind of purg would be available in pill form during the early 1940s.

Looks like Section Five turns us on our head Mal as to Framboise visiting La Rép for sexual encounters with at least one German but than as I said, if we believe Framboise who is telling the story we than must believe all she says - her mother may have things mixed up but it is Framboise who is telling us the story and so we cannot pick and choose what she tells us because one seems more plausable than another.

Pedln - I still smile as I re-read the difference in how we read the printed word - sarcasm hmmmm...

Traude - looks like there are several reasons for visiting La Rep - thanks for that break down of the war in Europe and how the Black Market was an intrical part of ordinery life during WWII.

And your effort to name so many French authors - great reference - I was trying to determine how many I had read and those still on my now new list because of your post - thanks

Mal - do you do that - where you try to figure out what you were doing at a certain age as compared to your mother and your daughter - I find it interesting especially since my daughter married and had her children almost 20 years after the age I was but it certainly gives me a new appriciation for my mom's experiences.

Hmmm as to comparing Maribelle to today's women who may have had dreams thwarted I am not so sure - I do not think there were too many dreams other than having a successful home/farm - the work in both kept a women so busy and worn out plus when you look at what women were saying and what was writen on books and magazines most women still took pride in not only hanging out their laundry the earliest of anyone on Monday morning but the laundry was compared to how white - and being known for preparing certain recipes were a women's crowning glory - the war was the bridge between tradition and what we think of as women's ability to dream in the twentieth century.

When you consider the work it took to keep that farm going on her own - alone with no pension or payment from any government because of her husband having been killed in the war - much less keeping a household without any modern conviences and using that house as a place to add value to her fruits and vegtables so she could earn money by selling what she baked etc. - never knowing when the enemy would come and confiscate her food or produce that earned her money - there were a variety of pressures on Maribelle that sapped her physicaly as well as emotionaly -

We forget that there were few to no medications available up through the late 60s - even the earlier treatment that I had for migraines when my children were ages 2 through 8 was straight Fiarinol - rather potent - and when I was in the middle of a mis-carriage I was given either Demeroil (sp) or morphine both of which made me very sick to my stomach. hehehe not unlike the past day and a half....

We may be using todays attitudes about Drug addiction - Before the 1960s there were many folks who took Drugs and they were not considered a predator to society with characteristics that were so severe that we would question their sanity, their ability to be more than they were, the ability to care for their family members - today between the Law and 12 step programs anyone with an addiction is looked upon as such the plinth to society

It could even be that some of us are trying to blame Maribelle with her addiction as the reason the children appear to be running wild - but more important our equally uncomfortable feelings over Framboise's treatment of her mother. A child so calculating and mean spirited to hord and place oranges where her mother would experience the pain of a migraine is more than some of us want to acknowledge a child is capable of and therefore, the mother's addiction is considered the cause that made her incapable of taking what we consider proper care of her children.

But let's look at it - there are several of us who have experienced migraines while our children were gowing up and we know because of our connection to our children based on respect and caring - while we were disabled they were not collaberating with a local crime group or plotting how to have more freedom to do what they wanted, to carry out activities we may not have approved with boys twice their ages. Because of the war we are using another vocabulary, but what Tomas and his group were doing would be considered criminal if the mantel of war didn't give it another morality.

Now that we have competed the book we can go back and review all that Framboise says about her mother - and as uncomfortable as we are even Framboise admits she was at war with her mother - seems to me if we use the various guidelines out there that help us read Novels regardless if it is Foster we need to look at the symbolism in a story - this in not like being a writer but as a reader the symbolism is a valuable tool - and so by looking at the war and and the war between Framboise and her Mother - the war between Laura and Framboise - the war between Framboise and Old Mother we can see some similarities - they are all based on a power struggle and one taking from another.

Traude - YES -- "the information the children provided and how Tomas processed it? To whom did he furnish it? It seems to have been acted upon in the case of the unfortunate Mrs. Petit, who was Jewish and simply disappeared one day." A simple explanation was offered for all their disapperances but in this last Section we get wind of the awful truth - it is not spelled out but very strongly hinted that they did not just of off to visit a family member.

Pedln - Yes, I saw that "dream of a woman flying a kite made of crates and oil drums. This sounds very much like a new fish trap to catch Old Mother that Framboise describes somewhere in that section (can't find it right now.) Is there a connection? I can't believe Harris would put that dream in for no reason, but it eludes me."

Seems to me the fish trap was oil drums and a couple of crates where as the dream was oil drums and plywood - although, I cannot imagine plywood since it was not yet common if available yet in the 1940s.

The only thing I got out of it was that maybe the dream was a way that Maribelle remembered the trap Framboise built and she was speaking more to following your heart which is what she saw Framboise doing when she was going after Old Mother.

Mal - yes, that would be interesting to think on - what do you get out of it - "Mirabelle drew a diagram in her journal "which might represent anything", but which looks like a stick figure standing on a swastika to Framboise. (Page 226) That's a pretty strong symbol with all kinds of implications. What does it mean?"

Seems we could see it as Maribelle's needs are met by the Nazis - or they are entwined - one dependent on the other like a flea on a dogs back -

Haven't read as closely yet all of Section Five and you are bringing up some thoughts that tell me to go read - now...

I believe the truth of this story is in Mirabelle's journal. The reader has to weed it out and unravel the codes, just as Framboise did. She talks in more than one code. The recipes themselves are often a code and clues to the truth.

Mirabelle mentions purchasing morphine many times, thus corroborating the addiction Framboise says she had. Mirabelle talks about the touch of only one German in her journal -- T. L. -- not many Germans.

These are important things, as are what she says about members of the Résistance, her life, and how she feels about her children. And this is what I believe.

Mal

Scrawler - "Throughout the book the author has gently swung us from the past into future and back into the past again. But the above scene seems to stop all together - a moment in time as we watch in slow motion the Snack-Wagon crash. But this crash will have consequences for Framboise. It seems to me that this crash finally brings Framboise out of the past and into the real world." I like that scrawler -

What hit me reading this is this slow way that not only Paul but Louis has of taking care of the unwanted - reminds me of the people in Appalachia who are now being bombarded with folks from other areas of this nation who would like to see change - they have their own slow patient language and ways where they get exactly what they want without any fuss and rable rousing - they talk among themselves - get the majoriety and vote it their way -

Or in one case in my daughter's community in the mountains of NC, an out of towner was trying to bring a new style of commerce to town - no one said anything after their displeasure was noted and ignored - when the guy was all finished and ready to open he had no customers except for a few tourists during the leaf season - not enough to keep his doors opened.

"No one should have to choose between a life and a lie." oh and how many of us do just that in order to bypass the judgemental scrutiny or one side views of others...

Traude - huh at the time I read that I did not think beyond the words on the page and thought only of her daughter in Canada - "The last call was long-distance. I left a message, struggling with the unfamiliar accent, the impossible words ..." hmmm need to re-read that also - although didn't the book say the Reine went to Paris for awhile and was esentially a hooker only that was not the word that was used - although it still could be that those pills from Tomas did not work - hmmm another wrinkle to iron out...

Mal - is the difficult you refer to the caring for her home/farm/children/earn a living or barter for what she used to get in the pharmacy or deal with her headaches without her husband to help her - I am not sure I understand what the difficult thing is she was compelled to do.

Pedln - ah so she is returning her daughter's call - no other twist to this plot - whewph...

Traude - hmmm and now you bring up how she is described as docile like Reinne - oh dear we are seeing all sorts of shadows in these words aren't we - well I think don't you that we would have to find more evidence to learn if this is a part of the secret and Framboise does not have two daughters but rather an aunt to one...

Mal - "The Lottery." - yes - I got the feeling as I was reading it that Reine-Claude was like the sacrificail lamb for the village - with all the golden reds and oranges it made me think of these societies where young women walk into an active volcano.

Helloooow Mal - Hello everyone --- hehehehe

Yes Mal - many times the morphine and not many Germans only one -

If you look at what Framboise says doping it out from the album, their claundastine meetings do not take place in their home and Maribelle does leave for La Rép frequently - she has this change that comes over her nightly - that as we read can be either - or - or both her desire for sex and to feel loved or as a women at least and her need for morphine as well as what ever else she buys on the Black Market - as Framboise notes Maribelle does not have to go to La Rép just for a drink...

I simply think it is the author's attempt to set a circle in motion - the unity between all parts - she never condems the Germans - she seems to show the connection and similar behavior of each group and each character - no one character's behavior seems to be heads and tails above the rest - they are all flawed with the possibility of Reine although early on she is made to be a simpering school girl with fluff for a brain.

It would be easy to say Maribelle the mother is strictly acting out of addiction but that does not appear to be the auther's message - had this been written about a time even a decade later than that could and would be the over-riding message and reason for what happened to her and her children.

There appears to be more than need Maribelle satisfies at La Rép and the buying of morphine is just one - if when you read the last section you can get a realization of who having sex with the enemy would be more damaging information than if she was buying morphine on the black market from the enemy - this is a different time and place and her use of morphine alone would not bring about the uncontrollable rage of the village...

BARBARA, I lived with my mother only until I was 7 years old. She didn't live long enough after that for me to be able to compare anything in my life with hers, except the poverty in which she existed until she died and the relative comforts I've had, even when I considered myself poor. I've sometimes compared my daughter's life with mine. It's only in the past ten years that I've lived near her so I could witness her life. Her career now is nothing like what I was doing at that age.

Mirabelle was close to my mother's age and the age of my aunt at the time of this book. My mother didn't live on a farm, but she certainly had dreams of being something she never was -- an opera singer. My Aunt Polly did grow up on a farm and lived there until she finished high school. She couldn't wait to leave and do something else besides farmwork and housework. The avenue for her escape was marriage. Throughout her marriage she regretted the fact that she was unable to get the college education she always wanted with a focus on business because she wanted to own and run a store. I knew many women of that age who were like this. Some were able to realize at least part of their dreams and have a life that was not totally based on raising children or hanging out Rinso White sheets.

Alcoholics Anonymous was founded in 1935. If you study the archives of what's been written about alcoholism at that time and before, you'll find plenty of cases where people addicted to alcohol and drugs were put in the mental institutions of the time and insane asylums because they were a danger to themselves and society, as well as in "drying-out" hospitals or in restraints in the home. You'll also find that many crimes and murders and broken homes were alcohol and drug-related. The difference between then and now is that drug addiction of all kinds was hidden in the closet, not out in the open as it sometimes is now.

There were many painkiller medications besides the ones you mention, BARBARA. Many were opium based, many are today. Many were herb-based or chemical-based. My mother couldn't afford medicine, so she used Feverfew, White Willow and Arnica for her sick headaches and a cloth wrapped around dried lavender on her head.

Mal

I'm not blaming Mirabelle or her illness for anything. Something was respnsible for her behavior and the neglect of her children, however, and I will say that she abused her children psychologically in a way that Paul was not abused. Framboise is an excellent example of that, as are Reine and Cassis. It's hard to tell which caused this -- Mirabelle's difficult and temperamental personality (even before the war), or the effect of the morphine and its aftereffects, or a combination of both.

I suffered not only terrible "sick headaches" when I was raising my children, there was the almost daily pain caused by the childhood illness I had and too frequent injuries that often required wearing a cast on my leg, and doing housework and everything else on crutches. Wonderful as they are, all three of my children took advantage of this and my handicap and did things, sometimes defying the law, that they shouldn't have done. They actually enjoyed the freedom from authority a disability or illness of a parent can bring in much the same way that Framboise did. It happens, and the author is right when she says children will take advantage of any weakness they perceive in their parents. This may be what you call a power struggle, BARBARA. I think a power struggle between children and parents is normal. To me it seems to be the way children prepare themselves to leave the nest and go out on their own.

As far as symbolism is concerned, I think the fact that Reine-Claude's blouse was made of parachute silk is far more significant than the fact that it was white. Icarus?

Mal

Plywood is a forest industry product in which layers of wood and veneer are glued together. It has been made for hundreds of years, but modern plywood, in which the veneer are cut on a rotary lathe from softwood logs, is of relatively recent origin. West coast Douglas Fir became the prime species for this production after 1905, when a plant went into production in Portland Oregon. The first Douglas Fir plant in British Columbia opened at Fraser Mills in 1913 and mainly produced plywood for use in door construction. Two hardwood plywood mills also operated in British Columbia (they both processed some softwood veneer) at Nelson and New Westminster, but it was softwood that was soon to dominate the West Coast industry. The construction of new plants in the United States and the opening of the H.R. MacMillan Export Company plant, in Vancouver in 1936, along with the widespread use of softwood plywood during World war II, greatly spurred the development of this product into a significant component of the forest industry production.

Source:

Plywood History

Yes! I felt the same way when I read "the Harvest" it did remind me of Shirley jackson's "The Lottery" but I thought Mirabelle was the person sacrificed.

"You cretin! Can't you keep away from me? You miserable old fool!" I wanted to hurt him, I think. It would have been easier if I'd been able to hurt him, make him turn from me in rage or pain or disgust, but he faced me out - funny. I'd always thought I was better at that game than anyone - with his inexorable patience, not moving, not speaking, just waiting for me to reach the end of my line so that he could speak his piece. I turned away furiously, afraid of his words, his terrible patience."

What's the song? We only hurt the ones we love. It seems that Framboise was more afraid of Paul's patience and his soft words than if he had yelled and screamed at her. Sometimes you can get more with honey than vinegar.

"Besides, without Tomas nothing mattered very much. I wondered if I would ever see him again. I sat by the Loire with my traps and my fishing rod and wtched. I couldn't stop myself from believing that somehow, if I caught the pike, Tomas would return."

Perhaps this sounds like a child's belief, but don't we as adults also say that if "only" this or that will happen than everything will be okay as well.

"I realized I hadn't seen him once since Mother chased him from the house, and I felt a sudden pang of guilt at having so completely forgotten my old friend."

Ah! Sometimes we all get so wrapped up in our own lives that we forget about friends and sometimes even family.

"The thought of his closeness - the unberable, hot joy that filled me at the thought of seeing him - was like baking stones under my feet."

Once again I love the author's words! The joy of waiting for someone special feels exactly like: "baking stones under my feet."

"I saw Cassis and Reinette standing a little way away from the main body of the crowd. Reine was wearing a red flannel dress and a necklace of berries, and Casis was eating a surgared pastry. No one seemed to be talking to them, and I could sense the little circle of isolation around them. Reinette was laughing, a high, brittle sound like the scream of a seabird. A little distance away from them my mother stood wtching a basket of pastries and fruit in one hand. She looked very drab among the festival crowd, her black dress and head scarf jarring against the flowers and bunting."

Now what is wrong with this scene? It's not anywhere near feastive but it describes her family perfectly just this one scene. There is defintly a sense of isolation. I can't help wonder why the villagers took it out on the children. I can see them trying to get back at Framboise's mother, but why hurt the children?

I thought Mirabelle was the victim in the "Lottery" comparison, too, SCRAWLER.

BARBARA, the villagers had lost not only 10 compatriots, they lost the one place where they could congregate and let off steam, La Mauvaise Réputation. They were a pressure cooker with no place to blow.

These people needed a scapegoat, and Mirabelle with her label of WHOAR was the unfortunate and obvious person to choose for the job. If she hadn't been around, they would have chosen someone else and would have dealt "punishment" to that person.

Mal

Mal - Whoops posting at the same time - you also see how it was anyone - yes, AA was created in '35 but it is still not a strong association in France as compared to here and even it the 40s and 50s very very few people heard about it -

Remember AA came out of the Oxford group - a Christian group in England - France is Catholic and until recently a Catholic would still look down upon any group that came from the Church of England - although the Oxford group was not, it was in England and subscribed to the principles of the Protestant faith.

I remember a cousin who married a young man, who when he came back from WWI could only cope with a drink and she joined AL-Anon - her friends and family had no clue what it meant and simply tossed it off as one more of her many missions, since she belonged to a prayer group who each member desired children and to practice a prayer life they wore a hemp rope around their waist all the time -

In the 80s when I finally became aquainted with Al-anon and ACOA the folks in Scotland were just trying to get the organization started there. Whenever I visited France in the 80s I would look for an Al-Anon meeting to no avail except in Paris.

All to say the history of AA or knowing the dangers of drugs isn't teh corner stone of this story - it is looking at life in the 1940s and looking at what is said in the book - the morphine is an issue as well as her sexual life - we know what an addiction can do but during this time in history there wasn't even that knowledge among health providers much less the average joe who belonged to AA.

Interesting that your family members had great dreams - and yes, many desired to go to collage but than before and during the war there were very few men or women who attended college - only 5% of the U.S. population had a college education - the thrust for education came about when the soldiers came home - that war was a great hinge that enabled society to change from a traditional agrarian society with its fairs and harvest queens to what we knew in the mid 40s as women had been given more opportunity on to 50s and 60s when women had wider dreams and now, since the 70s, they can even pursue those dreams -

The other factor here is the hard work just to keep that family, which would be different than city folks in the same era - there was probably no electricity or if there was it lite with one bulb in the kitchen - the well was hand pumped - the stove was burning wood - this is not a place of dream making - we could say the only dreamer in the group was Framboise with her dream of getting that fish - life was utilitarian - hard - taking satisfaction in what is well prepared food, baking, farming and fishing along with sewing and small businesses like managing the post office or selling cloth.

Scrawler - I wondered if the villagers were not so much taking it out on the children as taking out their pent up fears and frustrations on anyone that appeared to not share their experience - here Maribelle hangs onto her land and makes a successful farm while Julien Lecoz lost his farm in a game of cards -

As if they have all suffered and they were measuring each other to be enraged at whoever didn't appear to suffer as much as they did. I got the impression it wasn't what Maribelle and her children did, it was the villagers desiding who was to be the scape goat for their frustrations, losses and fears. Maribelle just did not have the right to be so successful even sending her children to school - if no one else at least Raphaël should have been successful and if her kids hadn't been there that night he might still be the most successful.

An interesting point about this story is that the only characters who achieve a somewhat happy ending are Framboise and Paul. All the other main characters never overcome the tragedy that occurred during the war. Reine ends up in an institution, Cassis becomes a drunk and wastes his life, Mirabelle loses her children and spends the rest of her life alone. Tomas, of course, dies. Even Yannick and his wife are indirectly poisoned by the trauma that Cassis lived through. But Framboise and Paul come together at last and manage to create a future together that overcomes their past. One hopes that whatever years they have left will be good ones.

BARBARA,in response to your Post #307 I mentioned AA only as a way to show that there are organizations with archives which have historical references to drug use that goes way back before the 1930's and '40's. AA and the Oxford Group are only two.

Put me down as one here who doesn't believe Mirabelle's main purpose in going to La Mauvaise Réputation was for sex.

Horselover, Harris does put a sentimental twist to this romantic novel at the end, doesn't she?

Mal

hehehe - we are beating a dead horse - but only to say neither do I believe her only reason was for sex - I see both issues equally important to her character - that was what I picked up from the book -

We know that Framboise says Maribelle had an addiction and we know that Framboise uncoveres she had a sexual relationship with a German that we assume to be Tomas - as we read both issues seem to drive this women and yet the one issue seems to be the one that the Villagers are most obsessed with - they consider her a collaberator because of her sexual relationship not for bartering to get the drugs. If she played a part in that night it was her daughter that was the victim -

interesting horselover - yes, they all end up incomplete or unhappy except Framboise and Paul - I was going to say Famboise's daughter but I do not think that was clarified after the daughter learns there were so many secrets.

Does seem like Harris is saying Love wins...

Sitting here listening to the kind of improv jazz Tomas Leibniz and the Mauvaise Rép Bad Boys never played or ever heard probably.

I'm sorry you were sick, BARB, and hope you're feeling some better by now. My daughter and I are going to Richmond to the SeniorNet Bash early Friday morning, so I'll get my own final licks in now and when I can sneak in tomorrow. I'm excited about going, since I haven't been out of this room since early January, or more than 16 miles away from this house for 4 years.

The saxophone was invented by Adolphe Sax when he was 20 years old. It was a C bass saxophone, patented on March 20 in 1846, and you can be pretty darned sure a bass saxophone wasn't what Tomas was playing. I'd put my money on a tenor sax for Leibniz, like the one I'm listening to right now. I love the soprano sax, and Sidney Bechet was one of my favorite jazz musicians.

The clarinet's predecessor was the chalumeau--the first true single reed instrument, which appeared in the late 1600's. It had a range of about 1 1/2 octaves.

Johann Christoph Denner and his son Jacob added two keys to the chalumeau to give it a larger range, and that instrument became known as a clarinet. The saxophone and the clarinet are both single reed instruments. The Denners were German. Adolphe Sax was a Belgian.

I wonder what those dudes played at La Rep that night? Ain't Misbehavin'? Pistol Packin' Mamie?

Mal

Focus questions:

A wonderful woman I know in Australia whose husband is dying of cancer wrote to me this morning and said, "We cope because we have to." Some people "have to" more than others.

One of the things that kept Framboise going was her infatuation with Tomas Leibniz, I think. Just as the Old Mother motivated her, so did the idea that she'd someday meet a man she cared for as much as she did Leibniz. Sharing this German was an interesting twist to a mother and daughter relationship, wasn't it? I'm not sure it was will power that got Framboise through all she experienced as a child and later as a 64 year old woman, or whether it was just plain stubbornness, another strong characteristic she shared with her mother.

Tomas Leibniz's death was caused by an error in judgment. He knew from experience that the tangled roots and weeds and the current of the Loire were treacherous at the spot where he went in the water. The only myth I see is the one that said he had been shot by a member of the Résistance, and that myth was based on a lie. I wonder how many myths of heroic deaths of soldiers which have sprung up were based on lies? I find the idea that Cassis pulled Liebniz's body out of that water hard to swallow. Shooting the body in the back of the head also seems like an implausible idea to me. It was a handy device for the author to use to build her plot, but it's hardly realistic.

I suppose many people can be beaten down physically and emotionally enough to collaborate with the enemy. Mirabelle was not a collaborator. What she did was not a treasonous act. Collaboration with the enemy is. Mirabelle consorted with the enemy to obtain the only medicine she thought would help her get through attacks of migraine headaches.

Throughout history women who have consorted with the enemy have been publicly chastised or even killed for doing this. It was against the laws of such civilizations as the Greeks and Romans, for example.

It might seem from the way Joanne Harris ended this book that love is the most powerful of forces, but I think the strongest instinct and force any human being has is survival.

Life lived close to nature is not always a pretty story. It can be bone-breaking hard. Read some of Willa Cather's stories of the early pioneers.

Paul seems like a well-drawn character to me.

Mirabelle taught Framboise the joy of cooking, and opened her eyes to the disadvantages of living mean and isolating yourself within yourself.

I answered the question about Mirabelle's behavior as a mother in another post. She abused her children psychologically. Paul was not damaged psychologically as a child.

Old age can be a good experience, and it can be the pits. It depends on the individual and how much philosophical groundwork he or she has laid in earlier years.

Mal

MAL, I do agree with you that some of the things that happen are unrealistic. But this is true of almost all thrillers--the characters develop superhuman strength when necessary, and coincidences frequently advance the plot.

I also agree that survival is the primary force. However, there are times when a parent will neglect her own survival to save the life of a child. So love sometimes does trump survival.

Framboise does achieve a kind of victory at the end, but needs Paul's help to do it. She might have given up otherwise. So I guess we do need each other's help to survive. If you stop to really look at your own life realistically, you would see immediately that you could not survive without the help of others. Even Robinson Crusoe would not have made it had not Friday showed up to supply mental and physical support.

As for the life close to nature being a simpler existence, I don't agree. Human nature is the same everywhere, and this is what usually causes most of the complications in life. I don't think I'd want to go back to a time when the average life span was forty-something and many women died even younger in childbirth. It took days to travel even short distances. People bathed and washed their clothes infrequently because it was so difficult just to get water. Life only appeared to be simple because there were fewer choices. The one thing that was better was that your whole life was not stored in computers where it could be accessible to anyone.

My schedule was so busy that I have not been able to go over each and every point in the preceding posts. A problem came up in the house last night and, thankfully, a repairman is on his way.

For the moment, let me say this, BARBARA:

Quite a few things in this story are implausible and, to me, unbelievable.

Both the child and the adult Framboise have only a tenuous grasp of what was happening in their lives or why, and there is no ultimate elucidation in the book. That's why I introduced the timeline. Even adults only whispered about the résistance because of the mortal danger involved, and that children between 9 and 14, in a village yet, should have knowledge of it is extremely unlikely.

The depth of the resentment of the characters for one reason or another, the overall bad feelings harbored by so many, and especially the malice shown by Framboise simply overwhelm me. Nor was Paul such a "good guy". How COULD he have sent those anonymous letters and painted the signs?

The book centers on Framboise all the way through, the other characters are satellites. Indeed, without the glorious recipes and the sensuous food this book would be just another story about World War II.

Or is it also marginally about mothers and children, life and its often lacking rewards? Either way it is disappointing to this reader.

For Framboise the enigmatic Tomas was a romantic hero even in her old age. He may have been that to her, but he was calculating and sinister underneath. Unfortunately we have only Framboise's (and the author's) idealistic view to go by. I find that disappointing.

Mixed reviews - Must agree the recipes carried the day - is there anyone is this story that has a moral compass or does everyone act out of survival, and revenge, and greed, and, and, and...

Traude - I think you hit the nail on the head - this is another WWII story - what I did like about it was it shows the other side of human nature during war - it is so easy to look back and wax the golden crown of bravery, honor, noble sacrifice which, although a part of the war, I think the daily slugging out of those years was closer to what we read in this book. Human foibles exageratered by fear and loss during occupation.

horselover - hmmm thought provoking that the earlier simple life before technology wasn't really all that great it was simply fewer choices - certainly would allow folks to feel more in control and absolute in choices and outcomes. Technology sure has offered freedom to women that allows us to dream...

The more I think on it - there are instances of love trumping survival and that is how heros or martyers are born but just taking Maslows Hiarchy of needs, survival is the first step before love and friendship - is the hero role what we hope for a character - is that what we want to read about when a mother is featured as a character - is that what we hope from our own parents - are we really saying our survival should be secured by parents whose love for us is greater than their own survival - hmmm I wonder

Mal - consorted - good word - sure does clarify her role - their role - great and thanks for the info on the background of the musical instruments - I think you are saying the clarinet is a much older instrument - it is just the Sax that is fairly new as compared to many other instruments - re-reading your comment about Tomas and it just hit me - it was his heal that was caught in the roots - achilles -

Hmmm the perfect Achilles - I don't think so but a nice reference - are all the men in this story manipulaters - Tomas and Paul both seem to have quietly manipulated the downfall of others. Does Paul have a bit of Tomas' personality making it easy for Framboise to fall in love I wonder...

BARBARA, you are right of course. There are always mitigating circumstances. You are right also in that both Paul and Tomas were manipulators and added fuel to the flame, as it were.

There are no true winners in a war. The combatants on both sides do as they are told (what else could they do- except desert or kill themselves), they serve, many are maimed and many die. Nothing is new in this world, which has seen it all before, time and again, in war after war after bloody war throughout history.

Yes, the survival instinct is the fiercest. And love sustains us.

I'm sorry you were sick Barbara. I hope you let Wendy's know that you got sick from eating at their restaurant. I know how you feel, but I usually get sick from eating my own cooking.

Mal I do hope you and Robby and all of you have a real blast this weekend! Have a safe trip.

I think Mal's friend is right. We cope because we have to. While my son and husband were dying evryone around me thought I was doing such a wonderful job taking care of them and working etc. But what they didn't know was that I was standing on my last nerve and I was totally numb in both body and soul and just going through the motions of living. Yes, survive and some survive better than others. Not soon after their deaths I got interested in Eastern religions which has brought me some peace and I'm able to live in harmony with the world around me. Writing has also helped me to survive. I am not sure I gained a spiritual victory any more than Framboise did in the story. I didn't gain peace until sometime after their deaths. But yes, I think it is on sheer will power that we survive our crosses in life. And some do it better than others.

Tomas Leibniz's death seems an elaborte plot to pull all the tangled strings together. He got tangled in the roots of the Loire and everyone who lived in the village including the occupied soldiers all knew the dangers of the river. I doubt seriously that even a child Cassis age would have have been able to do what he did. He might have been able to come up with a plan like that in his mind because of all the books he'd been reading, but to pull it off would take a lot of strength - which I doubt any of the children had. It's just hard to believe - than it is fiction and I didn't write it.

Oh, I don't think you need anyone to survive. It's nice to have family and friends, but they are really not necessary. If an individual wants to survive they will. I think it depends on the personality of the individual. To collaberate to me is to colaberate with an enemy during time of war. I don't see Mirabelle as a colaberator as such. Like all of us she sought love and affection. It was the children who colaberated, but I don't think they really knew what they were doing. They just saw their actions as a way of getting material things. They didn't see the consequences of their acts until the people in the village were shot and even than I doubt that they fully understood their part in drama. I think Mirabelle would have colaberated with the enemy to make sure her children survived. She showed that after the trouble at LeRep that she was able to stop taking drugs - so her motive would probably have been to survive herself as well as the survial of her children.

Traude - what a great statement - "...the survival instinct is the fiercest. And love sustains us." To me that could be a one line sumation of this story - realizing that love can be for the fruit trees, preparing wonderful dishes, re-building a childhood farm and serving folks the accomplishments of two generations of cooks as well as love for the river, the village and those people who are supportive among family members and among villagers.

Scrawler - Didn't realize you were alone - it did not sink in when you shared it earlier in the conversation and it appears you lost a son as well - hard - it sounds like you are putting one foot in front of the other - off the subject but are you reading books on Budhism or possibly Tao - when the atom bomb went off in my life I found what ever I read from the Tao was my saving grace - having grown up educated by the Carmelites and Benedictins I knew contemplation and this was an extension that is still my mainstay.

You are not alone having difficulty with Cassis shooting Tomas - having grown up with guns I just do not doubt it at all - I also think it shows the savagery that anyone adapts to survive during savage times - I guess I am reminded again of "Lord of the Flies" - but this story really asks a lot of us, to take ourselves out of our usual moral surroundings.

As I understand it this story is based on the experiences of Joanna Harris' grandfather in France, a boy during the occupation, although from Normandy rather than the Loire Valley.

Yes Maribelle was a tigar - as you say she, "would have colaberated with the enemy to make sure her children survived." It dawned on me - when someone is such the ferocious tigar they are probably not all sweetness and light but rather that tigar like personality is probably there for all to view.

Hmmmm gives me another view of my own daughter - who I always simply said in my head she didn't suffer fools gladly but now I see her not at severe as Maribelle or even Framboise since she has great fun about her and kids love her - she teaches art in the local schools as well as a Saturday program for NCU - but she can become a tigar when anyone stamps on her or her family, and her kids know to do what they said they would do, and she is a sherpa when it comes to her own work ethic.

And no, kids do not understand the consequences for their actions do they - it is where I have issues with the legal system - folks are outraged and simply want someone to make them feel better by the deed doer being punished - ah so - but that is another whole conversation in itself isn't it...As wily, meanspirited and manipulative as these children were they sure didn't see very far into the minds of the adults did they.

I am still gasping over Paul - I guess for 95% of the story he was painted the good guy so it was a shock I didn't see coming. Talk about forgiving your enemy - maybe that is what love is built on - forgiveness.

SCRAWLER has pointed out how well this author uses language. She often writes like a poet. It's my opinion that she may have bitten off more than she could chew. It's a complicated plot written in a complicated style of flashbacks that at times were confusing to this reader and did not always succeed.

The idea of an encrypted journal was a good one, and Harris does that part of the story well. Wrapping clues with pastry and adding ephemera like dried flowers, which sometimes have a special meaning, is a clever device.

Aside from the appeal of Tomas Leibniz, whom Harris endowed with some charm, I had trouble finding a single character I really respected and liked. It was hard to feel sympathy for Mirabelle, though I wanted to, and Framboise was too often a sadistic pain in the neck.

Paul didn't appeal to me in the beginning at all, and it was only at the end that he seemed finally to take shape. I was beginning to wonder if Mirabelle's calling him a cretin wasn't far offbase. Harris did better with her portrayal of Luc.

I don't mind having my imagination taxed when I read a book, but when a writer asks me to believe impossible things I balk. There were too many of those in Five Quarters of the Orange, if you ask me.

I see no moral conclusion to be found in this book. In fact, it didn't teach me much except to tell me of food I've never heard of before. On a scale of 1 to 10, ten being the best, I'd rate this book as a possible 2, maybe 2 1/2.

Thanks, BARBARA, for this discussion, and thanks to all of you for making it more interesting than the actual book.

Thanks, SCRAWLER. I think Dorian and I will have a grand old time at the Richmond Bash.

Mal

This book were it not for the romance in the final pages between Paul and Boise would be blacker than black!

I think one thing we can take out of the book is that people can behave in what we would consider aborrhant ways if they are put in abnormal circumstances such as the occupation of their country by a ruthless regime. We can sit back in horror at the behaviour of some of the characters but how do we know how we would react should we have been placed in the same situation. War brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. Many see war as a way of making their fortune. I remember my grandfather refusing to patronise a local business because the owner was a black marketeer. My grandfather was so straight that he used to argue with my grandmother about accepting gifts of food from the American soldiers they hosted during their time in Auckland. My grandparents had open house to the American boys when they were on leave. Often the boys would leave food unobtainable here because of strict rationing on the kitchen window sill for my grandmother as they went past in the early morning. My grandfather did not believe they should accept it when everyone was doing without.

I think the children fraternised with the enemy mainly because their mother was too busy with the farm and the problem with her addiction - they were just too much for her and if she had been well they would not have had as much free time to get up to mischief. Other children would have been warned by their parents not to fraternise with the German soldiers and would have had to give an account of how they spent their free time. Mirabelle was too much of a mess to push the point even when I think she suspected they were up to something.

I think the author is trying to show the reader the ignoble side of human nature when humans are placed in abnormal circumstances. In other words trying to make us think how we would behave if we were living in fear of an occupying army, going without necessities, having to put up with the most miserable of circumstances.

I did write a big long post this morning but lost it all and now I have lost my train of thought. I was too mad to sit down and start all over again at the time the post disappeared!

This is all I can think of to say at this moment.

Carolyn

Barbara, I took a course in Buddaism and the book I read and still re-read is "Awakening the Budda Within" by Lama Surya Das. It is Tibetain wisdom for the Western world and is written specifically for western ideals.

I think of Framboise as an anti-heroine. She's a little like our Superman or Batman! I guess Catwoman would be closer to her character. In the end these characters do good, but in a round about way and they are not always that good a character - in other words they weren't flawless!

I don't think that this story shows us love as much as it shows us hate. Framboise hates her mother more than she loves her. She also hates Old Mother but uses her to get what she think she wants. I think she had affection for Tomas, but I wouldn't call it love. She was not close to her sister or brother and not close to her own children. But she did seem to have genuine affection for her grandchildren. I can see the greatest force in the story as being "understanding of others" or rather the lack of understanding of others. If Frambroise and other characters had put themselves in another's shoes perhaps they would have understood what was happening around them. Therefore I think the greatest force is neither love or hate but rather understanding.

I wouldn't say that being close to nature was simpler or richer than life in a technolocgical society. I think each has it fundamentally good and bad combination. I don't think our enviornment has a lot to do with how we feel about ourselves or that what surrounds us. I think it depends on the personality of the individual. I'm a city gal myself that loves the country as long I remember to bring the bug spray. On the other hand my husband was brought up on a farm and he swore he'd never go back, but was also unhappy with the city life.

Life is harsh and unjust, but you have to play the cards God gave you. I can't tell you how many times I asked myself: "Why me? Why is this happening to me." It wasn't until I met a man that had not only lost his wife, but had lost all of his 12 chidren that my life wasn't anywhere as near as bad as his. We each have our crosses to bear and sometimes we don't get rewarded for our labors any more than Maribelle. My favorite line that I like to repeat to anyone that will listen is: "It's not whether you win or lose, but rather the journey that is important." Whether I finish writing my present book doesn't matter, it's the journey that I travel to get to writing that book that matters.

I don't see Paul as unbelievable, but I personally have never really met anyone like Paul. I think in some ways he may have felt guilty about the way he treated Maribelle and as I said before children seldom ever really know the problems of the adult world. I think just like the rest of us he had to become an adult before he could really do anything for Framboise. He might have loved her especially in the end, but than Framboise wasn't the easiest person to get a long with.

Mal - Interesting isn't it that Harris was able to make Luc so real for us - I wonder if she as a writer can bring out contemporary characters a bit better or we as readers can relate to a contemporary character where as we have limited ability to relate to a character experiencing European armed occupation that took place 65 years ago.

Her use of food and recipes was brilliant - giving us the sense that this could not be happening - there is warm clafoutis on the table.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is much better isn't he about writing of "impossible things" - of course he received the Noble for his efforts - but even while I read Marquez I have a difficult time determining where fantasy begins and where it is real - especially since in Latin America there is still believed so my myth and magic. Harris' handling of European "surreal" seems just as confusing doesn't it - I think many of us are used to and more comfortable with the surreal or magic or fantasy be pointed out to us and used as a metaphore rather then simply woven into the realism of the story so that we have to wonder what is Magical Realism and what is possible given the times and the war.

From your persepctive a 2 or 2.5 is how you rate this book...

Kiwi - Your first sentence sums it up - "This book were it not for the romance in the final pages between Paul and Boise would be blacker than black!"

And so the romance of the whole thing or just the romance between Paul and Framboise I wonder - because it really fits the description doesn't it of a romantic novel - not in the way of a love attraction between two people but rather the romance of emotionally charged background - a small village, an open air market, fields, rivers and woods, a tree house, a child fishing, an October festival, all the many meals described and recipes included, a farm house that we can imagine with scrubbed wood floors and table and the warmth of the cooking stove in the kitchen. All that was sure a contrast to knowing an enemy soldier would secretly befriend your children and a mother who as you say "was too much of a mess to push the point even when I think she suspected they were up to something."

I just wonder what a mother would say to her children under similar circumstances - parents know they all have to live with the situation and she does not want to frighten the children or make them so antaginistic they could get in trouble if they were ever stopped by the enemy soldiers - what a fine line a parent would have to tread.

Sorry I know about your long posts - same thing happened to me today - here I was responding to y'all this afternoon and bango the whole thing disappered - so finally after a nap, some supper and a look at the PBS NewsHour I am trying again.

Scrawler - Framboise as 'Catwomen' I love it...hehehe. And you make a good case for "understanding." Which I gather is the opposite of selfish - or maybe self-centered would be a better word -

I wonder if the war is the rational for a lack of understanding although that is one of the major characteristics we hear of people in major first world nations today - we still hear off the "me" generation which seems to be the big divide seperating us from most third world countries or is it - when we consider the enviornment as compared to a villager in Latin America or Africa using resources willy nilly to take care of the immediate needs of his family - looks like you may have hit on the basis of the struggle for power - me and now versus other and future.

Oh my a wife and 12 children - oh oh - as you say though we all go on with the cards we were delt - they say these painful experiences is how we learn - I wonder - at times I have to believe it and at other times I just wonder if we are not trying to justify our version of a "good" God that we developed so that he can continue to look good or maybe it really has nothing to do with God but rather the Chaos Theory opperating among humans.

Hehehe - right on - "... but than Framboise wasn't the easiest person to get a long with."

This is one story that will stay with me for awhile - her understanding of manipulation was amazing - much of what she wrote I can translate into other power struggles and uneven power positions between children and adults and so for that I was glued to the book - and yes the charm as a back drop was enchanting - makes me want to slow down and smell the flowers again -

I have a real dilemma - I loved to garden and for more years than not, I have had a vegtable garden - back now some years, gosh I cannot believe 14 years ago, my life changed so that work and getting my head back on again, became my main focus. Gardening was stopped for economic reasons and lack of time and energy I needed to focus on a new challange - the gate to the back rotted off even though the 6 ft fence seperating my yard was replaced by neighbors - through the gap the deer found my yard.

They spend nights and at times days in my yard and I love it - had two fawns born back there and many young fawns were left for the night while the does went grazing elsewhere. In order to garden I would have to either have the gate rebuilt or go to the expense of fencing off a piece of the yard - will it be the Deer or a garden...

Well this was our last day with Framboise, Cassis, Reinne, Maribelle, and her family along with Paul, the Villagers and Tomas and his friends. Quite a cast of characters -

Yes, I would have to say I learned a lot just by realizing that a novelist can give us a glimps of the power struggles played out among ordinary humans during times of enormous stress and how the author can bring that struggle to life - amazing to me was learning that power struggles are understood and can be explained - her description of a body dealing with struggle and stress was amazing.

And yes, I enjoyed immensly the charm of the coutry side, the farm, and those recipes. I could visualize the small creperie - the quiet chill of the tree shaded Loire in summer and brilliant autumn, I could hear the children when they were playing and daring each other to greater feats.

Bottom line what stands out is, as Kiwi says, "the ignoble side of human nature when humans are placed in abnormal circumstances."

I am not sure how yet, but the recipe discussion will be opened to all the bookies to post recipe's as they relate to books they are reading - they may even post a few more French recipes for us.

This has been a good group discussion and thanks for your participation - please if you would fill out our survey - if you did not receive one in an e-mail please let me know so I can be sure you are included.

Bye and thanks - have a great summer...

BARBARA and SCRAWLER, thank you for your posts. SCRAWLER, you have my admiration.

Coincidentally, the History Channel carried a program about the German occupation of France at 8 p.m. tonight.. I happened on it in the middle and watched only for a short time.

There were interviews with survivors from the era, one with an old, still beautiful woman. She had an improbable love affair with a much younger German soldier, which reminded me of our book right away. There was a picture of the lovely child she bore him but no further report on the little girl's fate.

There was also a photo showing a German soldier and a French policeman in a street scene, surveying/regulating traffic or some such, seemingly in harmony, while the voice in the background explained that the Pétain government cooperated with the Germans, acquiesced in and even implemented (!) the German policy against the Jews. Right then I closed my eyes and ears for a few seconds.

The French collaborators were found long after the fact and prosecuted following long internal debates in France. The process took years and years. One of them was Klaus Barbie, the "butcher of Lyon" -- no connection to the doll of the same name. He was tried and found guilty. He died i prison of cancer at 78 in 1991. Another infamous name is Papon.

The History Channel also reported that the French résistance became really active and effective only in 1944 after the Americans landed in Normandie.

CAROLYN, I share your impression of this story, whether we call it 'black' or 'grim'. For me the biggest stumbling block is the improbable obsession of a cunning (precocious, to be sure) nine-year old with an older man ... the enemy - as it happens. While that enemy, Tomas, may well have had what we now call charisma, I regarded him with suspicion all the way through the book. He may have been merely an opportunist, a war profiteer on a small scale. But he is too vaguely drawn in the book for the reader to be sure. His three companions, and the SS man, are stereotypes, in my opinion.l

BARBARA, Mirabelle was NOT at La Rép that night, she was home with another headache. Framboise had seen to that. Otherwise the children would not have been able to sneak out.

BARBARA, I enjoyed the different pictures in the heading which accompanied our discussion. Thank you for your labor. I hope you are well again.

Some time tomorrow I'll pen a post in La Cuisine; I can't be sure when ... the grands are coming.

Traude - We are posting at the same time - but a special thank you - your perspective and relating fact was invaluable - we are enriched here on seniornet with folks who have experienced so much life and your European heritage was a boon to this story. Thanks...

"The History Channel also reported that the French résistance became really active and effective only in 1944 after the Americans landed in Normandie." seems to agree with the book I purchased and have just started Marianne in Chains said to be based on massive archival research and probing interviews - the result is the most human and completly original account of the German occupation of France. Rober Gildea offers readers the opportunit to come to grips with the awful chioces facing the peopl of the Loire Valley, esepcially those in authority, after 1940. The bibliography is 49 pages thick and includes the dates and names of those he interviewed.

And so you could not the stereotyping of German soldiers - as they say Traude unfortunatly the winners get to tell the story their way - although I think there is less bad blood left here in the states from that war but I do not know how those in Europe secretly feel.

Not sure why you must make me aware that Maribelle was not at La Rép that night - somehow I think maybe in the writing or the reading that mis-understanding happened, because I didn't ever think she was there that night although, she had been there at other times - but it doesn't matter now - the story has had its impact on all of us and we are all coming away with many ifs, and could be's...

Traude thanks for joining us - like all the posters you added your unique interests, style and history that rounded out our discussion.

BARBARA, yes, it must have been a misreading on my part. Sorry.

As I said, the illustrations in the header are wonderful. I'm too exhausted to go back now and find out more about the artist.

I see Maribelle teaching Frambosie to be afraid. Fear is a healthy thing when not taken to the supreme. It keeps us aware of what our surroundings are like. As a child Framboise was never afraid of anything, but as an adult she became more fearful and this I think made her accept Paul at the end of the book, because she recognized her own fears in him.

I don't think Maribelle had anything to do with how her children responded. After all it was Paul who wrote those horrible letters to Maribelle. I know as children we had more freedom than I was able to give my own children in the 70s and 80s. I'm not sure that I can put my finger on why, but I think that our society evolved to the point where not seek to have more security and as a result we have to give up much of our freedom.

I don't know that old-age brings life's greatest triumphs, personally for me my greatest triumph was when I was raising my family, although I probably didn't appreciate it as much as should have at the time. I think it depends on the particular triumph we are trying to accomplish. After the deaths of my son and husband I moved to Portland, Orgeon to be close to my daughter, who in a matter of months got married and moved East. So what I thought I was going to have I never got, but I was able jump-start my writing career. So I think life is really a matter of trade-offs. And this I think is what Harris shows us in this book: "Five Quarters of an Orange". The characters all have "trade-offs" not all of them successfully done.

By the way I promised you I'd tell you all about my cousin, who was about 16 and what happened to her during the war. The women of the village in the Ionian Islands where she lived found her one night when she was coming home from the German encampment. They shaved her head and would have probably killed her except my great-uncle who was head of the Greek resistance on the island intervened and put her on a ship leaving the islands. She was told never to come back to Greece again and she was never to contact her two children.

Now I was born in 1943 before all this so I was named after her and since we were cousins we looked very much alike, which didn't endure me to my aunts. As a child I was always confused by this type of treatment. It seemed that the women in my family never forgave her for what they thought see did. Only my grandfather and the men of my family allowed her into our homes.

I saw her only once in the late 1950s. I was about nine years old and had braces on my teeth and was one of those lanky sub-teens just getting "zits" when I saw her. At the time she looked like Grace Kelly. I remember that she held me close to her and kept repeating a name over and over and there were tears streaming down her face. Later I asked my grandfather why she had cried and he explained to me that I reminded her of one of her own children whom she was forbidden to see.

Did my cousin collaberate with the Germans or was she working for the resistance? Nobody ever talked about her one way or the other, but it would seem to me that she was working for the resistance because even in Greece she was a very attractive girl. Later on I found out that the Greek resistance used not only young girls, but children to find out information -not unlike Framboise, Casis, and Reine.

Thank you all for a wonderful discussion. Until we met again have a great summer! Special thanks to Barbara for all her hard work.

Scrawler - Oh my the pain your cousin must have endured - we don't always need the enemy do we to see how easily we can turn on each other - regardless her role she lost her children and that I just cannot imagine living with easily.

And you to - you've had your share - we cannot depend on family any longer can we - when I think of my parents generation and the generations before there was a closeness that is not esteemed any longer - I think it was probably our generation that moved around with the job - new factory sites were built and you were expected to up and move or loose out on permotions. It all makes for an isolated feeling in our age since even if sisters and brothers or cousins are wanting you to move close by, you really do not know them after all these years.

My youngest lived in your neck of the country - he lived in Portland for about 3 years - I forgot the name of the community that was part of Portland - they didn't like it and were so glad to come home to Texas - the rain - three small boys - the twins were 5 and Chris was 6 when they moved there - Sally had no idea how to handle them indoors with all that rain and cold winters. And of course the people were different - they were glad they did move away for the experience but. it was not an area of the country they enjoyed even if the mountains and the ocean were within easy driving distance -

I would visit about 4 times a year and the Thanksgiving visit always included that weekend treck into the mountains to cut down a Christmas Tree. The vistas were unbelievable - what I liked is as thick as the trees are, even on the roads through the forests you can still see the sky. I did not feel as boxed in as I do when I travel east into the part of the South from Georgia east -

Louisianna and Mississippi aren't so bad - but leaving Mississippi traveling east I feel like I am driving through tunnels or caves - sitting on the porch at my daughters in the mountains of North Carolina I feel all closed in as if I should go around ducking as if I was about to hit my head on a ceiling. I am too used to seeing sky and lots of it.

I am so curious about the kind of books you are writing - have you published anything yet - and I must agree with you - some of my best memories are when the children were young and my life was centered in my home.

Good luck and I am sure I will see your posts in another discussion - I will have a busy summer but come fall I will be anxious to participate in another book discussion. Hope you are adding your posts and we can visit again.

Traude - Thanks I am so glad you enjoyed the heading - tried to keep it as short as I could and still make it fun to open each day - I am on my Mac and it still amazes me how different the heading looks according to what computer I am on. No telling what you are seeing.

This was a great group and I really enjoyed the discussion - we will be closing this down I believe today...

PLease if you have not taken the survey would you take a few minutes to fill it out - Marcie is hoping the information will be available so that next months discussions can benefit from your feedback. The link to the Survey in now in the heading.

Five Quarters of the Orange

Reading and Discussion Schedule

Link to Survey