Five Quarters of the Orange – Joanne Harris

The widow Francois Simon runs a small creperie in Les Laveuses, a sleepy village on the River Loire. The story she needs to get off her chest provides two narratives, one covering events in her youth that trouble her, and the other covering why it must and how it can be told.

What links the two strands is that no-one in Les Laveuses knows that the widow Simon, who bought the old derelict Dartigen farm a few years since, is the same Framboise Dartigen who left there as a twelve year old girl in the aftermath of the German occupation in the Second World War. She keeps her identity secret for good reason. People died in the occupation; other people got blamed; and residents of Les Laveuses have long memories and revile the name of Dartigen.

All would have remained well enough had not the renown of her culinary creations (based on her mother’s recipes encoded in an album left to Framboise) come to the notice of her nephew’ wife. She is a Paris food journalist; she wants the recipes and is not above dirty tricks, including threat of exposure to the locals, to get them.

The two narratives unfold in parallel. The child Framboise runs wild on the banks of the Loire: battling her mother, manipulating her older siblings, and getting too close to an enigmatic young German soldier. The widow Framboise finds her creperie subject to fierce and unfair competition. The two wars showcase Framboise’s character, but there are rarely winners and losers in war, just survivors.

The descriptive prose is well flavoured with culinary references that enhance rather than intrude on the narrative. The relationships are complex, motivations unsure, and outcomes uncertain until the twin climaxes arrive.

A riveting, deliciously written book.

The Postmistress – Sarah Blake

In 1940 two stories unfold, one on each side of the Atlantic Ocean. In London, bombs start to fall as the Blitz begins and cub reporter, Frankie Bard, takes cover between shifts broadcasting news back to the States. In Franklyn on the tip of Cape Cod, the locals listen to the voice of the ‘radio gal’ but events in Europe have little effect on still-neutral USA, and town life goes on as normal.

The doctor’s new wife, Emma Fitch, arrives to take up residence; postmaster, Iris James, sorts the mail; and Harry Vane runs his garage business unaware that Iris James has her sights set on him.

Dr Fitch loses a patient and, more moved than most by Frankie Bard’s broadcasts, he decides to go off to London to help minister to the dying and wounded. There is a chance encounter with Frankie that leaves the radio gal with a message to deliver back home. But before then she lands the work assignment she has been craving, recording the stories of the countless, stateless, refugees fleeing the Reich and heading west across Europe for a boat, they hope, to the USA.

It is dangerous and emotionally draining work, especially as no-one back home (including the residents of Franklyn) seem to care what is going on. Back there the news is Mrs Fitch’s pregnancy and Iris James finally snaring Harry Vale. Frankie returns to the US and heads up to Cape Cod to deliver the messages first-hand – on the war in Europe and about Dr Fitch. How well will they be received?

The contrast between the daily life in London and Cape Cod is well documented and using Frankie’s broadcasts to link the two is effective. But both narratives are fragmentary; back stories are hinted at but not developed; futures are left dangling. This, presumably, is deliberate and echoes Frankie’s increasing introspection about the nature of her reportage – her subjects are real when in her sights but may as well not exist before or after.

Neither a difficult nor particularly satisfying read.

The Museum of You – Carys Bray

Clover Quinn lives with her dad, Darren, in a three bedroom house in a small town on the Lancashire coast. The long summer holidays are here and now she has turned twelve she can be left at home to look after herself while Darren is on shift driving his bus. There is a watchful eye and friendly face next door though in the shape of Mrs Mackeral. She has known Clover since she was born; literally, as she delivered Clover from her surprised mother on the kitchen floor.

That is one of the few things Clover knows about her mother, Becky Brookfield; other titbits have been gleaned from her grandad, her uncle Jim, and her dad’s best friend Colin. Dad Darren, however, is reticent. He is more than reticent; he is almost in denial. One of the three bedrooms is stacked high with Becky Brookfield’s stuff that he cannot face dealing with.

Now Clover, inspired by a school trip to a museum and a conversation with the curator, decides to use her time home alone to secretly set up an exhibition in the third bedroom to interpret the remnants of the mother she never knew.

Told alternately from Clover and Darren’s perspectives, a picture of normal chaotic family life emerges, with flashbacks and tangential forays into the lives of minor but well-drawn characters.

As the summer heat builds so does the tension. As the exhibition nears completion, Clover moves from childhood into adolescence and Darren notices the first shoots of feelings for another woman. But the big question is how he will react to the ‘Museum of You’.

It is well done and sensitively written with the relationship between Clover and Darren particularly touching. And if sometimes Darren gets a bit maudlin over his loss of Becky, it is balanced by the humour of Mrs Mackeral’s verbal mix-ups.

My Name is Leon – Kit de Waal

When we first meet Leon he is in hospital, but he is fine; he is there as his mother has just given birth to his half-brother, Jake. Leon is a sturdy nine-year-old, self-reliant, as he needs to be, as neither his nor Jake’s father is around, and his mum Carole is a liability.

She cannot cope and eventually Leon and Jake end up in care with foster-lady Maureen. All goes well for six months or so, then a permanent placement is found for Jake – he is a baby and, unlike Leon, white, which makes him easier to rehome. The separation from his baby brother devastates Leon and he hatches a plan to reunite the family.

That will not be easy with Jake elsewhere in London and Carol institutionalised in Bristol, so Leon starts accumulating the things he will need – a map, baby stuff, and money filched from unguarded handbags – in an increasingly heavy rucksack.

After another enforced change in fostering, Leon discovers a local allotment and befriends a couple of plot holders, at last male role models of a sort, though neither are ideal. Their potting sheds provide another source for Leon’s pilfering.

Leon chooses a bad moment to make his move. There is trouble on the streets with protests over the death of a black man at police hands. It is scary out there for a ten-year-old, even if he has got a gun in his rucksack!

It is all told from Leon’s viewpoint, which maintains a tight focus, possibly at the expense of variety in voice and tone.