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.

Middle England – Jonathan Coe

The book opens with Benjamin Trotter returning to his home in the Midlands after his mother’s funeral. He has his father with him, and, as the evening progresses, they are joined by a succession of close friends and relatives who turn up uninvited, concerned at his quiet departure from the wake. That is in 2010, and the cast assembled form the core of characters that will take the reader through the events of the ensuing decade with all its challenges.

They are a diverse bunch, though a couple were at grammar school with Benjamin - an owner of a garden centre who gives a businessman’s perspective and a newspaper columnist who provides an insight into the political machine. From the family is Benjamin’s sister, Lois who is a university librarian, and her daughter, Sophie.

Sophie brings the younger generation into the picture. Her best friend, Sohan, is gay and of immigrant stock. Sophie, herself, in a reaction against her previous relationships with liberal metropolitan academic types, starts one with a working guy in Birmingham. His mother is far to the right and employs a Polish cleaner. Throwing in a couple more friends from Benjamin’s schooldays, Charlie Chappell, the children’s entertainer, and Jennifer Hawkins, Ben’s first failed attempt at coupling, provides additional scope for comedy.

The interplay between this panoply of characters and the significant events of the decade – the London Olympics, the US presidential election, the EU referendum, three general elections, and Brexit - paints a broad but vivid picture of Middle England in the 2010s. Each viewpoint is given respect, placed in real life context, with mouthpieces that articulate the debates of the day: immigration v racism; political correctness v equality of opportunity; and taking back control v cultural isolation. The destructive nature of the arguments takes its toll, but is there some hope for reconciliation at a personal level?

Difficult as the task is, the book successfully and entertainingly achieves its aims of reflecting life in middle England in a turbulent decade.

The Birthday Boys – Beryl Bainbridge

In June 1910 Captain Scott’s latest expedition sets off from Cardiff on the Terra Nova.

Its destination is Antarctica, its purpose to be the first to reach the South Pole. The book consists five sequential narratives, one each from the five men destined to make the final push for the pole.

First off is petty Officer ‘Taff’ Evans with his account of a wild send-off at Cardiff. A month later in July 1911 ‘Uncle Bill’ Wilson tells of a hazardous expedition en route, undertaken to collect specimens from the remote South Trinidad Island. A gap of nine months ensues before Scott himself, ‘the owner’, takes up the story of the error-strewn landfall on Antarctica (by now March 1911) and establishing bases. A fourth voice, that of Lieutenant ‘Birdie’ Bowers, describes a risky midwinter sortie in July 1911 to collect penguin eggs. Finally, ominously dated March 1912, ‘Titus’ Oates relates the final, fateful, journey alongside the four previous narrators whom by now we know well.

In fabricating these voices and linking them together, Beryl Bainbridge presents a most human account of their endeavour. The conflicts, disagreements and resentments are presented alongside the respect, camaraderie, loyalty and love. Heroic failure is made understandable if not sensible.

Is it bravery, patriotism or thirst for adventure or knowledge that drives their quest, or some compulsion to test themselves to the limit, inexplicable to most people? Whatever, it makes for gripping reading as each episode raises the stakes and shortens the odds on survival. Even the celebrations in Cardiff put Taff Evans at risk, of his job if not his life.

A clever idea very well executed.

The Hunting Party – Lucy Foley

This is a classic murder mystery with an added twist as not only is the identity of the murderer kept from the reader until the end, but also that of the victim.

The set-up is a group of nine young, well-heeled members of the metropolitan elite who book a remote highland hunting lodge to see in the new year in splendid, champagne fuelled isolation. They are not completely alone, there is a few staff and another party of two elsewhere on the estate.

Now to the form and plot, which complement each other cleverly. There are four female narrators (three guests and the manager) and another point of view over the shoulder of the male gamekeeper. They pass the baton to and fro to tell the story, but in two timelines. One starts on the discovery of the body on the second day of the new year, the other flashes back three days earlier to the day before New Year’s Eve when the party arrived.

Both strands move steadily forward, alternating to build up to twin climaxes of revealing the crime and unmasking the perpetrator.

It all works very well. The split timeline is effective, and the sliced narration provides a varied perspective on current events and private insights into long simmering hidden passions, resentments and most importantly, motives (of both guests and hosts).

And, of course, it snows to increase the isolation, ramp up the tension and provide a stark backdrop to the unfolding drama.