French Dreaming

I really don't think that I appreciated France enough when I went there in 2004. I was 16 years old, and it was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to be back in South Africa, at a camp with my friends, lying on the beach during the day and sleeping in tents at night. Instead, I was forced into coming to France, travelling through the countryside, sleeping in four star hotels (that's just how my family rolls, y'all) and eating decadent French cuisine.

Now, I can see what you are thinking (yes, I can read minds). Why on earth am I complaining?? Dirty, uncomfortable camp compared to France in luxury - not too difficult of a choice, right? Well, I wasn't all too happy to be going along. As much as I wanted to visit a foreign country, I also knew by this point what travelling with my family was like, and it wasn't something that I particularly looked forward to. And I was right. As beautiful as the French countryside was, it was a trip filled with fighting. I was fighting with my sister, which led to my father fighting with me, which led to my parents fighting with each other, which led to my sister fighting with my mother for defending me. There was a lot of fighting. In between, we visited Paris, Ceret and other areas whose names lost in the whirlwind trip, but whose images are ingrained in my mind, and overall the trip wasn't quite as bad as I had imagined that it would be, but it was certainly not the way that I would have liked to experience France.

Now that I am older and wiser and far more appreciative of different cultures, different cuisine and different people, I want to travel there again. Unfortunately, this is not particularly likely. Instead I have to console myself by reading books that are based in France - books like Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris.

For those of you who do not know who Joanne Harris is, she is the woman behind Chocolat, the sensational book (also based in France) and the award winning movie that followed starring Juliette Binoche and (swoon) Johnny Depp. I loved Chocolat, almost as much as I love the subject of the novel, and somehow knew that I would love Five Quarters of the Orange as well. Harris has this wonderful way of writing that just draws you into the novels that she writes and keeps you there through a mixture of suspense, longing and nostalgia (for lack of a better word).

Five Quarters of the Orange, like Chocolat, has a theme of cooking running through it, and she uses this theme to reminisce about the main character's secret past. Framboise, the main character, inherits a cookbook and a single truffle preserved in oil when her mother passes away. Her brother inherits the farm that the family grew up in, and as he has no use for it, Framboise buys it from him and returns to the town where she grew up under the pseudonym of Madame Simon. There, she builds up a restaurant and a life for herself, all the while delving into the mystery of her mother through her cookbook, filled with recipes and diary-like notes, and trying to avoid the past that threatens to catch up with her.

I adored Five Quarters of the Orange, and it is a book that I intend to read over and over again. The scenery described is beautiful, the recipes mouthwatering and the story intriguing. If you have read Chocolat and loved it, I would highly recommend this book. It has some of the best parts of the novel, and even though I still think that Chocolat is slightly better, I wouldn't pass this one over. For those that have yet to read Chocolat, I would recommend reading it first.