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Gentlemen and Players and Five Quarters of the Orange
Joanne Harris
Paperback, 422 pages; 2007 (2006) and Paperback, 307 pages; 2007 (2001)
To say that Gentlemen and Players is gripping hardly does the novel justice: I actually stood up and shouted, "Oh, no!" at one point as I was reading it. Joanne Harris's tour de force is set within a private school for boys in England. The caretaker's child, a bookish sort, roams the grounds and buildings at night, desperately wishing to belong to the elevated set attending St. Oswald's, but instead must settle for the local public school. Envy leads to deception; passion is met with rejection; and revenge results in murder. The chapters are titled in the terminology of a chess game: "Pawn," "King," "Knight," "En Passant"…and ultimately to "Mate." In Five Quarters of the Orange, a sixty-five-year-old woman returns to the small French village of her childhood. Decades earlier, her mother was blamed for a tragedy that occurred during the German occupation. A book of recipes and memories she's inherited from her mother holds the key to that tragedy. Once again, Joanne Harris surrounds likeable characters with an intricate plot.
(EE)
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