Thérèse Neelands

from the book straight to the blog

Gentlemen and Players. Joanne Harris.

Phew. This book is pure genius. It’s murder mystery totally un-Agatha Christie-style. In fact, it’s so witty and kinda humourous in the beginning that you barely notice it’s a murder mystery at all, until it starts to get dark, and then it gets pretty dark.

The characters are so well realized that you forget you’re reading a work of fiction. You get to know them really well. You think you get to know them really well, and then realize you didn’t at all.

And that’s the whole point of the book, really. The theme. If someone tells you “this is an apple” and it looks like an apple, you’ll easily believe it’s an apple. To quote:

“It was staring at you in the face, sir”, I said. “And all the time you never saw it. Never even guessed.”

Well bloody hell, I never guessed. I thought I had it figured out, and couldn’t figure out why there were so many pages left.

Cheers to you, Joanne Harris. Cheers to you, you bloody genius.

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris

Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris is filled with food. I’ve never read (gasp!) Chocolat (yet!), but I imagine that it was also filled with food, although of the sweeter kind. Five Quarters starts out sweet, then almost half way, gets dark and then darker and then a little mysterious. It’s about pleasure and repression. About family feuds past and present, innocence and experience, guilt, lies, and bold, fiesty hearts.

The writing is the best part. It’s simple but sumptuous and very real. And goes deliciously well with a stack of home made chocolate chip walnut cookies.

Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies (not to be eaten with lemons)