Bitter Orange, by Clare Fuller, follows the musings and reminiscences of Frances Jellico who is near death. Visited by a man who calls himself the vicar, she harks back to the summer of 1969 when Frances, then aged 39, gets a job surveying the garden architecture of a large country house (Lyntons). Up to that point, she had been looking after her recently deceased mother, and Frances takes the job on a whim, ready to experience the world. Upon arrival, she discovers that there are two others also working at the house - Cara and Peter, an exotic couple with a tortuous past. Frances soon becomes infatuated with them both, and cannot resist spying on them through a hole in the floor in her bedroom. They seem to become firm friends, but all is not as it seems and tall tales are told over long, lavish dinners drinking wine from the long abandoned cellars of Lyntons. When they also discover a stash of furniture and household items, they take to borrowing them ... or even selling them. The jobs they should be doing take second place to what has become a bohemian lifestyle and Frances falls deeply in love with Peter ... but where might that leave Cara? And as time goes on, she cannot be sure that anything they have told her is actually true. Told in a series of flashbacks, this is a story with many ebbs and flows and one that heads deeper and deeper into tragedy. Whilst I had sympathy for the naive Frances, I found it difficult to like Cara and Peter and I just wanted Frances to get out of the situation before it was too late. The volatility of the couple was just too much drama for me and I would have left them to it. I certainly didn't fall for them, but found them rather self absorbed and irritating most of the time. I did like the descriptions of the house and gardens and would have liked more of that, as well as the relationship between Frances and the local vicar ... if only she'd listened to him! There were also hints of a ghostly presence at times, which felt a bit out of place and totally unnecessary. So, a bit of a mixed bag, and I mostly enjoyed it while I was reading it, but I don't think it's a book that will stay with me for very long.
My STAR rating: FOUR.
Length: 268 print pages.
Price I paid: £2.98
Formats available: print, unabridged audio download, MP3CD, ebook.
No comments:
Post a Comment