Orchard On Fire: A Novel - Softcover

Mackay, Shena

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156005328 ISBN 13: 9780156005326

Publisher: Harvest Books, 1997

Synopsis

Set in the small English village of Stonebridge, the Orchard on Fire tells the story of eight-year-old April Harlency's coming-of-age in a place where the charm of the local landscape contrasts sharply with the predjuices and vagaries of the adult world. When April encounters the red-haired, energetic Ruby Richards, the two girls become fast friends. Together, they abandon the physical and mental abuse forced on them by adults in their lives and transform an abandoned railway car in an orchard into their secret hideaway, an idyllic camp of shared dreams.

About this title

Review:

This intimate, intensely seen novel was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize. Shena Mackay's six previous novels have won her critical admiration and a popular audience in England, but her work has not received due recognition in the United States yet. The Orchard on Fire is a concise, domestic novel set in the village of Stonebridge, where the parents of April Harlency have come in 1953 to run the local tea shop. April's private reveries and her entanglement with the grim family life of her best friend, Ruby Richards, fill up a vivid and dramatic year in the wonderfully distinctive life of Stonebridge.

From the Inside Flap:

When April Harlency and her parents move from Streatham to The Copper Kettle Tearoom in Kent April's whole life changes. Through her eyes we witness her rite of passage from childhood to adolescence. With her best friend, the wonderfully exciting but dangerous Ruby, they discover an idyllic secret world in the orchard. However, their lives are permeated with a sense of menace which is mainly centred on Mr Greenidge who befriends April and involves her in a sinister and uncomfortable relationship that will eventually lead to trouble for all her family.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvest Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0156005328
• ISBN 13: 9780156005326
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224