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The Orchard on Fire
When Percy and Betty Harlency abandon their seedy Streatham pub, for the Copper Kettle Tearoom in Kent, life for their daughter April changes dramatically. She is befriended by the wonderfully dangerous Ruby, whose red hair and brutal home life emphasise her love of fire, and by the immaculately dressed Mr Greenridge who likes to follow her around the village. Mingling the innocent with the sinister and laced with the tragic and the bizarre, this is a rare evocation of a 1950s childhood.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
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About the author
Shena Mackay
52 books32 followersShena Mackay was born in Edinburgh in 1944 and currently lives in London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and also Honorary Visiting Professor to the MA in Writing at Middlesex University.
Her novels include the black comedy Redhill Rococo (1986), winner of the Fawcett Society Book Prize; Dunedin (1992), which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; and the acclaimed The Orchard on Fire (1995) which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her novel Heligoland (2003) was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Novel Award.
Her novels include the black comedy Redhill Rococo (1986), winner of the Fawcett Society Book Prize; Dunedin (1992), which won a Scottish Arts Council Book Award; and the acclaimed The Orchard on Fire (1995) which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her novel Heligoland (2003) was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Novel Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 127 reviews
March 28, 2016
4.5 stars; rounded up
Here is another female author who should be much better known. Those slightly older than me who were aware of novelists in the 60s will know that Mackay started writing then; her first work being published when she was 16. She mixed in artistic circles and produced a body of work that was regarded as somewhat avant-garde. After a gap in the 1970s she began writing again in the 80s. This novel was short listed for the Booker Prize in 1996. Don’t let that put you off, it’s very good. Very good indeed; in fact in the late 1990s Julie Burchill referred to Mackay as “the best writer in the world today”.
It is an evocation of childhood in the 1950s in Kent. Evocations of childhood can be variable in quality and I’ve read a few that have been pretty bad. What Mackay manages to do is to combine the innocence of childhood with schoolroom trials and tribulations, eccentric small town characters, falling in and out with friends with a distinctly sinister undertone.
Percy and Betty Harlency leave London to run the Copper Kettle tearoom in Kent. The story is told by their daughter April looking back forty years later. It focuses on April and her best friend Ruby and the childhood difficulties they get into. There is humour in the novel and the writing is poetic and very powerful. What really makes the novel so gripping are the underlying themes of child abuse. April’s family situation is a happy one, but Ruby’s parents can be violent and abusive, especially her father and especially when drunk. April, however, has troubles of her own in the form of an elderly man who is a regular at the café and who is well liked and respected by all. His stalking of her (seemingly innocent meetings, requests to visit for tea (groping’s in the kitchen whilst his wife is ill in another room) and more serious attentions whilst his wife is away all build up gradually and underlie what is otherwise quite an idyllic setting. The avuncular, cardigan wearing and seemingly jolly old man being a sinister predator is much more commonplace now, but Mackay draws and characterises Greenidge very well. April’s reactions, her feelings of shame and confusion, her inability to tell her parents, her wondering if it’s her fault is exceptionally well written. The supporting cast of characters are also very good; the cruel schoolteacher, Miss Fay, rings very true. The lesbian couple Bobs and Dittany are engagingly eccentric and April’s London relatives provide some excellent comic turns when April’s brother arrives.
It all adds up to a very good whole and has persuaded me that I must read more of Mackay’s work.
Here is another female author who should be much better known. Those slightly older than me who were aware of novelists in the 60s will know that Mackay started writing then; her first work being published when she was 16. She mixed in artistic circles and produced a body of work that was regarded as somewhat avant-garde. After a gap in the 1970s she began writing again in the 80s. This novel was short listed for the Booker Prize in 1996. Don’t let that put you off, it’s very good. Very good indeed; in fact in the late 1990s Julie Burchill referred to Mackay as “the best writer in the world today”.
It is an evocation of childhood in the 1950s in Kent. Evocations of childhood can be variable in quality and I’ve read a few that have been pretty bad. What Mackay manages to do is to combine the innocence of childhood with schoolroom trials and tribulations, eccentric small town characters, falling in and out with friends with a distinctly sinister undertone.
Percy and Betty Harlency leave London to run the Copper Kettle tearoom in Kent. The story is told by their daughter April looking back forty years later. It focuses on April and her best friend Ruby and the childhood difficulties they get into. There is humour in the novel and the writing is poetic and very powerful. What really makes the novel so gripping are the underlying themes of child abuse. April’s family situation is a happy one, but Ruby’s parents can be violent and abusive, especially her father and especially when drunk. April, however, has troubles of her own in the form of an elderly man who is a regular at the café and who is well liked and respected by all. His stalking of her (seemingly innocent meetings, requests to visit for tea (groping’s in the kitchen whilst his wife is ill in another room) and more serious attentions whilst his wife is away all build up gradually and underlie what is otherwise quite an idyllic setting. The avuncular, cardigan wearing and seemingly jolly old man being a sinister predator is much more commonplace now, but Mackay draws and characterises Greenidge very well. April’s reactions, her feelings of shame and confusion, her inability to tell her parents, her wondering if it’s her fault is exceptionally well written. The supporting cast of characters are also very good; the cruel schoolteacher, Miss Fay, rings very true. The lesbian couple Bobs and Dittany are engagingly eccentric and April’s London relatives provide some excellent comic turns when April’s brother arrives.
It all adds up to a very good whole and has persuaded me that I must read more of Mackay’s work.
May 16, 2018
A remarkable book about a little girl April Harlency growing up in the 1950s in a Kent village called Stonebridge where her parents have moved to run the local tea room.
Evocative and nostalgic images and memories combine with a darker side of life sexual exploitation and domestic abuse.
April befriends the wonderful red haired Ruby who is brutally abused by her horrible parents who run the local pub , and April is also thrown into a sinister relationship with the seemingly benign. together Ruby and April convert an abandoned railway car and na orchard into a wonderful hideaway of idyllic dreams and beautiful times spent together.
a little bit of political tension brought in as April's parents are Labour activists in a conservative town.
Very rich in description and recalling the era of England in the 50s. wonderful accounts of the village and countryside and it's flora and fauna and village life of the time.
The smaller details sparkle to life reminiscent of Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie.
It's an amazing book and should be a modern day classic.
Evocative and nostalgic images and memories combine with a darker side of life sexual exploitation and domestic abuse.
April befriends the wonderful red haired Ruby who is brutally abused by her horrible parents who run the local pub , and April is also thrown into a sinister relationship with the seemingly benign. together Ruby and April convert an abandoned railway car and na orchard into a wonderful hideaway of idyllic dreams and beautiful times spent together.
a little bit of political tension brought in as April's parents are Labour activists in a conservative town.
Very rich in description and recalling the era of England in the 50s. wonderful accounts of the village and countryside and it's flora and fauna and village life of the time.
The smaller details sparkle to life reminiscent of Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie.
It's an amazing book and should be a modern day classic.
October 28, 2018
A powerful rendering of childhood: the golden days but also the frightening bits. This is so much more enjoyable than the first Mackay novel I read earlier this year, Heligoland. I bought a secondhand hardback in one of the bookshop-cafés in Wigtown and started reading it that very evening. April Harlency moves with her parents to Stonebridge, Kent, where the family takes over the running of The Copper Kettle tea-room. She soon makes a best friend, Ruby, who’s of a lower class and gets beaten up at home. April, too, is troubled: by the unwanted attentions of Mr. Greenidge, an old lecher who invites her over to his house regularly, supposedly so she can say hello to Mrs. Greenidge and play with their dog Liesel but really so he can kiss and paw at her in stolen moments in the kitchen. Along the way April gets a baby brother, her grandmother comes to visit and arrives in town on a tractor, and the girls have to collect a very drunk professor from the train station and bring him back in a wheelbarrow for his lecture – only to realize that he’s actually dead. It’s such an interesting blending of light and dark, and all seen from decades in the future when April is a grown woman. “In remembering the past one inevitably makes elisions and takes meteorological liberties: drops stitches, embroiders and unpicks,” Mackay writes.
Readalikes: Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley & The Kindness by Polly Sansom
Readalikes: Clever Girl by Tessa Hadley & The Kindness by Polly Sansom
August 13, 2014
If you're looking to reminisce about your village girlhood in 1950's England, there are a lot of pop-cultural references here but since none of this applies to me, I'm left with all the "funny" bits that are more horrible than amusing. The thing was that the jacket reviews played up the "humor" and "nostalgia" of this life but I was left with the image of two 10-year-old girls, one who is being physically abused by her parents and has to hide black-and-blue marks from being tossed down the cellar stairs and locked in overnight, and another who is being continually sexually molested by a creep who her parents find charming while he uses her to masturbate with (albeit without their knowledge, of course.) I guess the humorous part of this must have been was lost on me. I'm not sure how this was shortlisted for a Booker but I've read quite a few nominees and winners in the past which didn't appeal to me and can see how a certain book can strike a certain number of judges in a particular way; maybe that's what happened here. However, the innocence of an age isn't always as funny as it seems for everyone, even when you try looking back on it in a better light.
November 19, 2014
I loved this novel. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1996, it is everything a good novel should be.
It is beautifully written, but very unsettling. Evocative of a 1950s childhood in a small village, with underlying themes of menace, fear, loneliness and isolation even at the heart of a family. It also shows the support and love (but ultimate loss) of friendship.
The novel is narrated by April Harlency, looking back on her childhood in the 1950s. She moves with her parents, Betty and Percy, to a small village to take over the tenancy of a tearoom, The Copper Kettle.
April makes friends with a girl called Ruby, whose parents run the village pub. We see the huge difference between April's loving childhood and Ruby's dysfunctional one.
April is targeted by Mr Greenidge, an old man with paedophile tendencies. He insinuates himself into her family's life, becoming a regular in the tearoom and invites April to tea at his house sometimes even when his invalid wife is not there. He begins a campaign of grooming her - kissing and groping her in secret, and telling her not to tell anyone about it. She is terrified of him but also cannot find the words to tell anyone else about what he is doing, fearing that no-one will believe her. He is a menacing presence throughout the novel. We are left in no doubt as to his intentions, but April does try to stand up to him in spite of her parents' innocent and unwitting encouragement of their friendship. She never does tell her parents, opting to suffer in silence. Her childhood is all but destroyed, and she struggles to come to terms with this as an adult with a failed marriage behind her.
It would be wrong to assume that this is a relentlessly sad novel. There is a lot of humour in it, particularly Ruby who, in spite of her unhappy home life, is sharply funny, often using her quick wit as a defense mechanism.
It is beautifully written, but very unsettling. Evocative of a 1950s childhood in a small village, with underlying themes of menace, fear, loneliness and isolation even at the heart of a family. It also shows the support and love (but ultimate loss) of friendship.
The novel is narrated by April Harlency, looking back on her childhood in the 1950s. She moves with her parents, Betty and Percy, to a small village to take over the tenancy of a tearoom, The Copper Kettle.
April makes friends with a girl called Ruby, whose parents run the village pub. We see the huge difference between April's loving childhood and Ruby's dysfunctional one.
April is targeted by Mr Greenidge, an old man with paedophile tendencies. He insinuates himself into her family's life, becoming a regular in the tearoom and invites April to tea at his house sometimes even when his invalid wife is not there. He begins a campaign of grooming her - kissing and groping her in secret, and telling her not to tell anyone about it. She is terrified of him but also cannot find the words to tell anyone else about what he is doing, fearing that no-one will believe her. He is a menacing presence throughout the novel. We are left in no doubt as to his intentions, but April does try to stand up to him in spite of her parents' innocent and unwitting encouragement of their friendship. She never does tell her parents, opting to suffer in silence. Her childhood is all but destroyed, and she struggles to come to terms with this as an adult with a failed marriage behind her.
It would be wrong to assume that this is a relentlessly sad novel. There is a lot of humour in it, particularly Ruby who, in spite of her unhappy home life, is sharply funny, often using her quick wit as a defense mechanism.
February 27, 2009
My favorite line in this book is, "Lex and Gloria's crime was that they were given a work of art and they treated it as if it was worthless with no reverence for the care that had gone into it, all that precision stippling and the rainbows in the pigtails that ended in two paint brushes of wet red hair in the rain." This book reminds us to value our children and to be cautious of those who aren't children but want to keep the company of children. I thought it was a very good book, writing that wraps you in time and place evoked. Our children are gifts from the Almighty and we shouldn't for one moment forget it. Also in this book, the power of a best friend and how it makes the world sweet and alive. Not everyone sees the book the way I saw it. I was surprised when one of my friends hated this book so much that she threw it in the trash before she finished it.
September 30, 2018
A writer friend bought me this book for my birthday recently. It's very rare for me, but I read it in one sitting this afternoon. How self-indulgent to sit and read all afternoon, immersing myself in a 1950s childhood. I wasn't born until 1962, but little had changed in ten years from when April was a child. So many memories from my own childhood, including bloodsuckers (you don't see them now), Black Magic chocolates, Bronnley lemon soaps, bath cubes and talc. It was a sharp reminder of how much time we spent outdoors compared to today's children. Mr Greenidge is a sinister presence, both he and April's best friend's father casting a shadow over what appears to be an idyllic childhood in a country village. In spite of that, this isn't a depressing read at all.
July 19, 2024
Oh, the heartbreak... a beautiful story about the power of childhood and the chokehold it can have on the rest of our lives.
I bought this book many years ago from a bookshop that was closing in a neighboring town. I am not sure what made me pick it, but since then I started and stopped reading it twice. I am sure that I was supposed to read this now. I am sure I wouldn't have unterstood it a few years back.
The Orchard on Fire tells the story of April, our narrator, and Ruby, two friends in their early teens living in the small town of Stonebridge in the 1950s. Written in the 1990s, it is not cerebral like many contemporary books of this genre – April does not seem to understand how the events taking place in the year we witness changed her deeply, and why. We don't dive into deep reflections. She tells her story in a way that can seem almost naive in the very 21st century context of trying to find something in our past we can blame our current problems on.
I believe this book is a perfect depiction of the baby boomer generation and their relationship to traumatic events that happened in their childhoods.
I bought this book many years ago from a bookshop that was closing in a neighboring town. I am not sure what made me pick it, but since then I started and stopped reading it twice. I am sure that I was supposed to read this now. I am sure I wouldn't have unterstood it a few years back.
The Orchard on Fire tells the story of April, our narrator, and Ruby, two friends in their early teens living in the small town of Stonebridge in the 1950s. Written in the 1990s, it is not cerebral like many contemporary books of this genre – April does not seem to understand how the events taking place in the year we witness changed her deeply, and why. We don't dive into deep reflections. She tells her story in a way that can seem almost naive in the very 21st century context of trying to find something in our past we can blame our current problems on.
I believe this book is a perfect depiction of the baby boomer generation and their relationship to traumatic events that happened in their childhoods.
April 18, 2009
This book made me feel sick and uncomfortable the whole way through. I kept on reading in the hope that there might be some kind of hopeful (if not happy) ending, or at least resolution, but no. It had the kind of ending I hate -- miserable and inconclusive. It gets one star for the writing (which wonderfully evoked what it was like to grow up in the 50s) and one star for Betty and Percy (who I thought were brilliant parents).
December 7, 2010
Picked up off the bookshelf in our holiday cottage - by Darren actually who thought I might like it based on the fact that he'd read another of Mackay's books years ago. And I did. Found it all a bit flowery at first (mostly due to reading it hot on the heels of Ian McEwan I think) but it paints a vivid picture of a 1950s village childhood. Some aspects of it I found a bit stereotypical but in the end they didn't distract from the overall tale.
March 6, 2014
Opening: I chose this place to live, believing that I would find anonymity among those who did not care if the plaster and glass and paintwork of rented houses splintered and decayed, who were not reproached by gardens gone to seed and rotting sofas.
April recounts her early years in Kent, where she moved to The Copper Kettle Cafe in the coronation year of 1953.
April recounts her early years in Kent, where she moved to The Copper Kettle Cafe in the coronation year of 1953.
March 27, 2023
Offt, wow. This book gave me throwbacks of an unwanted kind. Growing up as a girl is tough and then and there it was tougher. I related a lot to April's background, as in coming from a more open and leftist family but being stuck growing up in a place that seems stuck in their traditions, far away from anything new. I also hated Mr. Greenidge with a passion. The blurb at the back of the book warned me, but I ignored it and proceeded to grow more and more hateful towards him, wanting to protect little April from what was about to come for her regardless. Perhaps I ended up understanding her too well.
Nonetheless, the book is not just misery. The reminiscing of childhood brought to the front of my mind the memories of my own hiddey places and children games; this image is still burning bright in my eyes after closing the last page. There is a wonder in chilhood that I hope everyone is able to bring into their adulthood with them. But perhaps seeing things with old eyes means to have more perspective on things, how they were, and how to go on nonetheless.
Although lil April here doesn't seem to have moved on from the events of her childhood. She comes back to the present in one last chapter, just holding onto how things were and not giving us much about her own self, describing how the lives of the characters continued on... but hers didn't. I don't know what to make of that ending. I don't know what to make of April anymore.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the read. It was engaging and brought pockets of joy despite all the hurt. Reading through was a bit tough at first because of all the vocabulary the author uses that I didn't have, but eventually you get used to it and can move at a pace. I don't know if I would consider this a 'modern classic', like the library advertised, but it was worth reading nonetheless.
Nonetheless, the book is not just misery. The reminiscing of childhood brought to the front of my mind the memories of my own hiddey places and children games; this image is still burning bright in my eyes after closing the last page. There is a wonder in chilhood that I hope everyone is able to bring into their adulthood with them. But perhaps seeing things with old eyes means to have more perspective on things, how they were, and how to go on nonetheless.
Although lil April here doesn't seem to have moved on from the events of her childhood. She comes back to the present in one last chapter, just holding onto how things were and not giving us much about her own self, describing how the lives of the characters continued on... but hers didn't. I don't know what to make of that ending. I don't know what to make of April anymore.
Overall, I quite enjoyed the read. It was engaging and brought pockets of joy despite all the hurt. Reading through was a bit tough at first because of all the vocabulary the author uses that I didn't have, but eventually you get used to it and can move at a pace. I don't know if I would consider this a 'modern classic', like the library advertised, but it was worth reading nonetheless.
February 25, 2023
I know that technically this is a lot better book than my rating would suggest, but partly I don’t think I’m the ideal reader for this sort of thing and similarly this kind of writing does very little for me at all. I could admire a lot of it but there’s something about the uneasy combination of dark tinged nostalgia, broad satire and occasional Laurie Lee like sentimentality (I’ve always been very lukewarm on that genre) that didn’t combine into an intoxicating brew but instead uneasily jostled against each other whilst never really cohering. Not for me, sadly
December 2, 2023
This 1996 Booker Prize shortlisted novel is a very enjoyable, but sad, story of a young girl growing up in 50’s England. It has been described as the best book in the 1990s.
Those, like me, who were children in that era will recognise and empathise with many of the descriptions of what life was like for a child then.
I found it unusual that April called her mum and dad by their first names rather than simply “mum” and “dad”, but they were quite a left-wing family and I do remember one such family in my childhood that were the same.
It is very sad that Percy and Betty do not realise what is happening when the creepy old Mr Greenidge takes a fancy to April, and also that April doesn’t feel able to confide to them what is happening. But that is unfortunately a true reflection of the reality of such situations. What came across to me so powerfully was the damage that can be done even by what some might regard as “lesser paedophile offences”. April believes that because Mr Greenidge has kissed her in the way he has she will now have to marry him even though she doesn’t want to. This introduces some pain to her childhood which simply should not be there.
If the book were purely focused on that relationship I would have found it a harrowing read and not very enjoyable, but although it is quite an important strand it is certainly not the only strand. I found the balance of all the other factors in April’s growth, especially her friendship with Ruby, made it a much more enjoyable story.
I love the way Shena has shown how young children take everything so literally, even though it often isn’t even intended to be so. Sometimes even the things they say themselves. For example:
‘“I hate my dad,” Ruby said. “He always kills everything. I’m going to kill him.”
“But that would be murder, to kill your dad.”
“He’s a murderer. He deserves to die, with an axe, and be hung up on a hook. Doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said, although I was frightened.
“Have you got an axe?” I asked tentatively.’
I found the descriptive powers of Shena really compelling and really reflective of the way we looked at things as children:
‘What made the orchard miraculous, though, was an abandoned railway carriage in the far corner, set down as if by magic, its wheels gone, anchored by long grass and nettles, with brambles barring its door. Ruby and I stared at it and at each other. Any enclosed space can inspire a primitive fear, of death or danger, supernatural or human. The orchard became lonely and silent as we gazed.
“Perhaps there’s a dead body inside.”
“I dare you to look.”
“I dare you too.”
“I said it first.”
We might have run away then, but the railway carriage, dark windowed, out of place in a thicket of thorns, was the perfect hide-out, house, the camp of our dreams.’
Those, like me, who were children in that era will recognise and empathise with many of the descriptions of what life was like for a child then.
I found it unusual that April called her mum and dad by their first names rather than simply “mum” and “dad”, but they were quite a left-wing family and I do remember one such family in my childhood that were the same.
It is very sad that Percy and Betty do not realise what is happening when the creepy old Mr Greenidge takes a fancy to April, and also that April doesn’t feel able to confide to them what is happening. But that is unfortunately a true reflection of the reality of such situations. What came across to me so powerfully was the damage that can be done even by what some might regard as “lesser paedophile offences”. April believes that because Mr Greenidge has kissed her in the way he has she will now have to marry him even though she doesn’t want to. This introduces some pain to her childhood which simply should not be there.
If the book were purely focused on that relationship I would have found it a harrowing read and not very enjoyable, but although it is quite an important strand it is certainly not the only strand. I found the balance of all the other factors in April’s growth, especially her friendship with Ruby, made it a much more enjoyable story.
I love the way Shena has shown how young children take everything so literally, even though it often isn’t even intended to be so. Sometimes even the things they say themselves. For example:
‘“I hate my dad,” Ruby said. “He always kills everything. I’m going to kill him.”
“But that would be murder, to kill your dad.”
“He’s a murderer. He deserves to die, with an axe, and be hung up on a hook. Doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said, although I was frightened.
“Have you got an axe?” I asked tentatively.’
I found the descriptive powers of Shena really compelling and really reflective of the way we looked at things as children:
‘What made the orchard miraculous, though, was an abandoned railway carriage in the far corner, set down as if by magic, its wheels gone, anchored by long grass and nettles, with brambles barring its door. Ruby and I stared at it and at each other. Any enclosed space can inspire a primitive fear, of death or danger, supernatural or human. The orchard became lonely and silent as we gazed.
“Perhaps there’s a dead body inside.”
“I dare you to look.”
“I dare you too.”
“I said it first.”
We might have run away then, but the railway carriage, dark windowed, out of place in a thicket of thorns, was the perfect hide-out, house, the camp of our dreams.’
April 13, 2017
Do you ever get those books that you read because someone forced you to?Yeah this is one of those.Its the kinda book that gets grouped along with Temples of Delight or Tell Mrs Poole I'm Sorry.You know the ones about these 10 to 13 year olds and the scandalous things they get up to?
This in other words pardon the crudeness is a toilet read.Its filthy and disgusting ,bear in mind it can't help being that way,the sort of book you need to wash your hands after reading.
I'm not apologizing by the way.In fact I think I'm the one that needs to be apologized to!
All around me were people scolding me saying 'you've gotta look at it in a certain way' or 'you don't understand it' or the worst of all 'you'll prefer it when you're older'.Not in a million years will I ever enjoy this book.
This in other words pardon the crudeness is a toilet read.Its filthy and disgusting ,bear in mind it can't help being that way,the sort of book you need to wash your hands after reading.
I'm not apologizing by the way.In fact I think I'm the one that needs to be apologized to!
All around me were people scolding me saying 'you've gotta look at it in a certain way' or 'you don't understand it' or the worst of all 'you'll prefer it when you're older'.Not in a million years will I ever enjoy this book.
June 1, 2014
I would probably give this 3 1/2 stars really. I ordered the book after hearing Jacqueline Wilson and Richard Osman discuss it on the radio and thought it sounded right up my street as I love retrospective books, especially warts and all portrayals of childhood. I thought I was used to reading very tragic and dark books but found this one especially uncomfortable and unsettling. I think this could be because I expected the nostalgic to outweigh the sinister but this was not the case. At times I found the slightly more humorous parts irritating as I was unable to enjoy them due to the seriousness of the Mr Greenidge situation. I was also disappointed by the ending. I did, however, really enjoy some of the descriptions, and the portrayal of Ruby and April's relationship. I loved the references to some of my other favourite books like Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, and found myself absorbed by the book, finishing it quickly.
August 3, 2016
[rating = B-]
I was not sure, by the first sentences, if I would like this. Well, it was just a wonderfully spun story of friendship and the remembrance of things past. April is a girl who explores her world with bright eyes and hope. Her friendship with Ruby, a girl who likes fire, consist of reading books, getting into trouble at school and having someone to talk to. Though her character's seems a bit one-dimensional, they still exude a very human warmth, and can make you cry or laugh at a sentence's beck-and-call. The prose, at times, can be lovely and very thoughtful, but mostly it just reads easily. The story takes place in rural Ireland. Though the only hint of this is the family being catholic. But the story is stuffed with a girl's will to overcome life and its cruelties, like old men and hostile neighbors. All in all the novel was enjoyable and merits reading.
I was not sure, by the first sentences, if I would like this. Well, it was just a wonderfully spun story of friendship and the remembrance of things past. April is a girl who explores her world with bright eyes and hope. Her friendship with Ruby, a girl who likes fire, consist of reading books, getting into trouble at school and having someone to talk to. Though her character's seems a bit one-dimensional, they still exude a very human warmth, and can make you cry or laugh at a sentence's beck-and-call. The prose, at times, can be lovely and very thoughtful, but mostly it just reads easily. The story takes place in rural Ireland. Though the only hint of this is the family being catholic. But the story is stuffed with a girl's will to overcome life and its cruelties, like old men and hostile neighbors. All in all the novel was enjoyable and merits reading.
December 27, 2013
This was a 3.5 book but I've rounded it down as the ending left me slightly dissatisfied. I know the novel was a journey rather than a destination but I'd have loved to have found out more.
This is a story of two young friends, April and Ruby, growing up in the austere 1950s. Being a child of the 50s myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the nostalgia of songs, sweets, soap scents and other items that were around at that time. These were the days when children were allowed to roam and explore, create dens and have picnics. (Quite what sort of novels will be written about children growing up now, I can't imagine). A time when expectations were low and adults were scary. Both the girls, unbeknown to each other, were plagued by two despicable characters that marked their childhoods.
A beautifully written novel that was shortlisted for the Booker prize.
This is a story of two young friends, April and Ruby, growing up in the austere 1950s. Being a child of the 50s myself, I thoroughly enjoyed the nostalgia of songs, sweets, soap scents and other items that were around at that time. These were the days when children were allowed to roam and explore, create dens and have picnics. (Quite what sort of novels will be written about children growing up now, I can't imagine). A time when expectations were low and adults were scary. Both the girls, unbeknown to each other, were plagued by two despicable characters that marked their childhoods.
A beautifully written novel that was shortlisted for the Booker prize.
June 11, 2023
I love Shena Mackay's writing. Old Crow was one of the best books I read this year, and while The Orchard On Fire is more of a ramble through a childhood in 50s England without the clear purpose behind Old Crow, it's thoroughly absorbing. What is clever is that April's childhood was not easy, it was permeated by sadness and hardship (and the sinister - an element you seem to find in all Mackay's writing), yet the story still comes off as being at least in part nostalgic. Children want to find the good and the fun in everything, no matter how hard the circumstances, and I thought Mackay got this across perfectly through April's first-person narrative in this book.
June 13, 2016
Verbose writing, which is not helped by the uneven characterisation and a plot that's filled with half told points. In life of course there are always loose ends but as the story is told from the adult April's point of view of her childhood, the author had the chance to breach the decades that had passed. Instead we're given a disjointed narrative that leaves the reader dissatisfied as the ending fizzles into mediocrity.
May 31, 2014
Delighted to have picked up this little gem with my monthly trawl through the charity shops. A gorgeous read. I sat in the sun today and was transported to the world of April Harlency in Kent in the 1950s. A wonderful evocation of childhood and a bygone era. It's not all chintz and smiles mind you - but truthful and so beautiful. Really well written, funny and sad -well worth reading.
May 11, 2008
I loved this little book! It's wonderful to feel like a kid again (even though April wasn't a happy one) and see the world through kid's eyes!! I hated Mr Greenidge and felt really disgusted when he showed up. Unfortunately, I believe such kind of persons are real. :(
March 24, 2010
I found this book difficult to read because it's so depressing. I want April to speak out about Mr. Greenidge, but she never does. That man is so creepy and wrong. I actually am a bit sickened everytime he comes into the story. This book is just sad all around.
June 16, 2010
I have to say, I didn't particularly enjoy this one, I found it left a rather sinister and nasty taste behind that I didn't like at all!
The writing however rescued it slightly, it was well written and the characters were well rounded and fleshed out, so it wasn't a complete loss of a read!
The writing however rescued it slightly, it was well written and the characters were well rounded and fleshed out, so it wasn't a complete loss of a read!
May 12, 2011
Another amazing MacKay book, though I had to skim the painful parts, to my chagrin. If you have a youngish daughter - may be difficult to read. And it is so well written - I slept poorly after reading and was haunted for days - but that is good literature!
November 18, 2012
Well written and interesting story about childhood friendships and growing up in the 1950s.
June 24, 2020
What is story, what narrative? There will be more academic definitions for what I have in mind, but I felt the distinction between the two from first to last pages of Mackay’s novel.
The story: It concerns the remembered sexual abuse – we’d call it grooming today – of the nine or ten-year-old April by the outwardly charming and inwardly creepy 60+-year-old Mr Greenidge, and her childhood best friend Ruby, who suffered physical abuse from her father.
The girls eventually lose contact with each other and in the final chapter – by far the best – the now adult April evokes a watery-eyed nostalgia for the sweet by-and-by, for what has been and what is lost. The story is sad but thankfully not horrific, and we last see her as if looking up bravely after closing a picture album of memories. The effect is tender and affectionate.
I’m not sure that April would not have found more excuses to avoid the unwelcome attentions of her predator, but it’s hard to judge.
It’s the narrative however that’s the problem. There’s always going to be the question of which voice to use to convey the emotions and speech of a child when told by her older self, as well as the logistical issue of how minutely the story-teller can relate the details of an incident or dream experienced some 30 years earlier.
The latter difficulty is compounded by the fact that Mackay is such a visual writer, and as in looking at a picture by Delaunay or Pollock, one is left with such a riot of colour that the result can become a dazzle. The plum orchard of the title, for example, is a ‘dark-green and purple-blue paradise’ where ‘you bit into sweet dark-yellow flesh reddening towards a stone set in crimson.’
The author cannot cite one illustrative item from a harvest festival without wanting to list most of the catalogue, and seldom uses one adjective where three or more will do. Thus, the windows of the railway carriage in said orchard are not simply besmirched, but are ‘earthy, rain-streaked, bird-squirted, berry-smeared.’
It’s as if the novel has been written in the style of a short story, with the need to pack in as much as possible into a few pages. That would not however excuse the clichés and artificial-sounding and hackneyed dialogue that seems to have come out of a 1950s B movie.
Greenidge arranges his assignations in Lover’s Lane, and the loathsome characters of Stonebridge include Albert Fatman (who is fat) and the sour Vinnegar family. I can just accept that romantic, bookish young girls might decide their secret sign would be ‘the lone cry of the peewit’ but not that young April would watch the clock tick toward a dreaded appointment ‘inexorably.’
‘Wotcher cock,’ says a visitor to April’s parents’ café, where a diner exclaims ‘Yum, yum, yum.’ A reception has been transferred there from their home by two dippy artists, one of whom explained, ‘We’ve bitten off more than we can chew and we’re up the creek without a paddle.’
The language could have come straight from Richmal Crompton, a pastiche which Mackay acknowledges in a reference to the Just William books. There is even an episode involving a dead professor whose body is carted in a wheelbarrow. The incident is ill-fitting, although not without its humour, as April explains to the professor’s professor brother, the wheelbarrow ‘was brand new, that was the first time we used it.’
The story: It concerns the remembered sexual abuse – we’d call it grooming today – of the nine or ten-year-old April by the outwardly charming and inwardly creepy 60+-year-old Mr Greenidge, and her childhood best friend Ruby, who suffered physical abuse from her father.
The girls eventually lose contact with each other and in the final chapter – by far the best – the now adult April evokes a watery-eyed nostalgia for the sweet by-and-by, for what has been and what is lost. The story is sad but thankfully not horrific, and we last see her as if looking up bravely after closing a picture album of memories. The effect is tender and affectionate.
I’m not sure that April would not have found more excuses to avoid the unwelcome attentions of her predator, but it’s hard to judge.
It’s the narrative however that’s the problem. There’s always going to be the question of which voice to use to convey the emotions and speech of a child when told by her older self, as well as the logistical issue of how minutely the story-teller can relate the details of an incident or dream experienced some 30 years earlier.
The latter difficulty is compounded by the fact that Mackay is such a visual writer, and as in looking at a picture by Delaunay or Pollock, one is left with such a riot of colour that the result can become a dazzle. The plum orchard of the title, for example, is a ‘dark-green and purple-blue paradise’ where ‘you bit into sweet dark-yellow flesh reddening towards a stone set in crimson.’
The author cannot cite one illustrative item from a harvest festival without wanting to list most of the catalogue, and seldom uses one adjective where three or more will do. Thus, the windows of the railway carriage in said orchard are not simply besmirched, but are ‘earthy, rain-streaked, bird-squirted, berry-smeared.’
It’s as if the novel has been written in the style of a short story, with the need to pack in as much as possible into a few pages. That would not however excuse the clichés and artificial-sounding and hackneyed dialogue that seems to have come out of a 1950s B movie.
Greenidge arranges his assignations in Lover’s Lane, and the loathsome characters of Stonebridge include Albert Fatman (who is fat) and the sour Vinnegar family. I can just accept that romantic, bookish young girls might decide their secret sign would be ‘the lone cry of the peewit’ but not that young April would watch the clock tick toward a dreaded appointment ‘inexorably.’
‘Wotcher cock,’ says a visitor to April’s parents’ café, where a diner exclaims ‘Yum, yum, yum.’ A reception has been transferred there from their home by two dippy artists, one of whom explained, ‘We’ve bitten off more than we can chew and we’re up the creek without a paddle.’
The language could have come straight from Richmal Crompton, a pastiche which Mackay acknowledges in a reference to the Just William books. There is even an episode involving a dead professor whose body is carted in a wheelbarrow. The incident is ill-fitting, although not without its humour, as April explains to the professor’s professor brother, the wheelbarrow ‘was brand new, that was the first time we used it.’
December 9, 2024
2.5 stars (5/10)
I'd had a couple of recommendations for The Orchard on Fire (and it had even been shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1996) but I found it disappointing. It has all the right ingredients but it's been mixed together in the wrong way. So we have a great setting with a 1950s childhood in a Kent village, and a roll-call of interesting characters, plus there's lashings of nostalgia, but I found it clunky and poorly written and edited. There was too much 'telling rather than showing' (2x 'heard' in close succession on p79) and an overuse of adverbs (eg p194) and adjectives. It rambled along a bit like a memoir, but not really going anywhere. It was all very one-paced with no quiet moments for reflection or immersion into the story.
The first and last chapters (main character in present day) felt overwritten/overworked, whereas the rest of the novel (main character as 10-year old girl) felt almost written in a rush (such as the lazy dialogue on p187). Perhaps this is because the author is writing it through the eyes of a young girl, which is fine, but at times it comes across as though you're reading a Just William book (without the humour) or a Famous Five story.
But the author does capture the spirit of the time especially with her references to objects or ways of speaking or doing things which are no longer done and have passed into history. So for instance, we are reminded of: 'the veined gold and silver paper from cigarette packets' (you can smell the tobacco. p3); 'the flash of fire from a Woolworth's ring' (or from a LuckyDip bag) p5; 'plimsolls stiff with whitener' (fabulous! p48); 'cobwebbers' (p60); 'fruit pie' (p82), 'Basildon Bond' stationery, miniature tins of polish from the door-to-door Kleeneze salesman; snippets of songs that I can remember singing (One Misty Morning p198), bicycles with saddlebags, and remember how we all used to park our bicycle alongside the pavement by placing one pedal on to the kerb to make it stand up. :-)
There are snatches of immersive description: 'two beautiful Indian ladies in saris, like butterflies playing tennis, visitors in shimmering wings from another world...' (p130); handkerchiefs bubbling like snails in a bear barrel (p137); a classroom smelling of wet wool and school dinners (p151); and how main character April's mum clucked in annoyance as if she'd just dropped a stitch (p188); and there's a lovely description of the animals at a circus who, 'looked like old soft toys that nobody played with anymore...' (p203).
Perhaps it's just me. Funny how some novels (such as Sarah Winman's Still Life) are a joy to read, whereas others fail to engage and you're left trying to analyse exactly what isn't working.
I'd had a couple of recommendations for The Orchard on Fire (and it had even been shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1996) but I found it disappointing. It has all the right ingredients but it's been mixed together in the wrong way. So we have a great setting with a 1950s childhood in a Kent village, and a roll-call of interesting characters, plus there's lashings of nostalgia, but I found it clunky and poorly written and edited. There was too much 'telling rather than showing' (2x 'heard' in close succession on p79) and an overuse of adverbs (eg p194) and adjectives. It rambled along a bit like a memoir, but not really going anywhere. It was all very one-paced with no quiet moments for reflection or immersion into the story.
The first and last chapters (main character in present day) felt overwritten/overworked, whereas the rest of the novel (main character as 10-year old girl) felt almost written in a rush (such as the lazy dialogue on p187). Perhaps this is because the author is writing it through the eyes of a young girl, which is fine, but at times it comes across as though you're reading a Just William book (without the humour) or a Famous Five story.
But the author does capture the spirit of the time especially with her references to objects or ways of speaking or doing things which are no longer done and have passed into history. So for instance, we are reminded of: 'the veined gold and silver paper from cigarette packets' (you can smell the tobacco. p3); 'the flash of fire from a Woolworth's ring' (or from a LuckyDip bag) p5; 'plimsolls stiff with whitener' (fabulous! p48); 'cobwebbers' (p60); 'fruit pie' (p82), 'Basildon Bond' stationery, miniature tins of polish from the door-to-door Kleeneze salesman; snippets of songs that I can remember singing (One Misty Morning p198), bicycles with saddlebags, and remember how we all used to park our bicycle alongside the pavement by placing one pedal on to the kerb to make it stand up. :-)
There are snatches of immersive description: 'two beautiful Indian ladies in saris, like butterflies playing tennis, visitors in shimmering wings from another world...' (p130); handkerchiefs bubbling like snails in a bear barrel (p137); a classroom smelling of wet wool and school dinners (p151); and how main character April's mum clucked in annoyance as if she'd just dropped a stitch (p188); and there's a lovely description of the animals at a circus who, 'looked like old soft toys that nobody played with anymore...' (p203).
Perhaps it's just me. Funny how some novels (such as Sarah Winman's Still Life) are a joy to read, whereas others fail to engage and you're left trying to analyse exactly what isn't working.
July 17, 2023
My first read of Shena Mackay. I'm ambivalent about it -- I'm the right age to read it, and she wonderfully evokes an English childhood in the 1950s, mingling nostalgia and humour (sometimes almost slapstick, for example the corpse in the wheelbarrow) ... threaded through with menace.
The troubles April and her best friend Ruby have to deal with are certainly believable; a rural childhood isn't all sweetness and light and the 1950s were not the most enlightened era when it comes to child abuse.
But April's reactions often seemed a bit off to me. She finds Mr Greenidge's sloppy kisses revolting (and rightly so) but she doesn't take obvious moves to avoid them, seemingly feeling it would be impolite or unkind to do so. Her parents at least are caring and approachable, but too busy to pick up her signs of discomfort and assuming Mr Greenidge is just a kind old man. Yet when Ruby is potentially in great danger, April doesn't tell them what she knows. But perhaps I'm being overly rational -- April is a confused and frightened child who has all sorts of anxious fantasies about what might happen to her if she is somehow "found out" by the adults.
Some of the descriptions are a bit adjective heavy, and I found the ending overly sentimental -- though the line "Lex and Gloria's crime was that they were given a work of art and they treated it as if it was worthless with no reverence for the care that had gone into it, all that precision stippling and the rainbows in the pigtails that ended in two paintbrushes of wet red hair in the rain" rose above this. A call for parents to respect and treasure their children.
Anyway, there's a lot to like about this evocative book and the fine balance of humour and fear. So three stars. If you like Kate Atkinson you might like this.
The troubles April and her best friend Ruby have to deal with are certainly believable; a rural childhood isn't all sweetness and light and the 1950s were not the most enlightened era when it comes to child abuse.
But April's reactions often seemed a bit off to me. She finds Mr Greenidge's sloppy kisses revolting (and rightly so) but she doesn't take obvious moves to avoid them, seemingly feeling it would be impolite or unkind to do so. Her parents at least are caring and approachable, but too busy to pick up her signs of discomfort and assuming Mr Greenidge is just a kind old man. Yet when Ruby is potentially in great danger, April doesn't tell them what she knows. But perhaps I'm being overly rational -- April is a confused and frightened child who has all sorts of anxious fantasies about what might happen to her if she is somehow "found out" by the adults.
Some of the descriptions are a bit adjective heavy, and I found the ending overly sentimental -- though the line "Lex and Gloria's crime was that they were given a work of art and they treated it as if it was worthless with no reverence for the care that had gone into it, all that precision stippling and the rainbows in the pigtails that ended in two paintbrushes of wet red hair in the rain" rose above this. A call for parents to respect and treasure their children.
Anyway, there's a lot to like about this evocative book and the fine balance of humour and fear. So three stars. If you like Kate Atkinson you might like this.
June 7, 2025
This is a relatively short book about a particular part of the 1950s childhood of a 10 year-old-girl (April), told from her perspective as an adult.
It’s an era I hold no personal experience of. As a child of the 80s, I had a non digital childhood, but the lifestyle, games and schooling depicted here are another step back - more brutal, less indulgent of children.
It is very much a relationship driven book and many of the relationships are extremely unpleasant - violent, sexually abusive, neglectful. You don’t come away wishing to be part of that time or place. I often felt angry at the treatment of the children - her best friend Ruby suffers horribly at the hands of her parents with quite limited repercussions. April is groomed and repeatedly abused by a creepy old man and there’s no comeuppance. So, I can understand some of the other comments that dislike this book for not wrapping up plot lines in a satisfying way. But perhaps that’s also life - sometimes people do awful things and don’t get what they deserve.
I enjoyed the writing enormously - the inventive dialogue, clear depiction of place, well fleshed out characters. Sheila Mackay is a hugely talented writer.
Some people have questioned the ‘humour’ mentioned on the cover. Is it funny? Not really. Darkly so, sometimes. But don’t expect a comedy.
It’s an era I hold no personal experience of. As a child of the 80s, I had a non digital childhood, but the lifestyle, games and schooling depicted here are another step back - more brutal, less indulgent of children.
It is very much a relationship driven book and many of the relationships are extremely unpleasant - violent, sexually abusive, neglectful. You don’t come away wishing to be part of that time or place. I often felt angry at the treatment of the children - her best friend Ruby suffers horribly at the hands of her parents with quite limited repercussions. April is groomed and repeatedly abused by a creepy old man and there’s no comeuppance. So, I can understand some of the other comments that dislike this book for not wrapping up plot lines in a satisfying way. But perhaps that’s also life - sometimes people do awful things and don’t get what they deserve.
I enjoyed the writing enormously - the inventive dialogue, clear depiction of place, well fleshed out characters. Sheila Mackay is a hugely talented writer.
Some people have questioned the ‘humour’ mentioned on the cover. Is it funny? Not really. Darkly so, sometimes. But don’t expect a comedy.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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