At the Edge of the Orchard

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She’s got a full on crush on the Apple man who visits with the trees and apple seeds in the canoe and right in front of her husband. James patiently grows his sweet-tasting ‘eaters’ while Sadie gets drunk on applejack made fresh from ‘spitters’. A visitor looks at Raphael's painting 'Extase de Sainte Cecile', 1515, from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence during the opening of a Raphael exhibition at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia. She is mean on purpose and truly awful when she gets her hands on applejack and gets sexually boisterous, although not with her husband, but flagrantly, with other men. Tracy is the author of 10 novels, including the international bestseller GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING, which has sold over 5 million copies and been made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Scarlett Johansson and Colin Firth.

Chevalier tells a fierce, beautifully crafted story in At the Edge of the Orchard, her most graceful and richly imagined work yet.I kept reading and thinking it couldn't possibly get worse between these two, and then something more would pop up as James and Sadie told their story in alternating POVs. Life is harsh in the swamp, and as fever picks off their children, husband and wife take solace in separate comforts. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Five of the Goodenough children have already died, it seems inevitable that those won't be the last. It’s not a happy life, and not just because of the difficulty of raising healthy apple trees or children. Descriptions of the giant redwoods in California, and the spectacular species of the giant sequoias in the Calaveras Grove, are a balm to the emotional violence of earlier chapters.Robert’s doubts about the rush to commercialise California’s natural resources, turning the giant redwoods and sequoias into tourist attractions and exporting them to wealthy English landowners, echo the arguments between his father and the intinerant tree seller John Chapman (better known to history as Johnny Appleseed), about how far man should interfere with nature – a theme with obvious contemporary resonance. The voices are rich and individual; the attention to detail impressive; and the scent of apples, damp earth, pines, runs potently through the whole. Highly recommended, it moves at an excellent pace and I will shortly read it again to enjoy Chevalier's excellent prose.