Amazon.co.uk Review
This intimate, intensely seen novel was short-listed 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 teashop. 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.

Synopsis
When her parents abandon their seedy Streatham pub for a tearoom in Kent, life for April changes dramatically. She is befriended by the wonderfully dangerous Ruby and by the creepy but immaculately dressed Mr Greenridge, who likes to follow her around the village.

I loved this book for it's evocation of a 1950's childhood but at the same time it made for slightly uncomfortable reading. Extremely well written

Sending on to Teachie following book swap.

Thanks Maggieg will be joining the TBR for now.

What an interesting book. A woman goes back to the village of her childhood and remembers what life was like in the 50's for her and her best friend Ruby. Rather a sad story showing the effect adults have on the lives of children.

This is off to sunlightbub who won it in the Orange swap on BCUK-EXTRA.

I read a book by this author some years ago and enjoyed it, so was pleased to grab this in the orange swap xx