Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris

Mother/daughter relationships and food play a big part in this book as they did in Chocolat (by the same author).  But Five Quarters of the Orange is a much darker story.  It takes place in a small French village during and then years after the German occupation during World War II.

The protagonist, Framboise, is tenacious and clever, both as a nine year old and as the much older widow.  Her mother is a hard woman, plagued by incapacitating migraine headaches.  Few of the characters are likable in the traditional sense.  Disconcertingly, the kindest character is a Nazi soldier.  It was interesting when I realized that I didn't really like any of these people, as that's one thing that usually draws me into books.  But, I respected them, cut them some slack, perhaps because of the time during which they lived, or maybe the fact that they didn't seem to care about being likable.

Framboise inherits her mother's notebook, which is a mélange of recipes, notes, memories and entries in a foreign language that she doesn't recognize.  The notebook helps her piece together a fuller picture of the dramatic events of her ninth year.

It's interesting how we think we have the whole picture based on our own experience, and yet, the "reality" can be very different, when all the parts start coming together.