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Five Quarters of the Orange: Angela Camos


Excerpted from Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris, published by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Read by Angela Camos: "This piece struck home for me, not only in the struggles with my mother; but in the ones I have with my daughter. Every struggle seemed to be so important - most of them I cannot even recall now. Still we try to create meaning through order; for ourselves, our families and the world around us." Angela is a Program Coordinator at UAF Marine Advisory Program and chairperson of a new non-profit, Teen Quest. She is currently training at Fielding University to become a certified coach with the International Coaching Federation. Angela is also the single mother of two wonderful daughters.  

In Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris, which takes place in occupied France, Framboise looks back on her constant battles with her mother:

"She wanted the clothes on the washing line hung by the hems: I hung them by the collars. The jars in the pantry had to have the labels facing the front: I turned them backward. I forgot to wash my hands before meals. I changed the order of the pans hanging on the kitchen wall, largest to smallest. I left the kitchen window open so that when she opened the door the draft would make it bang. I infringed a thousand of her personal rules, and she reacted to each trespass with the same bewildered rage. To her, those petty rules mattered because those were the things she used to control our world. Take them away and she was like the rest of us, orphaned and lost.

Of course, I didn't know that then."



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