SOURCE: “Fate in Frocks,” in New Statesman and Society, Vol. 8, No. 363, July 28, 1995, pp. 40–41.

In the following excerpt, Kaveney offers a generally positive assessment of A Thousand Orange Trees.

Kathryn Harrison's last novel dealt with kleptomania and photography in uptown New York. In A Thousand Orange Trees, her new heroines have neurosis in common with the earlier one, but are unlike her in being doomed without reprieve. Francisca bears a priest's child and ends on the racks of the Spanish Inquisition as a witch; Marie, the queen fails to produce a child and is poisoned by mother-in-law. Some centuries, women just can't win.

This may sound like Mary Daly, but is actually more like Ronald Firbank. Harrison is interested in 17th-century Spain for the frocks as much as anything—Francisca's family are failed silk growers and even the Inquisition rustle round in silk. This is a highly decorative novel...