SOURCE: Clausen, Jan. “Passionate Friendship.” Women's Review of Books 14, nos. 10-11 (July 1997): 35.

In the following review, Clausen surveys the strengths and weaknesses of The Orchard on Fire.

When eight-year-old April Harlency, “born into the licensed trade,” arrives in Stonebridge, Kent, the first person she meets is red-haired Ruby Richards, busy setting toilet paper afire in the ladies' room of her parents' pub. As the Harlencies settle in to run the Copper Kettle Tearoom, the two girls form a passionate, nearly seamless friendship. Though plagued by a gendered terror of public spaces (“None of the village girls would have dreamed of walking down Station Hill at night … because everybody knew there was a man with a sack and a knife waiting to jump out on you”), they push the envelope. Ruby takes the lead; she knows that terror begins at home.

Their glorious alliance can't alleviate the solitude in...