![]() The novel is divided into eight sections, with the titles of the first eight books of the Bible, from Genesis to Ruth. (When she goes to school she duly terrifies the other children by explaining the fiery judgment that will soon be visited upon them.) Yet, though this is a story of the heroine's escape from her Scripture-obsessed mother and the Christian sect to which she belongs, the Bible gives shape and meaning to that story. ![]() The young Jeanette knows the Bible as a work of warning, prohibition and eschatological fear. The Bible is the all-controlling authority to which the narrator's fundamentalist mother makes her defer, yet it is also the book on which the novel is based. N arratively, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is built on a particular irony - a contradiction in which it takes some sly delight. ![]()
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