LoveReading Says
Into a small rural French village comes a mysterious woman, Vianne, her young daughter and the child’s invisible rabbit. They open a chocolate shop opposite the church. It is Lent and a strange war breaks out between the church and the shop. In alternating chapters between the priest and Vianne we are given views of good and evil, temptation and righteousness and a thought-provoking story unfolds. This is quite delicious, all of it – the villager’s and their secrets, the Frenchness of it all and the chocolate. A far greater book than the film.
A "Piece of Passion" from the publisher...
‘I’ve always believed you can’t go wrong with love and chocolate: and this deliciously has both. This is a novel which is totally irresistible, because it works on so many different levels: there’s the lovely French setting, the sensuousness of the food and the seriousness of the underlying themes, mixed with a dash of magic, a pinch of ancient wisdom, plus gentle humour and a clear-eyed insight into the most repressed of emotions. Joanne Harris has gone on to write a whole string of bestsellers, often sensuous, sometimes chilling, always surprising – but Chocolat remains the one she is best-known for, and most-loved, too.' Marianne Velmans, Publishing Director at Transworld
Sarah Broadhurst
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Chocolat Synopsis
When the exotic stranger Vianne Rocher arrives in the old French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique called La Celeste Praline directly across the square from the church, Father Reynaud identifies her as a serious danger to his flock. It is the beginning of Lent: the traditional season of self-denial. The priest says shell be out of business by Easter.To make matters worse, Vianne does not go to church and has a penchant for superstition. Like her mother, she can read Tarot cards. But she begins to win over customers with her smiles, her intuition for everyones favourites, and her delightful confections. Her shop provides a place, too, for secrets to be whispered, grievances aired. She begins to shake up the rigid morality of the community. Viannes plans for an Easter Chocolate Festival divide the whole community. Can the solemnity of the Church compare with the pagan passion of a chocolate clair?For the first time, here is a novel in which chocolate enjoys its true importance, emerging as an agent of transformation. Rich, clever, and mischievous, reminiscent of a folk tale or fable, this is a triumphant read with a memorable character at its heart.Says Harris: You might see [Vianne] as an archetype or a mythical figure. I prefer to see her as the lone gunslinger who blows into the town, has a showdown with the man in the black hat, then moves on relentless. But on another level she is a perfectly real person with real insecurities and a very human desire for love and acceptance. Her qualities too - kindness, love, tolerance - are very human. Vianne and her young daughter Anouk, come into town on Shrove Tuesday. Carnivals make us uneasy, says Harris, because of what they represent: the residual memory of blood sacrifice (it is after all from the word carne that the term arises), of pagan celebration. And they represent a loss of inhibition; carnival time is a time at which almost anything is possible.The book became an international best-seller, and was optioned to film quickly. The Oscar-nominated movie, with its star-studded cast including Juliette Binoche (The English Patient) and Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love), was directed by Lasse Hallstrom, whose previous film The Cider House Rules (based on a John Irving novel) also looks at issues of community and moral standards, though in a less lighthearted vein.The idea for the book came from a comment her husband made one day while he was immersed in a football game on TV. It was a throwaway comment, designed to annoy and it did. It was along the lines of...Chocolate is to women what football is to men The idea stuck, and Harris began thinking that people have these conflicting feelings about chocolate, and that a lot of people who have very little else in common relate to chocolate in more or less the same kind of way. It became a kind of challenge to see exactly how much of a story I could get which was uniquely centred around chocolate. Rich with metaphor and gorgeous writing...sit back and gorge yourself on Chocolat.
About This Edition
ISBN: |
9780385674737 |
Publication date: |
3rd December 2010 |
Author: |
Harris, Joanne |
Publisher: |
Doubleday Canada |
Format: |
Ebook (Epub) |
Primary Genre |
General Fiction
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Other Genres: |
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Recommendations: |
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