A Sumptuous Box of Chocolates

books:


	• The Girl with No Shadow CD: A Novel Joanne Harris HarperAudio, 2008 average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

A Sumptuous Box of Chocolates

Think of free spirit Vianne personified in the film version of "Chocolat" by the lovely Juliette Binoche blowing into a small French village on the north wind, tempering the richest, darkest bittersweet chocolate, fashioning it into truffles rolled into powdered balls infused with her special brand of domestic magic and the sole intent of changing people's lives. Remember her daughter, Anouk, with the part phantom-familiar Pantoufle trailing at her heels desiring only a permanent home like any other child. Add to the mix four-year-old Rosette, a special child who doesn't speak, but perpetrates "accidents" that cannot be explained or ignored and change the venue from Lansquenet, the Midi hill town's chocolaterie to the urban "village" chocolate shop located on the butte of Montemartre crowned by the white marbled Sacre Coeur de Paris. In "The Lollipop Shoes," (US title: "The Girl With No Shadow") novelist Joanne Harris whips up another batch of pure enchantment, this time bringing her white "witch" protagonist's special skills out of the closet while pitting her against a red-shoed force much darker than the "kindly" but bothersome convention and respectability of Lansquenet's traditional religious contingency.

The questionable Zozie could pass for the old Vianne with her bohemian attitude, bon-bon colored costumes and her uncanny ability to tantalize the Parisian shoppe's clientele with their "favorite" confection. Impressed with the latent supernatural talent possessed but untried by now preteen Anouk, Zozie intends to manipulate Vianne's lapse into conformity to her own advantage by mimicking Vianne's own gentle yet paranormal methods of persuasion. In the ultimate play on identity theft, Zozie attempts to steal a few lives while interrupting the shaky existence that Vianne has molded to solidify the impression of stability established for the benefit of her two irrepressible children and buttressed by the presence of a boring but stalwart fiancé. The delicate balance tips over a confused and emotionally charged edge when the rakish redheaded Roux reappears with his riverboat and his practical but moody gypsy desires causing Vianne's past to careen into a future that oscillates with a frightening yet comfortably recognizable uncertainty.

This cunning battle of wits shines like the glossiest couverture; Harris's alternating three person narrative keeps the reader turning the pages while divining the speaker with the same delightful impetuosity and impulsiveness that nonsensically urges even the most fastidious dieter to eat one chocolate after another from a naughty beribboned gold-leafed ballontine. With an adept panache worthy of a ganache fashioned by Pierre Hermé, Harris assembles the usual cast of secondary eccentrics that adds bitter to the sweet, keeping the chocolatier cash register stuffed with euros and the atmosphere redolent with both requited and unrequited hopes and dreams. Zoxie's ample allusions to Aztec gods and goddesses as she flicks off a cantrip and Vianne's constant consultation of the tarot cards adds the necessary off-kilter authenticity that Harris utilizes in all of her culinary fairy tales.

Bottom Line? "The Lollipop Shoes" entertains as only a Joanne Harris novel can. Interjecting magic with the everyday ups and downs of an adolescent searching for self-identity, a mother seeking peace and security while sacrificing her own desires and an opportunist willing to destroy for destruction's sake alone, this "Chocolat" sequel offers a different take on the usual good versus evil fable that is built upon the foundation of Harris's other books, weaving in already explored places, characters and a magical heredity that here reaches a thoroughly enjoyable crescendo. Recommended not only as the sequel to "Chocolat", but as a good story with a moving, albeit somewhat over swollen plot line in its own right.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"

for more information click here

Delightfully Delicious

Joanne Harris is my current "flavour of the month". I have read a number of her books in short succession and savoured each of them. She has a knack for bringing the magical into the ordinary. With her quirky characters, mouthwatering descriptions and enchanting story-telling abilities, I cannot help but be drawn into her words. This story, and of course its predecessor "Chocolat" reminded me somewhat of my favourite movie - "Amelie". A lovely read to warm the soul and tantalise the tastebuds!

for more information click here

Sweet delights

Yanne and her two daughters, 11 year old Annie and 4 year old Rosette, are renting a Chocolaterie, a shop which sells chocolates and sweet confections to tourists in Montmarte, an old section of Paris. Yanne is being courted by the owner of the premises, Thierry, a stolid, unimaginative man who is worthy but too conventional for Yanne and the girls. Rosette has never developed in body or intellect but seems to possess strange powers which unsettle Thierry who tries to dominate them all. One day a mysterious stranger, Zozie, comes into their lives, making herself indispensable to Yanne in the shop and befriending Annie who is being bullied mercilessly at school. Zozie is able to discern the marks of a mystic power around Annie and urges her to use her abilities to get revenge. Yanne has been at great pains to make herself and her girls "normal" and to suppress any signs of otherworldliness for their own safety. When Zozie coaxes Yanne to resume her old trade of chocolate making, business increases to a huge degree and they are at last accepted by the neighbours as true Parisians. This is a fascinating story, combining the occult and the art of making scrumptious chocolates and I would seriously advise any reader not to read this book on an empty stomach as the descriptions become so real that one can almost smell the delicious morsels and be driven to scrounging for ANYTHING with chocolate in or on it.

for more information click here

Dark Chocolat

Joanne Harris's sequel to her sly, clever novel, Chocolat, finds Vianne and her two daughters living in Paris four years after the wind blew them out of the village of Lansquenet. Gone is the magic that enriched their lives and transformed the village, and that is fine by Vianne. Now calling herself Yanne, she only wants her family to be normal and safe, and on the surface, it seems to be. Anouk is now a pre-teen with an early adolescent's normal angst. Her younger sister, Rosette, appears intelligent enough even if she can't talk. And Yanne herself is soon to be engaged to her staid bourgeois landlord. Life couldn't be more ordinary, until the fateful wind blows into their lives a mysterious and exotic woman who seems to know all about "Yanne" and her family. Soon Vianne faces an adversary who threatens everything she holds dear and whose skills are as great as her own.

Although it's a sequel to Chocolat, The Girl With No Shadow is not Chocolat II. It is a darker, grittier story of mothers and daughters, love and loss. Although readers may expect the same Disneyesque charm of the first novel, this contemporary fairy-tale is more in the vein of the Brothers Grimm. My only quibble is I missed the zest of earlier Vianne during most of the story. The villain was a much more compelling creation. Nevertheless, fans who want to follow the characters from Chocolat will enjoy this book.

for more information click here

Mendiants and macaroons

In my view, not the best Joanne Harris I have read.
Positives: The descriptions of people with their many hang-ups, idiosyncrasies and preferences were beautiful. As ever, the descriptions of food were simply super (particularly the repetition used when referring to the persuasive power of certain treats, mendiants and macaroons, for example) and added atmosphere to the narrative. Reading about food is invariably a pleasure, and this book is no exception.
However, in terms of plot I found it lacking in comparison to other stronger plots. In many of Harris' novels the strength lies in the very unexpected final twists and turns and I find myself often trying to work out the plot for hours as I go about my day, only to still be surprised in the end. In this one, the plot seems fairly predictable, and no, the ending did not hold any treats in store. The obvious happens, the villain scarpers and all others are happy. Mmmm. The narrative from the 11-year old Anouk's point of view also seemed too mature.
This book still deserves recommendation as it has many strenghts and the descriptions are as ever beautiful.

for more information click here

reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

search for books
girl with, girl, novel, shadow

Impressum / about us