Filled with surprises and pain, Blackberry Wine is a beautiful book from a talented writer. Joanne Harris is gifted, with a long and successful career ahead of her.
Thirty-seven-year-old writer, Jay Macintosh, is stuck in the past. During his childhood, Jay spent three magical summers in rural England with retired miner and eccentric gardener, Joe Cox, a man who would become a source of inspiration for Jay. Joe, with his talismans, good luck charms and rituals, taught Jay many things, mostly about luck, magic, gardening and winemaking, before disappearing without a trace one day and impacting Jay for the rest of his life. And several years later, after the overwhelmingly success of his only novel, Jackapple Joe, Jay has found himself struggling with writer's block. On a whim, Jay purchases a small cottage in a remote village in France where he hopes to recreate those magical summers and let his imagination and creativity flow. But there are all sorts of surprises in store for Jay -- for one, a mysterious woman with a secret past that influences Jay in more ways imaginable.
Blackberry Wine is a beautiful, lush piece of work. However, I couldn't fully appreciate it until I'd read the whole story -- it was too hard to decide if I liked it or not when all the pieces were unread. Now having reflected on the complete story (and after ravishing the last few chapters), I realize that Joanne Harris's touch is still magical. Blackberry Wine will seduce you little by little, and it is so worth it by novel's end.