Images, feelings, and relationships in sure hands

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	• Coastliners: A Novel Joanne Harris Harper Perennial, 2003 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 30 reviews view larger image
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genuine souls.......................

In a story that is set on a small island, a young woman returns home after the death of her mother, to try to understand her father's life and come to terms with her own past and future.
The story takes place amidst a rivalry between the villages at opposite ends of the island. It seems that ultimately one village will thrive, but only at the expense of the other. This seems to be the case between Mado and her sister also.
The villagers are pitted against each other generation after generation in a manner that is mirrored by the characters, Mado's father and his brother, Mado and her sister, husbands and wives and even the religious become opponents to each other.
The descriptions of the coastline, the sea and the villages is so real and clear you can feel the salty breezes. The people are genuine souls that can move your heart.
As the truth about Mado's life is realized, she sees that there is an important reason that everything returns to it's beginnings and that lessons in life will be repeated until they are truly learned.

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Sands of change.

COASTLINERS, by Joanne Harris.

Once again, Joanne Harris takes us to a small French community. This time, on Le Devin a small Breton Island. She introduces us to several inhabitants of this island, where life has remained constant for hundreds of years. Two memorable characters, are the Carmelite nuns, Soeur Therese and Soeur Extase. Their role in the story is a small one. Yet, as with so many of her characters, Joanne has the ability to make them memorable.

The central character, though, is Mado. She is a local girl. After a ten year absence and quite unprepared for the changes that have taken place (as well as the changes still taking place) she returns to this sea side village She quickly learns that Brismane, a local entrepreneur is buying up property all over the island. It is with a certain amount of trepidation that Mado realises that her own family home is one of these under threat.

For centuries this little island has been split into two factions. There is little love lost between the inhabitants of les Salants and on the other side of the island, la Houssiniere. It is this thread of the story that adds to the tension. In fact, COASTLINERS does have a slightly harder edge to it, than some of the previous Joanne Harris novels. And this, for me, added an extra element of enjoyment.

Mado is soon resolved to restore the dying community to which she has once again found herself becoming a part of. The theme of `everything eventually returns to Le Devin` is very relevant here. Before long she has become attracted to Flynn. He is a drifter who for some (at first) unknown reason has stayed on the island. She enlists his help to save her stricken community.

It is here, that the true element of the story begins to emerge. The tide has been diverted by a jetty built into the bay of Immortelles by the local people of la Houssiniere. Consequently all the fine sand has washed away from les Salants to be deposited onto the beach head of La Houssiniere. Because of this, La Houssiniere has now become an established and prospering sea side resort. While, on the other hand, La Salants is languishing. Until Mado hits on an ingenious plan, to alter this.

There are some lovely little sub plots to this seaside tale. One of them being the `miraculous` restoring of the statue of the local Sainte-Marine. Could the wily and attractive Flynn have had something to do with this? Or, as most of the inhabitants of Le Devine would like to imagine, is it really a miracle?

Apart from her crusade to save her part of the island, Mado also has to cope with Grossjean her emotionless and aged Father. How she would dearly love to claim his affection. However, with the arrival later on in the novel of her sister, Adriene, it would seem this is never going to happen.

So the story, like the sands of the island, undergoes several changes. Towards the end, it is left with certain threads of storyline needing to be completed. It is here, that I was happily and pleasingly surprised. Towards the ending of the story, Joanna provides one or two extra twists and turns. And as to the actual ending itself. I thought it was splendid. But to give anything else away, any clue or indication would be to spoil, a thoroughly entertaining and in places, exciting read. And that, I would not do!

Footnote. A thoughtful map of the island of Le Devin is provided in the front of the book.

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A Good Beach Read

The smell of sea and rotting fish, eroded beaches void of life, decaying sea cabins covered with moss, crabby neighbors, a distant father, and a mysterious, uncertain lover- defiantly not your perfect vision of a homecoming welcome. Yet this is what the main character in Joanne Harris' novel "Coastliners" receives when she returns to her childhood village of Les Salants on the island of Le Devin; and ironically, this is all she needs. Madeleine (Mado) Prasteau is a passionate, stubborn, artistic, and driven woman. She is determined to revive the small village which is being torn apart by ancient family feuds and a growing problem of beach erosion. However, the situation in Le Salants is only the secondary part of her worries; Mado's father GrosJean Prasteau is a distant, withdrawn, and embittered man. Driven into seclusion when Mado and her mother leave the island for Paris ten years ago, GrosJean has fallen into a mental decay with the years- much like the physical decay of the island he lives on. Resolved to help both her father and the quarrelsome community, Mado finds help in the charming, handsome, and mysterious character of an Englishman named Flynn. Together they bring a new sense of camaraderie to the villagers and to Mado's detached family. But when a Flynn's murky past comes into full view his identity might shatter his relationship with Mado and the very existence of Les Salants.

Though this novel is not as strong as her best selling "Chocolat", Joanne Harris' "Coastliners" still contains a good plot and determined characters that face some type of adversity. Filled with exceptional images of the sea and details of life on a small fishing island, "Coastliners" will definitely have a different, edgy, and more robust feel than the rest of Harris' novels. It's mysterious and often cryptic characters will catch your attention immediately and keep you reading, hoping to find the secrets they house within themselves. "Coastliners" is a good novel for a light-summer-beach-read (you could probably finish it in two days), but do not expect to find the literary richness found in "Chocolat".

These are the only two setbacks I found in the novel...
First I was a little disheartened to find no cooking aspect in this novel. I really enjoy Harris' creativity with recipes in her other novels and I think they are a great and defining characteristic of her literary style. I found in "Coastliners" that Harris was more concerned with imagery of the sea and sea life than the many delicious recipes that contain sea creatures.
My second complain about the novel is that it tended to ramble on in certain sections, leaving me slightly disinterested. Harris' use of multiple characters and situations was excellent because it gave the story a true-to-life feel. But it takes time and space to develop each character to fruition, and many times you have to sacrifice something to do this aspect justice. This resulted in the novel's tendency to drift off a bit and to loose track of its main plot and purpose. A great example of this is during the last 60 or so pages of the novel the drama of Flynn's identity and mysterious connection with Mado's father and the towns rival Brismand is made. At best this entire situation was solved within three very small, very complicated chapters. I think this would have been a great characteristic to develop withing these three characters throughout the novel, since during those few pages it was a very IMPORTANT part of the plot. Instead, it seemed as if Harris threw this in at the last moment as an after thought or was too busy developing everything else about the characters and forgot this important aspect.

Still this novel was a good read and I recommend it to any fan of Joanne Harris' writing who is willing to experience a different side of the author or to anyone who enjoys reading about life at sea.

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Images, feelings, and relationships in sure hands

This work by the author of Chocolat, which I thoroughly enjoyed and was my impetus for picking up this book, brings several similar themes here. Among them are life in a small town, family relations, and the role of a good bright woman who is an outsider (in this story, a local who is returning after time in the big city and so has lost much of her insider status). After having lived in Paris with her now deceased mother, Mado returns to the French island of her birth, small enough to harbor two communities that are fierce rivals. The human focus is largely Mado's relationships with her family and the neighbors as well as the business leader of the rival community, Brismand, who owns its hotel. Also deeply involved is another outsider, Flynn, who is light-hearted and extremely mysterious. When Mado's community, Les Salants, is threatened by developments in rival La Houssiniere, Flynn leads them in response. Sort of. The citizens of Les Salants rally, but Flynn's role becomes murky. The relations of the people are foremost here, and nature, personal histories, community rivalry, and religion (superstition?) play roles also in how the characters relate. Harris' writing is vivid in both the images and feelings she elicits, seemingly effortlessly. Mado is a rich and deep character, complex, real, and enjoyable. The events ring lifelike and make for a very pleasurable read in Harris' gentle and capable hand. Read it. You'll be glad you did.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Mado has been adrift for too long. After ten years in Paris, she returns to the small island of Le Devin, the home that has haunted her since she left.

Le Devin is shaped somewhat like a sleeping woman. At her head is the village of Les Salants, while its more prosperous rival, La Houssinière, lies at her feet. Yet even though you can walk from one to the other in an hour, they are worlds apart. And now Mado is back in Les Salants hoping to reconcile with her estranged father. But what she doesn't realize is that it is not only her father whose trust she must regain.

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