Anyone who enjoyed Joanne Harris’s 1998 bestseller Chocolat and its sequels The Lollipop Shoes, Peaches for Monsieur le Curé and The Strawberry Thief is bound to love her latest creation, Vianne, published in May this year. For anyone new to the series, it’s a great place to start.
Vianne is a prequel to Chocolat; it is the backstory of the memorable heroine, Vianne Rocher, whose trials and tribulations the series has followed. Set in Marseille in the mid-nineties, the latest book starts with Vianne’s arrival in the city. She has just scattered the ashes of her mother, with whom she has lived an itinerant lifestyle, in New York. Vianne finds she is pregnant, and the story follows her as she begins to build a life for herself in one place. As Harris explains on her website, it is ‘the story of a Vianne who does not yet have a daughter; who has never cooked a meal; who doesn’t know the first thing about chocolate. It’s the story of how Vianne became Vianne.’
If you’ve seen Lasse Hallström’s 2001 film of Chocolat, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, it is easy to forget that the books are not set in the 1950s, but the 1990s onwards, and that they are much darker in tone than the film. Harris has said herself that the film is ‘certainly not as dark as the book, but I like milk chocolate too.’ This latest book, like its predecessors, cover some darker themes: Harris lists bereavement, miscarriage, implicit racial prejudice, homelessness. But as with the rest of the series, the combination of magical realism and rich, sumptuous descriptions of food create an immersive piece of fiction – perfect for curling up with (along with some sweet treats) on a Sunday afternoon.
Karen
Buy it here: Vianne a book by Joanne Harris – Bookshop.org UK