Blackberry Wine: from Joanne Harris, the bestselling author of Chocolat, comes a tantalising, sensuous and magical novel which takes us back to the charming French village of Lansquenet

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In 2000, the book won Best Novel in both foreign and international categories at the Salon du Livre Gourmand in Périgueux, France. Moving to the small town of Lansquenet in the French countryside, he begins to cultivate his garden and rebuild the run-down farm. Slowly he is welcomed by his colorful neighbors, including the secretive, strong-willed Marise, who lives on the farm next to his. When the sun goes down each night, he retires to a candelit room where he feverishly spins the lives of the villagers into a new novel. As the novel progresses, Joe begins to appear to him, gently coaxing Jay to embrace a life that feeds his soul, and to challenge the very foundation upon which he has builthis life. What qualities made Joe so appealing to Jay? Jay felt betrayed; was his anger justified? What was Joe attempting to teach Jay about reality, about everyday life? Did Jay ever learn this lesson? From the author of Chocolat, an intoxicating fairy tale of alchemy and love where wine is the magic elixir. After weeks of inspired writing, rewarding hard work in his gardens and revisiting the past through Joe's "Specials", Jay comes to feel that the life he is building for himself is more important than writing the great follow-up novel and that self-fulfilment is more alluring to him now than fame and notoriety. He finally gains Marise's confidence following a crisis at her farm, and learns the terrible secret that she has been so desperate to conceal.

The language and the spell of Harris's characters are such that this, like Chocolat, is a novel one will return to again and again, as we do with those books that become our old and dear friends. All these events lead to the entire city shunning the family, and following one situation too many, they flee in separate directions, barely in time escaping death by the neighbors' wrath and need to designate a scapegoat. Of course, there is also the love aspect, a childhood friend, Paul, whom she eventually lets in. Together they learn to heal. If not forget, but to accept the past, their indivual secrets, and Framboise finally makes amends with her mother.But that's only the current (1999) side of the book. Interwoven between the modern plot are Jay's memories of 1975, when he was a rather fed-up teenager who befriended an elderly eccentric called Joe. Joe taught Jay all he knows about plants and herbs, and also about preserving and wine-making. Wine is an important motif in the book - so much so that its narrator (in places) is, rather bizarrely, a bottle of wine. Surprisingly this works well; the bottle-as-narrator is not intrusive, and most of the book is told from the third-person viewpoint of Jay. This is a beautiful book, beautiful being the word here instead of good, though it is good as well. Now Harris Magic is never really magic (except the Norse books and the fairy tales) but it's the kind of magic you can choose to believe is real but maybe it's also just the magic you find in the small things in life. Her books are the closest I ever get to reading what I call Mummy Literature, which mainly features unexpected romances in charming small villages with a cupcake shop on the cover and a woman in a polka-dot dress... But I love her novels because, unlike those Mummy books, her novels aren't about bubbly pretty young things who get a prince when they least expect it after a bad break up. They are about real things and independence and rawness and grief and they make you want to live a wilder, less artificial life and enjoy every damn fruit you eat.

Kerry is Jay's girlfriend; ambitious, worldly and fashionable. She represents everything that Jay most dislikes about London and the life he is leading there, and yet he finds it hard to escape from her dominant personality. It has its usual themes you will find in most Harris books: France, art, mothers and daughters, wine, cheese, fruit, plants, scents, tastes, atmospheric overloads, more descriptions than events, more impressions than actions, a very strong sense of place, travelling folk, issues with the church, issues with modernisation and gentrification, feminism, conservative mistrust of single mothers, estranged families, secrets and magic. Gilly is a traveller girl. Jay meets her during the summer of 1977. She is wild, brave and adventurous; younger than Jay. This is a book about haunted lives, unfinished stories and the chance to change your own life and atone for your past mistakes.

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Harris has indicated that several of the characters were influenced by individuals in her life: [1] Her son forms the basis for the young Anouk, including his imaginary rabbit, Pantoufle. Harris' strong-willed and independent great-grandmother influenced her portrayal of both Vianne and the elderly Armande. The Lollipop Shoes, the first sequel, was published in the United Kingdom in 2007 (released in 2008 as The Girl with No Shadow in the US) [2] What if you could bottle a year of your past? Which one would it be? Which time of year? What would it smell like? How would it taste?

It's only a matter of not losing hope completely and let others surprise you, with one foot in the Earth and the other one suspended in the air, letting the wind blow where it has to.

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The plot of this novel revolves around Jay, a rather disillusioned writer who completed one brilliant book, years previously, and a great deal of junk fiction. He's married to the ultra-smart and supercilious Kerry, but one day, on impulse, decides to buy an old farm in France - and then moves there, out of the blue. Most of the novel revolves around his re-finding his writing muse, getting the farm into some kind of shape, and getting to know the neighbours. Mireille is Marise's mother in law. A stubborn, unhappy old lady, she detests Marise, believing that she has destroyed her son Tony's life, ultimately driving him to suicide. Another issue between them is that Marise will not let her see her granddaughter, Rosa, as she would like nothing better than to take full custody of her. Whether she believes it or not, Mireille would tell everyone that Rosa is being mistreated. It does for gardening and wine what Chocolat does for chocolate, it's even partly set in the same town, with some familiar names making appearances. The chocolaterie is an old dream of hers. She has an innate talent for cooking and a charming personality. She tries to fit in and help her customers. She starts to build a group of regular customers, including Armande, Guillaume and Narcisse, and, to Reynaud's dismay, she doesn't go out of business. Reynaud attempts to have Vianne run out of town, and he talks about her every Sunday at church. Some people stay away, but not for long. His conflict with her becomes his personal crusade.

I really enjoyed this. I liked the setting (England and France) and the magical quality of the story. I liked the old character, Joe and in my mind saw one of our library patrons playing his part. It made me want to read more of Harris's books. I like the way she conveys that there is more going on in our lives than meets the eye. Joe is the reason why I'm giving this book four starts and why I loved it despite the somewhat predictable plot and undeveloped characters. The magic realism of this book was wonderful- the present day events and plot- not so much. I didn't find the plot credible at all. Everything works out way too conveniently for Jay, the protagonist of this book. The only thing that made Jay relatable and real was his relationship with Joe- and his struggles at the writer. There was no chemistry in the love story part of the plot. As Jay settles in, he contemplates his childhood friendship with Joe, who made the Specials and whose idiosyncratic outlook on life was the inspiration for his only successful book. Jay becomes involved in village life, meeting up with some familiar characters from Chocolat. Caro and Toinette, the snooty troublemakers, make an appearance and Josephine, the bar owner and battered wife of the earlier novel, becomes a real friend. But it is a new character, the enigmatic Marise that becomes the real focus of his attention. It's the lure of her story that really changes his life, re-ignites the flare of his work. Joanne Harris is an Anglo-French author, whose books include fourteen novels, two cookbooks and many short stories. Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology and fantasy. She has also written a DR WHO novella for the BBC, has scripted guest episodes for the game ZOMBIES, RUN!, and is currently engaged in a number of musical theatre projects as well as developing an original drama for television.Anouk Rocher, Vianne's six-year-old daughter. A precocious child with an imaginary animal friend, called Pantoufle, that is also seen by her mother. She often plays near the river with the other children. Paul-Marie Muscat, married to Josephine, using her as his servant. He beats her often and he drinks too much. Under his father's guidance he developed a cruel personality that, coupled with his need for vengeance, made him incinerate Roux's boat. Luc Clairmont, Caroline Clairmont's thirteen-year-old son, whom she raised with obsessive care. Luc has a penchant for the dark and bizarre which he's been hiding for fear of upsetting his mother. He has a stutter, although it lessens in the company of his grandmother, and when he's drinking at the party.