How many of us fell utterly in love with Johnny Depp following his performance in the decadent Chocolat? To have him in such close proximity with large amounts of dessert fulfilled the dreams of many women.
Yet how many of us knew that Chocolat was originally a book, by English author Joanne Harris? Or that Harris has written follow up novels?
Peaches for Monsieur le Curé is the third book in a trilogy focusing on gorgeous heroine Vianne from Chocolat. In it we find that Vianne is living in Paris with Roux (Johnny Depp’s character) and her daughters. Yet a letter from the dead will propel her back to Lansquenet, the town where she once had her own chocolate shop.
Upon her return, Vianne finds a very different town from the one she left. Especially surprising is the presence of a new ethnic community on the outskirts of town, mainly made up of muslims. The attitudes of the townspeople are openly hostile as they are so unaccustomed to change.
Peaches for Monsieur le Curé is written with Harris’s trademark flowing, sensory prose. She is a writer who can truly immerse us in an environment so that we can almost taste the air of the French countryside. Underneath such picturesque writing though, her novels are concerned with serious matters: intolerance, prejudice and xenophobia are all dark undercurrents running through the novel. Like most of Harris’s work, this is a finely crafted and elegantly told novel that will linger on your palette long after the final page.
Bio: Joanne Harris is the author of the Whitbread-shortlisted Chocolat (made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp) and seven other bestselling novels.
Praise: “Harris’s prose is an absolute delight…like Water for Chocolate… but with a European rather than a Latin flavour’.
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