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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Lyons Public Library | F HAR | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Harris, J. 2002 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Joanne Harris writes fiction that engages every one of the senses: reviewers called Chocolat "delectable" and Five Quarters of the Orange "sweet and powerful." In her new novel, she takes readers to a tiny French island where you can almost taste the salt on your lips.
The island, called Le Devin, is shaped somewhat like a sleeping woman. At her head is the village of Les Salants, while the more prosperous village of La Houssini#65533;re lies at her feet. You could walk between the towns in an hour, but they could not feel further apart, for between them lie years of animosity.
The townspeople of Les Salants say that if you kiss the feet of their patron saint and spit three times, something you've lost will come back to you. And so Madeleine, who grew up on the island, returns after an absence of ten years spent in Paris. She is haunted by this place, and has never been able to feel at home anywhere else.
But when she arrives, she will find that her father -- who once built fishing boats that fueled the town's livelihood -- has become even more silent than ever, withdrawing almost completely into an interior world. And his decline seems reflected in the town itself, for when the only beach in Les Salants washed away, all tourism drifted back to La Houssini#65533;re.
Madeleine herself has been adrift for a long time, yet almost against her will she soon finds herself united with the village's other lost souls is a struggle for survival and salvation.
Author Notes
Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley, Yorkshire, England on July 3, 1964. She studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. While working as a teacher for fifteen years, she published three novels: The Evil Seed (1989), Sleep, Pale Sister (1993) and Chocolat (1999), which was made into a film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. Her other works include Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, Coastliners, Holy Fools, The Lollipop Shoes and Runemarks. She also co-wrote two cookbooks with cookery writer Fran Warde: The French Kitchen and The French Market.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Family history meets village rivalry in Harris's poignant fourth novel, an understated passion play set on the provincial French island of Le Devin. Madeleine Prasteau leaves her Paris apartment to return to the island village of Les Salants, where she discovers that her father, a widowed boat owner, is going downhill along with the village itself as the rival town of La Houssinire grows and prospers. Despite her father's chilly greeting, Madeleine spruces up the family home, and when she meets an attractive, mysterious stranger named Flynn she gets involved in a project to save Les Salants by building a homemade reef to restore the fast-eroding beach. The project gets complicated when Madeleine realizes that Flynn has ties to Brismand, a rival of her father's, who controls local commerce in La Houssinire. The reef project succeeds, but with a bitter aftertaste when Madeleine's older sister, Adrienne, moves back to the island and her father becomes infatuated with Adrienne's children. Sibling rivalry fades to the background when Madeleine learns that Flynn's ties to Brismand extend into her own family history, and she discovers that Flynn was an integral part of a romantic triangle involving her father and Brismand. Harris develops her beguiling story in layers, drawing Madeleine into the village life she loves and loathes while exploring the nuances of island living. Despite the narrowly focused setting, Harris exposes a wide range of passions and emotions as Madeline gets involved with Flynn against the effective backdrop of the various family and village rivalries. This book lacks the lurid erotic power of Chocolat, but Harris compensates for the lowered levels of passion and eros by writing with power and grace about the family ties that bind.(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
In an ever-so-cozy tale, a woman returns to the small French island of her ancestry to reconnect with her roots and act generally plucky. Amid descriptions of delicious scenery, quaint customs, and mouthwatering delicacies, the story is told of Madeline ("Mado" to anyone who cares) coming back from Paris to the windswept French island of Le Devin, where her father still lives after her mother's death. There are two towns: the northern one, Les Salants, is poor, hardscrabble, and full of character, while the southern, La Houssiniere, is rich, arrogant, and touristy. Any guesses where Mado hails from? The ocean is indeed a harsh mistress, and Mado notices right away, after failing to make much headway in reconnecting with her taciturn, mule-headed father, that Les Salants' formerly gorgeous beach has been mostly washed out to sea. Mado senses a project just crying out for her to organize, and so, in the grand tradition of fictional small towns everywhere, the people of Les Salants leave their grumpiness behind and band together to build a reef that will shelter the beach and, they hope, encourage some of the tourist business away from La Houssiniere. Unfortunately, though, the proprietor of La Houssiniere's hotel, Les Immorteles, a foxy businessman by the name of Claude Brismand, won't take the challenge lying down. As the battle rages, Mado has her father, a snooty sister, and a potential romance with an Englishman to keep her occupied as well, so there's no telling whether the forces of good will be able to hold off the onslaught of the southern villains. It's all as underwhelming as it sounds, chockablock with stereotypically earthy villagers and picturesque, Travel Channel-like prose. Rightly or wrongly, Harris (Chocolat, 1999; Five Quarters of the Orange, 2001, etc.) delivers the goods for readers who can't get enough of this sort of thing. Author tour
Booklist Review
Madeleine Prasteau is convinced that she can go home again. Ever since she fled her island hometown with her mother 10 years prior, she has been restless, seeking out island after island, trying to recapture the flavor of the tiny village of Les Salants, with its rocky, beachless coast, stone dunes, and gritty, ceaseless wind. After her mother's death in Paris, she returns to Les Salants. And although it does not seem possible, her father is even more silent than she remembered. As she once again settles into the rhythm of small-town life, with its superstitions and long-held grudges, she attempts to crack her father's defenses without doing herself too much harm in the process, and what she learns surprises her. She becomes obsessed with showing up a nearby, more prosperous town, convinced she can turn Les Salants into a tourist destination, if only they can prevent the sand erosion. She recruits a resourceful beachcomber nicknamed Flynn to help her rebuild the beaches and the villagers' spirits. Within this layered, nuanced story, Harris (Chocolat, 1999) expertly weaves her themes of family, community, and loyalty and shows how these values can be affected by money. Most impressively, she vividly depicts how a bleak, patchy strip of land can be synonymous with home. Joanne Wilkinson.
Library Journal Review
As in her previous work, Harris (Chocolat) is a master at the long, quiet, atmospheric novel in which it appears that nothing much is happening. Here she describes the rich and rough shoreline of Le Devin, a small French island with a quickly eroding coastline, inhabited by generations of families whose feuds are the equal of the Montagues and the Capulets. Then there are smaller feuds between fishermen and tourist-mongers, plus a vague family feud between Madeleine and her sister Adrienne. At first it seems nothing much is happening, until we realize that landscape approaches the level of metaphor, and while listeners were dreamily lost in her lush descriptions read by Vivienne Benesch, the author has portrayed the lives of her characters as changing dramatically, and irreversibly. Only in the last third of the book do things happen quickly, and importantly enough one is tempted to go back and replay other sections. Yes, all the seeds are there, and we should have guessed them, but it's a tribute to Harris's writing that we did not. While a few events are clichd and almost predictable, there are enough surprises to satisfy listeners. Short, clearly focused chapters make this ideal for long, quiet drives, or while resting lazily before sleep. Highly recommended.-Rochelle Ratner, formerly with "Soho Weekly News," New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.