For hundreds of years, the sleepy French village of Lansquenet has been content to wrap itself in the gauzy layers of tradition, cocooning itself against the influences of the modern world. Then Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk, the heroines of Joanne Harris's new novel Chocolat, breeze into town on the changing wind, and Lansquenet will never be the same again.
It's not just that Vianne is beautiful and carefree, or that her shop, La Celeste Praline, brings a touch of luxury and a splash of color to the town; there's something more to Vianne that draws customers -- especially the village outsiders -- to her. Perhaps it's the fact that she knows their favorite sweets without asking, or possibly the way she can pull their deepest wishes and fears from them with just the slightest touch. Whatever it is, Vianne's appearance changes the town, for better and for worse. Vianne, too, feels the change, even though change has dictated her entire life; this time its impact will be more than she ever suspected.
One of the best aspects of this novel is Harris' ability to evoke the customs and lifestyles of a quaint French village with authenticity.
Chocolat's gentle prose is immediately compelling. Perhaps it's the scent of magic in the air, the understanding of what it's like to be an outsider in a closed community. Harris's tale of Vianne Rocher and her six year old daughter Anouk who find home after a lifetime's journey in a small conservative village in France is an unabashed success. .
At the heart of Chocolat is confrontation between forgiveness and liberality versus conflict and intolerance, embodied in the relationship between Vianne Rocher and Francis Reynaud, the austere parish priest. Vianne blows into the righteous, upstanding town as a single mother; fate, she says, guiding her. The stage is set on the chocolate shop's opening day when Vianne tells Reynaud with a matter of fact that "I don't go to church" " war has begun.
