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Hello and welcome! My name is Emma and I've been a bookseller for over a decade. I also write fantasy under the name E. M. Epps. This blog features my Two-Paragraph Book Reviews. One paragraph from me. One from the book. Here's why I keep it short.

You are here: Home > Review: “Chocolat” by Joanne Harris

Review: “Chocolat” by Joanne Harris

Image Emma 12 January 2019

Thumbs up for Chocolat by Joanne Harris. Literature.

A sensualist wanderer and her daughter open a chocolate shop in a small French village. Good magical realism is hard to find, but Chocolat is a perfect truffle. Vianne Rocher is a witch – maybe. And the “maybe” is why it’s so lovely. Celeste Bradley once compared my novella The Portrait of Géraldine Germaine to Chocolat, so whyever did it take me so long to read it? I was missing out! Perhaps I initially avoided it because I am tired of the Church-as-villain trope, but as I discovered, Chocolat is better than that; Father Francis Reynaud is a well-developed character and his believable internal struggles are what make him the antagonist. I enjoyed his point-of-view chapters just as much as Vianne’s. Don’t miss out like I did, but enjoy every word of this delicious book.

We lit a candle for every room, gold and red and white and orange. I prefer to make my own incense, but in a crisis the bought sticks are good enough for our purposes, lavender and cedar and lemongrass. We each held a candle, Anouk blowing her toy trumpet and I rattling a metal spoon in an old saucepan, and for ten minutes we stamped around every room, shouting and singing at the top of our voices – Out! Out! Out! – until the walls shook and the outraged ghosts fled, leaving in their wake a faint scent of scorching and a good deal of fallen plaster. Look behind the cracked and blackened paintwork, behind the sadness of things abandoned, and begin to see faint outlines, like the after-image of a sparkler held in the hand – here a wall adazzle with golden paint, there an armchair, a little shabby, but coloured a triumphant orange, the old awning suddenly glowing as half-hidden colours slide out from beneath the layers of grime. iAnouk and Pantoufle stamped and sang and the faint images seemed to grow brighter – a red stool beside the vinyl counter, a string of bells against the front door. Of course, I know it’s only a game. Glamours to comfort a frightened child. There’ll have to be work done, hard work, before any of this becomes real. And yet for the moment it is enough to know that the house welcomes us, as we welcome in. Rock salt and bread by the doorstep to placate any resident gods. Sandalwood on our pillow, to sweeten our dreams.


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Posted in book review
Tagged literature, magical realism, thumbs up
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My bookstore is an affiliate of Bookshop.org, so we will earn a commission if you click through my links and make a purchase. I, personally, am also an affiliate of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and will likewise make a commission if you click through those links and make a purchase. Having to use Amazon doesn’t fill me with joy, but they’re the only good affiliate program for used books available right now. So…that’s the way it is.

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