Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The Girl With No Shadow, or, The Lollipop Shoes


I've been on a Joanne Harris kick lately. Which means I've been re-reading a lot of her books, Gentlemen & Players, Holy Fools (one of my top 10 books of the last five years), Five Quarters of The Orange, Jigs & Reels and of course, the book which started it all, Chocolat. Such a brilliant book, although I have yet to actually sit down and watch the movie starring Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche (I simply have to grab a copy of the movie soon). Love everything about the book; the setting, the cast of characters, location, and it's about chocolate for God's sake, and love and relationships and magic.

And so I was excited to find out, at the end of last year that Harris was coming out with a continuation to Chocolat entitled The Girl With No Shadow. It was actually already released in Europe under the name The Lollipop Shoes in 2007. In it (without giving anything away) Vianne Rocher finds herself in Paris with Anouk and another daughter named Rosette. She's trying hard to blend in, after leaving Lansquenet and Roux and her chocolate shop. Anouk is now eleven and a loner at her school, who's gradually resenting her mother. Onto this comes Zozie D'Alba, a stranger who reminds Vianne of her past self. But this stranger is not without her own agenda, and as Christmas dawns, Vianne must find the strength and magic within herself to protect the ones she loves.

This is a brilliant book, Harris is inventive and it's so easy to imagine the world that she has written about and you actually grow to care about the characters. It's beautifully written and I like it as much as I liked Chocolat. Will there be a movie in the making?

In other news, I will shortly post a list of recommended books from the last five years. As soon as I compile one. A list, that is.

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