Synopses & Reviews
In her bestselling and critically acclaimed novel
Chocolat, Joanne Harris told a lush story of the conflicts between pleasure and repression. Now she delivers her most complex and sophisticated work yet, an unforgettable tale of mothers and daughters, of the past and the present, of resisting and succumbing an extraordinary work of fiction lined with darkness and fierce joy.
When Framboise Simon returns to a small village on the banks of the Loire, the locals do not recognize her as the daughter of the infamous woman they hold responsible for a tragedy during the German occupation years ago. But the past and present are inextricably entwined, particularly in a scrapbook of recipes and memories that Framboise has inherited from her mother. And soon Framboise will realize that the journal also contains the key to the tragedy that indelibly marked that summer of her ninth year...
Review
"Unexpectedly sweet and powerful." New York Times Book Review
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"[Harris's] prose reads like poetry, and it is a physical experience to fall into her imagery." Philadelphia Inquirer
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"The craftsmanship and emotional power of this novel...place Ms. Harris in the forefront of women writers." Richmond Times-Dispatch
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"Tragedy, revenge, suspicion and love are the ingredients for [Harris's] latest offering. Readers will love it." Library Journal (starred review)
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"This intense work brims with sensuality and sensitivity....Beautiful." Publishers Weekly
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"Compelling . . . Harris once again revels in the smells and tastes of French food." Cleveland Plain Dealer
Synopsis
From the author of Chocolat comes an "unexpectedly sweet and powerful" (New York Times) novel of a widow in her sixties returning to the French town she left as a child, and the clues to long-kept secrets she finds in her mother's recipe scrapbook.
About the Author
Joanne Harris is the author of seven previous novels—Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, Coastliners, Holy Fools, Sleep, Pale Sister, and Gentlemen & Players; a short story collection, Jigs & Reels; and two cookbook/memoirs, My French Kitchen and The French Market. Half French and half British, she lives in England.