{"id":26546,"date":"2014-08-07T06:30:04","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T18:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=26546"},"modified":"2014-08-05T23:15:38","modified_gmt":"2014-08-05T11:15:38","slug":"gorgeous-words-chocolat-by-joanne-harris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2014\/08\/07\/gorgeous-words-chocolat-by-joanne-harris\/","title":{"rendered":"Gorgeous Words: “Chocolat” by Joanne Harris"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On March 3 of this year<\/a>, I let you all into a\u00a0 secret [Cue: Drum roll!]: I love writing.<\/p>\n

On March 5 I went further, and shared that I Simply Adore Reading<\/a>!<\/p>\n

Since then I’ve begun sharing a gallery of the books and writers that I love.<\/p>\n

One of those books is Joanne Harris’s Chocolat.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One of my brothers, who lives in Australia, was very ill with meningitis and I had flown over to be there, as you do. He recovered, which was the fabulous news, but in between hospital visits there was a lot of downtime, and in one of those down moments I wandered into a little local book store\u00a0(yup, they still had such critters then) in Brisbane and bought the book on the strength of its title, Chocolat<\/em><\/strong> (aka foodie here!) and gorgeous cover (featured), both of which were not let-down by the backcover blurb.<\/p>\n

From the very first page I was hooked. Here’s an example of why Joanne Harris’s gorgeous words about food, people, a community and more than a dash of everyday magic, drew me in:<\/p>\n

“We came on the wind of the carnival, a warm wind for February, laden with hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hotplate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter. There is a febrile excitement in the crowds which line the narrow main street, necks craning to catch sight of the crepe-covered <\/em>char with its trailing ribbons and paper rosettes…The people of Lansquenet have learned the art of observation without eye contact. I feel their gaze like a breath on the nape of my neck, strangely without hostility but cold nonetheless. We are a curiosity to them, a part of the carnival, a whiff of the outlands. I feel their eyes upon us as I turn to buy a <\/em>galette from the vendor. The paper is hot and greasy, the dark wheat pancake crispy at the edges but thick and good in the centre…”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Can’t you taste it? And already the whole feel of the book is set up in those swift opening sequences: the central motif of food, but just as importantly, the themes of self and other, the divine and the mundane, the stranger in an equally strange (if curiously without hostility) land.<\/p>\n

And so much better than the film, Johnny Depp notwithstanding. So many more layers and subtlety, and a far greater depth of character.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On March 3 of this year, I let you all into a\u00a0 secret [Cue: Drum roll!]: I love writing. On March 5 I went further, and shared that I Simply Adore Reading! Since then I’ve begun sharing a gallery of the books and writers that I love. One of those books is Joanne Harris’s Chocolat. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,10,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funstuff","category-general","category-other-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26546"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26560,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26546\/revisions\/26560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}