Something completely different with Chocolat by Joanne Harris

This is a bit of an odd one for me. So, my plan has been to make a post on the concept of a blind date with a book, and in that involves getting two blind dates with books, one from a physical bookstore, and one online. This post, about Chocolat by Joanne Harris, revolves around the blind date with a book that I got from a physical bookstore.

The blurb says that in the small French village of Lansquenet, nothing much has changed in a hundred years. Then an exotic stranger, Vianne Rocher, blows in on the changing win with her small daughter, and opens a chocolate boutique directly opposite the church. Soon the villagers cannot keep away, for Vianne can divine their most hidden desires. But it’s the beginning of Lent, the season of abstinence, and Father Reynaud denounces her as a serious moral danger to his flock. Perhaps even a witch…

I got the twentieth anniversary version of this book, and this version has a foreword where they talk about the book, and in that they mentioned how the book is more about acceptance more than anything else. I see that. Vianne has moved to this small village that’s more or less run by the church. The idea is that the people of this village are majority religious, so listen to the pastor, the Father. They’re all quite closed-minded, and they’re very Kacey Musgraves ‘This Town’ core where everyone seems to know each other, and since it’s such a small town, everyone is in everyone’s business, because there’s nothing else going on but the need to gossip. In all of this as well, I found that whether Vianne was a witch or not, that was never really the issue. The author also mentions that even though the Father is antagonistic, maybe that’s coming from a place where he has desires himself, but cannot give into them, whereas he’s being faced with Vianne, who by offering chocolates and sweets, is the purveyor of indulgence.

Vianne and her daughter, Anouk, open the book just moving or considering moving to Lansquenet, but given the whole novel, they do move. And on the day they’re first there, they get to experience a celebration that gets mentioned that by the end of the day, it seemed it never existed with how quickly it got cleaned up. A cute little detail I noticed that the book both starts and ends with carnivals and events, so regardless of what happens in the book, it’s kind of like a whole cycle. But by the end of the day, Vianne and Anouk are moving into their new place, their boutique that used to be a bakery. When they get in, they go around and sage the place to get out all the negativity. We pop over to Reynaud briefly where he’s talking to his god. Immediately he came across very tightly wound, like he was clearly going to oppose everything that Vianne existed for, and that he’s also got the end that he wants to be taught hope.

It was a very human book. Like I mentioned previously, a lot of it just seemed to be people trying to live, and that was it. With Vianne arriving in town, she marked change for the people, whether they wanted it or not, or whether they knew they wanted it or not. For some whether they knew they needed it, even. Obviously, in that, with change, comes resistance for some – which you definitely saw with some of the characters, see Caro and Paul Marie – but that’s natural. I’m going to mention this multiple times throughout the post that Lansquenet is a little church town, so, obviously you’re going to get these rank people who are going to despite those like Vianne who just want to live their life. Vianne, like I just said, ended up being the change for some of them, or the catalyst for allowing them to step forward in getting, perhaps not what they want, but heading in the right direction. Lansquenet being stuck in its roots meant that people who didn’t necessarily align with those roots, or were trapped by them, saw more good in Vianne than those who were happy in the little religious town they had.

Father Reynaud was an odd man. As the book goes on, he torments himself more and more, as if that’s going to make changes to the world around him and in the town. Meanwhile all these changes happening are due to outside forces. I get that he’s a man of the church, and not only that, a man of the church in a small town, so he’s obviously going to be very traditional. A lot of his rage and ire towards Vianne comes from the fact she’s not a church woman, as is her right, and all of these things she seems to be doing, so villainously, all just happen to be around Easter. In his eyes, she’s this being of temptation, trying to destroy what Easter is about according to his belief system. When, obviously, to the outside person, she’s not, she’s just doing this and it also just happens to be Easter. Yet the whole time he’s fully enraged by her literally just existing, to the point he ends up reducing the food he allows himself, forcing himself into gardening and landscaping that he hates, all things that are clearly just going to fuel this rage that he has to the point he ends up making himself completely snap.

Something I will mention, the whole Vianne being a witch thing, that definitely seems more present towards the start of the book than the end. Perhaps the idea was that once she arrived, people judged her a certain way, labelling her witch, and once that label was there for them, they just saw her as Vianne. But for me, it kind of just faded away to nothing. Like, yes, Vianne ended up doing tarot for herself a few times, and was plagued by the death card, but outside of that? Very nothing burger on the witch front. I think my final thought would be that it was a nice book. That’s about it. Well, I say nice, some of the content absolutely wasn’t. But the whole thing felt very lowkey, like I was just flowing down the river aside Lansquenet. Do I think I’ll read another Joanne Harris book? Probably not, but I’m glad I read this one.

Okay, bye!