Harris Opens Chocolat Box Once More

The Age

Saturday June 23, 2007

Dianne Dempsey

The Lollipop Shoes

By Joanne Harris

Doubleday, $32.95

Dianne Dempsey enjoys Joanne Harris' latest venture into the world of magic.

JOANNE HARRIS IS A PROLIFIC author distinguished by her uncanny ability to conjure distinctly different worlds. Published in 2005, Gentlemen and Players is set in an elite English school where the staff room politics degenerate from bitchy to downright sinister. Her short story collection, Jigs and Reels, is notable for its versatility and sometimes macabre and savage view of life.

Most people, however, will associate Harris with her best-selling novel Chocolat that was made into a successful film starring Juliette Binoche. Set in a French village, the novel's heroine Vianne seduces the devoutly religious villagers with chocolate, beauty and the mists of magic that surrounds herself and her little girl, Anouk.

In The Lollipop Shoes, the sequel to Chocolat, Harris ventures further into the realm of magic, playing Vianne against an exotic, evil witch Zozie de l'Albaz, who tries to steal Anouk away from her. It is five years on and Vianne is living in Montmartre struggling to make a living in a chocolate shop. She now has a second daughter, Rosette, a new name, and a new start. But then Zozie turns up, equipped with fabulous chocolate recipes, gorgeous shoes and a cold hard heart.

That Vianne and Zozie both possess magic powers in the here-and-now of the 21st century seems perfectly feasible and wonderful; this willing suspension of our disbelief is encouraged by Harris' incisive and confident prose rather more than any references to black cats, runes and secret spells.