For most of the length of the book, this is a delicious confection. I loved the language, the style, the lushness of this book as a sensory experience. On Mardi Gras day of 1997, wanderer Vianne Rocher and her six-year old daughter Anouk Rocher "came on the wind of the carnival" into the small French village of Lansquenet "of two hundred souls at most." The next day, the beginning of Lent, she's opening a decadent confectioner's shop. The way Harris describes that shop and its wares brings back the magic of childhood but with an overlay of an adult sensuousness and a pagan sensibility. A note says "Joanne Harris, part French and part English, found her inspiration for Chocolat in her own family's history--herself having been born in a sweetshop and being the great-granddaughter of a French woman known locally as a witch." Most of the story is told by Vianne, and it's a lyrical voice and she's a sympathetic character for the most part.
I had mixed feelings about the character of her adversary, Cure Francis Reynaud, the priest of St. Jerome's. He also has his say, and there are times I felt a great deal of pity for him. And the climax of the book on Easter Sunday with him among the temptations of the sweetshop I thought almost brilliant. Almost, because it would have been brilliant if he had been developed in a different direction. I think the problem is we learn too much about him I wish Harris had left obscured. I thought that with his secrets Harris took it a bit over the top, made him too....pathological? Too stereotypically anti-clerical? There was plenty in his personality and profession to give impetus to his opposition without adding those elements, and his voice didn't always work for me.
This also was graced with a lot of wonderful secondary characters though and some of their stories were most moving in the book. There's 80 year old Armande Voizin, who wants so much to connect with her grandson and to keep her independence. There's Guillaume Duplesis, who loves his little dog more than the priest considers "appropriate." There's Josephine Muscat, who has put up with her abusive husband too long. And above all there's Michel Roux and the other river gypsies. Definitely a very enjoyable and memorable read.
