Blackberry Wine [Paperback]

Thirty-seven-year-old writer, Jay Macintosh, is stuck in the past. During his childhood, Jay spent three magical summers in rural England with retired miner and eccentric gardener, Joe Cox, a man who would become a source of inspiration for Jay. Joe, with his talismans, good luck charms and rituals, taught Jay many things, mostly about luck, magic, gardening and winemaking, before disappearing without a trace one day and impacting Jay for the rest of his life. And several years later, after the overwhelmingly success of his only novel, Jackapple Joe, Jay has found himself struggling with writer's block. On a whim, Jay purchases a small cottage in a remote village in France where he hopes to recreate those magical summers and let his imagination and creativity flow. But there are all sorts of surprises in store for Jay -- for one, a mysterious woman with a secret past that influences Jay in more ways imaginable.

Blackberry Wine is a beautiful, lush piece of work. However, I couldn't fully appreciate it until I'd read the whole story -- it was too hard to decide if I liked it or not when all the pieces were unread. Now having reflected on the complete story (and after ravishing the last few chapters), I realize that Joanne Harris's touch is still magical. Blackberry Wine will seduce you little by little, and it is so worth it by novel's end.

In Blackberry Wine, Jay Mackintosh needs a little magic. An unproductive novelist living in a depressing English lifestyle earmarked by alcohol and an unfulfilling relationship, Jay is haunted by a childhood defined by bullies and detached parents but redeemed by the quirky Joe Cox, who planted vegetables and made magical wine. Now, on a whim, Jay sets out to rediscover Joe's magic in the French village of Lansquenet, a place which is quaint and remote but beginning to go to seed and also needs a little magic. Jay carries with him the last six bottles of Joe's Special wine. The house that Jay purchases sight unseen except for a blurry picture in a brochure, is in disrepair but reminds him of Joe, and in fact seems to be inhabited by Joe's ghost.

In the house over the next several months, Jay uncorks the Special wines one by one, releasing their magic and allowing himself and the house to absorb their mysterious qualities. He begins renovations on the place, taking care not to lose its essential charm. He meets and learns about the people in the village and their concerns for saving their economy and their way of life. His writer's block lifts and he can hardly believe he is able to produce page after page of a new novel about the village and its inhabitants. He is most intrigued by his reclusive and alluring neighbor Marise, respected by some as a hard worker who bothers no one, but denigrated by others for being unsociable and irreligious. But the more he learns about her, the less she fits the character he had presumed her to be in the fiction he has been creating. Although his novel is coming along swiftly, he does not know where it is going, nor where he himself is going. The village also is waffling through the same process, unclear about how to define its future. Should it embark on tourism and commercial development schemes or sit back and submit to its inevitable economic decline? Through a blending of magic and hard reality, Jay rediscovers what is important in planning his own future and that of the village of Lansquenet.