Chocolat [Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

I hear our M'sieur le Curé already has it in for you ... Does he know you're a witch?

Lansquenet-sous-Tannes--"a blip on the fast road between Toulouse and Bourdeaux"--and new home to Vianne Rocher, her six-year-old daughter Anouk, and Anouk's "imaginary" rabbit, Pantoufle. They arrive "on the wind of the carnival", and, a couple of days later, Vianne opens a luxuriant chocolate shop. "La Céleste Praline" bubbles over with the most tempting of confections, topped with an irresistible selection of rich, smooth chocolate drinks. It's Lent, the shop is opposite the church (which Vianne and Anouk don't attend) it's open on Sundays and Francis Reynaud, the austere parish priest with the "measuring, feline look" is not exactly happy.

As one by one the villagers sidle into the shop to sample Vianne's concoctions, we learn of their characters and secrets, their loves and desires, their troubles and hopes. Sad, polite Guillame and his dying dog. Shoplifting, beaten Joséphine Muscat. And Armande Voizin, still vigorous and perceptive in her 80s, who can see Pantoufle, and recognises Vianne for who she really is.

But Reynaud has his power base. And when Vianne advertises a Grand Festival of Chocolate to start on Easter Sunday, it's all-out war. War between church and chocolate.

Read clearly and precisely by Samantha Bond--whose voice is almost choclatey enough for Vianne--and Gareth Armstrong -- who sounds marginally too rich for Reynaud--this is an elegant adaptation of an utterly delicious novel, the denouement of which brings a new, literal meaning to the phrase "a sticky end", and which proves, indisputably, that soft centres are best. --Lisa Gee

'An addictive read haunting,obsessive, and just a little nutty, like a freshly made praline.' -- Elisabeth Luard, author of Family Life 'A celebration of pleasure, of love, of tolerance.' -- Observer 'Samantha Bond is perfectly cast as Vianne: her voice is smooth and luxurious. But Gareth Armstrong steals the show as the priest who turns increasingly to his faith and in so doing loses touch with reality.' -- Observer

‘A celebration of pleasure, of love, of tolerance.'

When an exotic stranger, Vianne Rocher, arrives in the French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique directly opposite the church, Father Reynaud identifies her as a serious danger to his flock especially as it is the beginning of Lent, the traditional season of self-denial. War is declared as the priest denounces the newcomer's wares as the ultimate sin. As a result, Vianne's plans for an Easter Chocolate Festival divide the whole community in a conflict that escalates into a 'Church not Chocolate' battle. As mouths water in anticipation, can the solemnity of the Church compare with the pagan passion of a chocolate eclair?

When an exotic stranger, Vianne Rocher, arrives in the French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique directly opposite the church, Father Reynaud denounces her as a serious moral danger to his flock - especially as it is the beginning of Lent, the traditional season of self-denial.

As passions flare and the conflict escalates, the whole community takes sides. Can the solemnity of the Church compare with the sinful pleasure of a chocolate truffle?

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Joanne Harris was born of a French mother and English father, and spent most of her childhood holidays on the island of Noirmoutier, in southern Brittany and Nerac, in Gascony, where she was immersed in French village life, folklore and tradition. She is the author of two previous novels, 'Sleep, Pale Sister', and 'The Evil Seed'. Her fourth, 'Blackberry Wine' was published in March 2000 to great critical acclaim. Joanne lives in Yorkshire with her husband and young daughter.

February 11 Shrove Tuesday

WE CAME ON THE WIND OF THE CARNIVAL. A WARM WIND FOR February, laden with the 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 char with its trailing ribbons and paper rosettes. Anouk watches, eyes wide, a yellow balloon in one hand and a toy trumpet in the other, from between a shopping-basket and a sad brown dog. We have seen carnivals before, she and I; a procession of two hundred and fifty of the decorated chars in Paris last Mardi Gras, a hundred and eighty in New York, two dozen marching bands in Vienna, clowns on stilts, the Grosses Tetes with their lolling papier-mache heads, drum majorettes with batons spinning and sparkling. But at six the world retains a special lustre. A wooden cart, hastily decorated with gilt and crepe and scenes from fairy tales. A dragon's head on a shield, Rapunzel in a woollen wig, a mermaid with a Cellophane tail, a gingerbread house all icing and gilded cardboard, a witch in the doorway, waggling extravagant green fingernails at a group of silent children ... At six it is possible to perceive subtleties which a year later are already out of reach. Behind the papier-mache, the icing, the plastic, she can still see the real witch, the real magic. She looks up at me, her eyes, which are the blue-green of the Earth seen from a great height, shining. "Are we staying? Are we staying here?"' I have to remind her to speak French. "But are we? Are we?" She clings to my sleeve. Her hair is a candyfloss tangle in the wind. I consider. It's as good a place as any. Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, two hundred souls at most, no more than a blip on the fast road between Toulouse and Bordeaux. Blink once and it's gone. One main street, a double row of dun-coloured half-timbered houses leaning secretively together, a few laterals running parallel like the tines of a bent fork. A church, aggressively whitewashed, in a square of little shops. Farms scattered across the watchful land. Orchards, vineyards, strips of earth enclosed and regimented according to the strict apartheid of country farming: here apples, there kiwis, melons, endives beneath their black plastic shells, vines looking blighted and dead in the thin February sun but awaiting triumphant resurrection by March ... Behind that, the Tannes, small tributary of the Garonne, fingers its way across the marshy pasture. And the people? They look much like all others we have known; a little pale perhaps in the unaccustomed sunlight, a little drab. Headscarves and berets are the colour of the hair beneath, brown, black or grey. Faces are lined like last summer's apples, eyes pushed into wrinkled flesh like marbles into old dough. A few children, flying colours of red and lime-green and yellow, seem like a different race. As the char advances ponderously along the street behind the old tractor which pulls it, a large woman with a square, unhappy face clutches a tartan coat about her shoulders and shouts something in the half-comprehensible local dialect; on the wagon a squat Santa Claus, out-of-season amongst the fairies and sirens and goblins, hurls sweets at the crowd with barely restrained aggression. An elderly small-featured man, wearing a felt hat rather than the round beret more common to the region, picks up the sad brown dog from between my legs with a look of polite apology. I see his thin graceful fingers moving in the dog's fur; the dog whines; the master's expression becomes complex with love, concern, guilt. No-one looks at us. We might as well be invisible; our clothing marks us as strangers, transients. They are polite, so polite; no-one stares at us. The woman, her long hair tucked into the collar of her orange coat, a long silk scarf fluttering at her throat; the child in yellow wellingtons and sky-blue mac. Their colouring marks them. Their clothes are exotic, their faces - are they too pale or too dark? - their hair marks them other, foreign, indefinably strange. 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 nevertheless. 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 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. I break off a piece and give it to Anouk, wiping melted butter from her chin. The vendor is a plump, balding man with thick glasses, his face slick with the steam from the hot plate. He winks at her. With the other eye he takes in every detail, knowing there will be questions later. "On holiday, Madame?" Village etiquette allows him to ask; behind his tradesman's indifference I see a real hunger. Knowledge is currency here; with Agen and Montauban so close, tourists are a rarity. "For a while." "From Paris, then?" It must be our clothes. In this garish land the people are drab. Colour is a luxury; it wears badly. The bright blossoms of the roadside are weeds, invasive, useless. "No, no, not Paris." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.