Coastliners (Hardcover)

Coastliners is good. There is no doubt about that. The plot is strong as are the characters. Anyone who read the first few chapters would be compelled to read to the end. Joanne Harris' empathy with the town or village community is particularly moving in this story. She has a remarkable ability to portray a small, secure yet claustrophobic community, she does it so completely that by the end of the book, you could recognise each character if they were walking dwon the street. At the same time as drawing on caricature so well that you recognise immediately the type of person she means, yet she has a sensitivity that draws deeper so that the reader can identify with the character as an individual.

For my own reading of this novel, I do feel that in concentrating on twist and turns in the plot, and the differing relationships between the characters, Harris has lost something of the succulent imagery that has become her trade mark. Strong flavours enhance her earlier stories, sweets, sours, fruit and wine, natural flavours that work with instinct and overpower the senses. Chocolat, Blackberry Wine and Five Quarters of the Orange are a dazzling gastronomic feast, tastes and smells vivid. Coastliners leave you hungry.

While I really did enjoy Coastliners and I could not put it down till I had found out the destinies of each character, afterward I still found something lacking. I have always idenified with Harris weaving the physical pleasures, eating and drinking, smells and scents, together with the emotional turmoils of year to year life. Coastliners deals with the ups and downs of life, without weaving the heady imagery of her earlier books. For the time being, Blackberry Wine will remain my favourite Joanne Harris novel, the images and characters through that story stayed with me a long time and for me it is the most potent and appealing of her novels (though I do think that may have something to do with the fact that it is narrated by a bottle of wine!).

I find it hard to work out why this disappointed me. Something just seemed to be lacking. Perhaps it's because she has reworked many ingredients and themes she's used in previous novels, so it didn't feel as fresh eg: the idea of a stranger coming to an island (like Vianne in 'Chocolat') and stirring things up. It felt a little as if Joanne Harris has worked out a nice formula and was writing a book by numbers. Yes, her writing style is gorgeous and very readable and she stands head and shoulders above many other contemporary writers... but it just felt lacking the breathless energy and passion which characterised 'Chocolat', or the dark shocks of 'Five Quarters of the Orange'. I also found the love story a bit Mills & boon.

Even so, I gave this 4 stars because JOanne Harris is such an amazing writer. I will keep buying her books but maybe it would nice if she did a quantum leap and just wrote about something completely different with fresh themes & new slants.