Blackberry Wine
by Joanne Harris
419pp, Doubleday, £12.99
Being more of an alcohol buff than a confectionery lover, I was drawn to Blackberry Wine with much more instinctive enthusiasm than to its predecessor, the international bestseller Chocolat (shortlisted for the 1999 Whitbread Novel of the Year award).
So, after having recovered from the unexpected shock of being addressed directly by a bottle of wine (not the cheeky home-made plonk of the title, which obviously couldn't be trusted to tell a straight tale, but a rather more dignified if somewhat garrulous 1962 Fleurie), I slurped down Joanne Harris's new novel with easy enjoyment.
Harris draws on her French and Yorkshire backgrounds, setting her tale partly in the north of England and partly in the archetypal village of Lansquenet, already familiar to Chocolat enthusiasts. Her chosen literary territory is again that of magical realism. You might think this would sit oddly in down-to-earth Yorkshire and provincial France - and it is a genre that can irritate - yet Harris accomplishes it remarkably smoothly, without ever getting cute or unlikely, even when indulging in astral travel and chatty vintages. Belief is most pleasurably suspended, much as after a few glasses of decent hock.
Jay Mackintosh, owner of the articulate Fleurie that narrates the tale, was once a saddened, disillusioned child; struck down by boarding school and his parents' divorce, but then happily restored by the magic of retired miner Joe Cox. The old man teaches him the secrets of gardens and growth, of spells and potions, and, most importantly, of powerful home-made wines which "unleash the tongue" and "speak of great things". When Joe moves on without leaving a forwarding address, the angry, deserted teenage Jay rejects all things magical. Yet in later life, now a fatally blocked author, he discovers a crate of Joe's special wines and finds his way to a new home in France, where Joe's astral form guides him to self-discovery (and a new, improved love interest).
Oddly enough, the strands of this novel that jar the reader into disbelief are not the magical-realist ones but some of the supposedly true-to-life characters, whose stories raised my eyebrows in mean-minded suspicion, while only a few pages previously I'd downed the herbal potion for invisibility without a murmur of protest.
Witchcraft aside, Harris is at her best when detailing the sensual pleasures of taste and smell. As chocoholics stand advised to stock up on some of their favourite bars before biting into Chocolat , so boozers everywhere should get a couple of bottles in before opening Blackberry Wine . It even made me nostalgic for those disgusting sugary home-made vintages that country-dwelling folk love to brain you with at every opportunity.
