Chocolat by Joanne Harris
April 26th 2007 07:47
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
I first came to know about Chocolat only after the movie based on the novel was nominated for the Oscars. I read the plotline in some paper and for years I kept dreaming about it. It was such a wonderful idea ! I then saw the movie. While not a masterpiece, it was neveretheless good. One day while shopping, I chanced on the book. The blurb on the book said, "Is this the best book ever written?" and I was wholeheartedly willing to acquiesce. I gave in and bought the book.
I wish I hadn't. I wish I had not read it. I wish I had kept kept ruminating on the idea in my mind forvever. It was not to be and I came to ruin a very special feeling.
Joanne Harris's novel, Chocolat, is about a vagrant mother, Vianne Rocher and her daughter, who arrive in a new town where parochialism and religious sentiment both run high, where the local priest, Father Reynaud, has a commanding power over his flock and keeps them under strict religious lock and key Vianne has a gift for chocolate making and she opens a patisserie, a thing unheard of in the village. She also has a knack of telling who likes what and soon draws a circle of unhappy souls who like to hang around her cafe. She inspires a lot of tiny insurrrections and comes under the eye of the priest who thinks that chocolate is too tempting for his parishioners to resist and blames Vianne for spreading insubordination. Soon, it is a duel between the two where the priest imposes a stricter moral code on his village to counter Vianne's ever more exorbitant creations in chocolate. Time for a showdown.
Harris does not have a talent for converting idea into incident or for story-telling. The novel unfolds without any revelation and runs morosely. But her worst failing is that she is so constrained by an academic femininity that she is unable to look at the world, leave alone men, with any sort of meaningful vision. She can neither draw from the real world nor can give reality to her own imagination. In the end, even though she desperately tries to be a projected Vianne Rocher, she ends up being a Father Reynaud. What a waste of a brilliant idea!
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Comment by Filmpeeker
Film Peek
Gizmo Peek
Film Peek Forum
Too bad the novel wasn't as good. That's why you sould read the novel before the movie
//filmpeeker
Comment by nagster
Cenacle
Comment by Nickoftime's Sanity Corner
great movie! Piss poor book...I totally agree...
Great post!
Take care,
Nick
Comment by nagster
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