You can feel the magic in this book! (Blackberry Wine - Joanne Harris)

Member Name: lonestarsky

Product:	Blackberry Wine - Joanne Harris
Date:	31/01/09 (110 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good plot, nice writing style, interesting characters, supernatural element

Disadvantages: Ending a bit untidy, changes in POV can be jarring

I've been meaning to read "Chocolat" by Joanne Harris for a while now but as I tend to buy most of my books from charity shops and I live in a town with a tiny library, I don't always find the books I'm looking for. But when I recently came across "Blackberry Wine" by the same author, I read the blurb on the back and thought it sounded like an interesting story.

Jay Mackintosh is a writer who has been blocked since his hugely successful first novel "Three Summers With Jackapple Joe". He now lives with his media-hungry, shallow girlfriend Kerry and spends most of his time drinking and reminiscing over past events. However a chance glance through a property magazine leads to Jay abandoning his dead-end life and purchasing an old, run-down house in the French village of Lansquenet. Here, Jay can write again, but at the same time he has to deal with a ghost from his past and finally put to rest the memories he keeps reliving.

Food and drink play an important part in the story, as suggested by the title. The story flashes backwards and forwards in time so that we can clearly see Jay's childhood memories of the summers he spent with the real life "Jackapple Joe." Joe was an eccentric old man who lived near Jay's grandparents. He was a keen gardener, but preferred to rely on old fashioned yet new age methods of gardening - planting seeds when the moon is in the right phase and hanging sachets of herbs around the garden as protection for his plants. He grew loads of different kinds of vegetables but in particular he was fond of a rare type of potato that he used to make his wine.

I won't say much more about Joe here, but Jay never knew what happened to the old man and longs to find out. At the start of the book, we find out that Jay has in his possession four bottles of the special wine that the old man used to make. Quite how he came to be in possession of these wines is revealed later in the book.

In France, Jay becomes embroiled in local life, although some of the villagers view him with suspicion as they want to retain their traditional village but worry that Jay intends to develop the land he has bought. The setting is the same as for the novel "Chocolat" and a few of the characters crop up again. I'm not sure if this was necessary or not. I've recently managed to get my hands on "Chocolat" so am reading it just now but I find it hard to imagine the characters as being the same as those in this book. Jay also hs the added complication of his reclusive neighbour Marise, who was desperate to get her hands on the house and land Jay has bought. She clearly has something to hide and despite being despised by the village she refuses to leave Lansquenet. Jayis desperate to discover more about her and as he collects snippets of local gossip, he finds that he can fill in the blanks and uses Marise as the focus of his novel. But is his idea of her anything like the reality?

This book is in third person but there are a few chapters of this book that are written in first person from the point of view of a bottle of wine! Occasionally it slips back to first person in the middle of a third person chapter which I found a bit distracting.

The characters are all well developed and interesting. Jay is likeable as the main character, and Joe and Kerry are both vivid and realistic. Gilly is a feisty and fun character who shakes the young Jay up, and Marise is delicately portrayed as the haunted young woman with heavy secrets.

In part, the ending was a let down for me. There is a sub plot involving a grandmother who is not allowed to see her granddaughter and I didn't feel that this was resolved in as neat a way as it could be. On the other hand, I did like the changes in Jay's character by the end. I feel that the events of the novel affected him in a realistic way.

There is a definite theme of magic running through this book and I love how the author works it in to the story to make it seem utterly believeable. Quite how Jay comes to be interacting with a ghost from his past is very interesting, as is the power that the bottles of special wine seem to hold.

I loved this book because I love books that jump backwards and forwards in time, and I love books that have an element of the supernatural in a seemingly normal setting. I am currently reading "Chocolat" and will hopefully read other books by this author. I would recommend this book to anyone, but have deducted one star as I felt the ending could have been more clear-cut.

Summary: A really enjoyable read