Vianne by Joanne Harris

Secrets.
Chocolate.
A touch of magic…

On a warm July evening, Sylviane Rochas scatters her mother’s ashes in New York and lets the changing wind blow her to the French seaside town of Marseille.

For the first time in her life, Vianne holds the future in her own hands. Charming her way into a job as a waitress in a local bistrot, she knows that she is not here to stay – when her child is born in a few months, she must be gone.

As she discovers the joy of cooking, making recipes her own with the addition of bittersweet chocolate spices, she realises that it possesses its own magic in this town full of secrets.

Yet Vianne will never forget her mother’s warning: that there is danger in revealing the true desires of those around her – and she must flee these cobbled streets before it’s too late…

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I was extremely late to Chocolat, eventually reading it in 2024 some 25 years after it was first published.  I adored it, and particularly the main character of Vianne Rocher.  While I haven’t yet read any of the sequels, I couldn’t resist picking up this prequel novel after hearing Joanne Harris’s talk at last year’s Hay Festival. 

It begins with Vianne’s arrival in Marseille, pregnant and alone following her mother’s death.  Used to an itinerant lifestyle, she has nothing with her beside her wits and a single bag, but she soon finds work and a place to stay in a small bistrot run by the taciturn Louis.  She begins to make friends, and enemies, of those who frequent the bistrot – getting along with some more than others, although all have their role to play in the events that follow.  Harris is very good at giving her minor characters a fully fleshed out background and it works really well here to give the reader a sense of the community that Vianne has entered into.  Of all those that she meets, perhaps the most pertinent are Guy and Mahmed who are in the process of setting up their own chocolatier…

Vianne is more character than plot driven as we see her grow and develop over the course of the novel.  On her own for the first time, she’s indecisive as to her next steps, which is perhaps natural given that her choices are now solely hers.  Should she stay in Marseille in the company of the friends she’s made, or should she continue to move as her mother would undoubtedly tell her to do?  That said, there are several interesting strands to the narrative that Vianne becomes caught up in and that come to a head in final third of the novel.  Harris gives the reader much to ponder and untangle as the novel progresses and I enjoyed seeing how these aspects of the narrative played out.

The descriptions of food and chocolate had me drooling throughout the novel and with hindsight, this perhaps wasn’t the best choice of read for January as we’re hit over the head with messages of “new year, new you” abstinence.  Working in the Bistrot, Vianne soon convinces Louis to teach her to cook, and she learns quickly from the recipes of his deceased wife, Margot.  At the same time, she gets her introduction to chocolate through Guy, who teaches her about the end-to-end process of converting a cocoa bean to a finished product. I adored Vianne’s passion as she takes what she learns and makes it something uniquely hers, and the way in which she uses these new skills and the fruits of her labour to break down barriers and to reach out and connect with those around her. 

Writing a prequel to a novel as popular as Chocolat comes with a huge amount of expectation, but Harris delivers.  The Vianne we meet here is younger and less sure of herself, but she grows over the course of the novel and it’s possible to see the woman that she will become taking shape.  It also gives the reader more insight into her background and her mother’s desire to follow the wind and never stay in any one place for too long – something so ingrained in Vianne that the idea of putting down roots is both exhilarating and a little scary.  As ever, Harris imbues the novel with a great sense of place and that little touch of magic which helped make Chocolat so special.

Vianne is a great novel and can be enjoyed without having read Chocolat, although I do recommend that novel as well.  If you have read Chocolat, I think that you’ll enjoy finding out more about Vianne’s background as well as the little easter eggs dotted throughout the text.  Recommended whichever camp you fall into.