I did not love it, but I did like it a lot.

The similarity to Chocolat was considerable, but that is to be expected when the same characters return. Parallelism is rampant as Harris points out that the witches both lie about their past, assume multiple identities, have issues with their parentage and cast spells of different sorts. Harris returns to her structural notion of centering the climax on a major holy day. Are they the shadows of Dante’s Inferno, shades? The game is played throughout, leading to a climax battle between the two powers. Are shadows souls? Are they like the daemons of The Golden Compass, spiritual alter-egos? They appear as animals, like those from Pullman’s books.

There is considerable shadow imagery here. The story is of Anouk coming of age and of Vianne rediscovering herself. She sees power in Vianne’s daughter, Anouk, and tries to gain her loyalty. She seems mostly a dark spirit, a devil in a red dress looking to acquire souls. Zozie is a witch like Vianne, but without the self-control and kind heart. The novel is tort-like in the density of its imagery, particularly early on. In Joanne Harris’s follow-up to Chocolat, Vianne and now two daughters have relocated from the rural town of their initial setting, Lansquenet, to Paris. She also spends too much time on Twitter plays flute and bass guitar in a band first formed when she was 16 and works from a shed in her garden at her home in Yorkshire. Her hobbies are listed in Who's Who as 'mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion'. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and in 2022 was awarded an OBE by the Queen. In 2000, her 1999 novel CHOCOLAT was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She has also written a DR WHO novella for the BBC, has scripted guest episodes for the game ZOMBIES, RUN!, and is currently engaged in a number of musical theatre projects as well as developing an original drama for television. Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology and fantasy. Joanne Harris is an Anglo-French author, whose books include fourteen novels, two cookbooks and many short stories.

Joanne harris the lollipop shoes