Blackberry Wine: from Joanne Harris, the bestselling author of Chocolat, comes a tantalising, sensuous and magical novel which takes us back to the charming French village of Lansquenet

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In 2011, she contributed a short story, Never Cut A Hawthorn, to Why Willows Weep–an anthology which supports the Woodland Trust. This is only one of the many stories she has contributed to charity anthologies. The main characters are Joe an eccentric old man who brews wine, gardens, makes pouches of herbs that protect against bullies layman's alchemy he calls it and Jay a young lad who admires Joe and learns much of life from him the story follows Jay into adulthood in alternating chapters. It has its usual themes you will find in most Harris books: France, art, mothers and daughters, wine, cheese, fruit, plants, scents, tastes, atmospheric overloads, more descriptions than events, more impressions than actions, a very strong sense of place, travelling folk, issues with the church, issues with modernisation and gentrification, feminism, conservative mistrust of single mothers, estranged families, secrets and magic. Jay also feels disconnected from his creative-writing students. Why? What does he try to teach them about the emotional significance of writing?

Blackberry Wine - Wikipedia

Five-Quarters of the Orange: Shortlisted: 2002 RNA Novel of the Year; Author of the Year 2002; WHSmith Award 2002 (UK). Shaffi, Sarah; Knight, Lucy (12 July 2022). "Adjoa Andoh, Russell T Davies and Michaela Coel elected to Royal Society of Literature". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 23 June 2023.Are you studying this book as part of a readers’ group? Here are a few extra resources and questions to help your discussion along. ( Note: questions do contain spoilers, so please read the book first if you want to avoid them!) Joe’s garden is his life. In what way would you say this novel is a story about the importance of nature in our increasingly urbanized lives?

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Gilly is a traveller girl. Jay meets her during the summer of 1977. She is wild, brave and adventurous; younger than Jay. It does for gardening and wine what Chocolat does for chocolate, it's even partly set in the same town, with some familiar names making appearances.

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Unusually, the US version of this book is significantly different from the original, with the US version written entirely in the third person, whereas the UK version is written from the somewhat whimsical point of view of a bottle of vintage wine. The French Kitchen: (a cookbook with Fran Warde): 2005 Winner of the Golden Ladle for Best Recipe Book (softcover) in the World Food Media Awards. [13] Joe is a constant presence in the book, even though Jay hasn’t seen him for a long time. In what way is this a story about the power of memory and the past? What role do the travellers play in this story, and why do you think the author chose to include them? In 2000, her 1999 novel CHOCOLAT was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and in 2022 was awarded an OBE by the Queen.