BETYGSATT AV:

faith

FÖRFATTARE:

Joanne Harris

TITEL:

Blackberry Wine

VALT BETYG:

Boken var främst:

wonderful

men även:

RECENSION:

I'm totally fascinated. Blackberry Wine is yet an other wonderful Joanne Harris-book. I love them. This time it is writer Jay Makintosh who has to make up with his past involving the betrayal of an old friend. Harris keeps writing about the same themes in book after book. But that's really nothing negative. It's great. There definitely is a great bit of nostalgia over her books.

Besides haunting pasts one of her themes is small villages and the special kind of societies they make. Everybody knows everybody and that's very bad when you are excluded, but when you are included it's really great. An interesting thing about Blackberry Wine is that it is set in the same small village, Lansquenet, where Harris' most famous book Chocolat is set. We do actually meet the same characters again, and only the main characters are different. So as always, Harris is a master of describing "the French idyll". This time, however, a important part of the book is set in England. Maybe England and France aren't so different after all. Well...

As for the symbolism. Harris is a master of that also. Blackberry wine reveals secrets. There's a great deal of magic over it, just like over the chocolate in Chocolat. Blackberry wine is something mysterious, but this time not dangerous like the oranges in Five Quarters of an Orange. It rather stands for safety and comfort, being what Jay has left of his old friend Joe.