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. What qualities made Joe so appealing to Jay? Jay felt betrayed; was his anger justified? What was Joe attempting to teach Jay about reality, about everyday life? Did Jay ever learn this lesson?

What if you could bottle a year of your past? Which one would it be? Which time of year? What would it smell like? How would it taste? Anouk Rocher, Vianne's six-year-old daughter. A precocious child with an imaginary animal friend, called Pantoufle, that is also seen by her mother. She often plays near the river with the other children. But that's only the current (1999) side of the book. Interwoven between the modern plot are Jay's memories of 1975, when he was a rather fed-up teenager who befriended an elderly eccentric called Joe. Joe taught Jay all he knows about plants and herbs, and also about preserving and wine-making. Wine is an important motif in the book - so much so that its narrator (in places) is, rather bizarrely, a bottle of wine. Surprisingly this works well; the bottle-as-narrator is not intrusive, and most of the book is told from the third-person viewpoint of Jay.

In 2000, the book won Best Novel in both foreign and international categories at the Salon du Livre Gourmand in Périgueux, France. As Jay settles in, he contemplates his childhood friendship with Joe, who made the Specials and whose idiosyncratic outlook on life was the inspiration for his only successful book. Jay becomes involved in village life, meeting up with some familiar characters from Chocolat. Caro and Toinette, the snooty troublemakers, make an appearance and Josephine, the bar owner and battered wife of the earlier novel, becomes a real friend. But it is a new character, the enigmatic Marise that becomes the real focus of his attention. It's the lure of her story that really changes his life, re-ignites the flare of his work. 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.

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale. 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. Jei prakalbėtų, ką papasakotų vynas? Tai ir tam tikro laiko dvelksmas, prisiminimai ir nostalgija, kvapų ir skonių alchemija, šventė ir kasdienybės akimirka. Šiame romane neįprasta tai, jog istoriją pradeda pasakoti vynas. Viskas prasideda nuo to, kai rūsyje atsiranda šeši seno vyno buteliai, ranka užrašytomis etiketėmis – Ypatingieji.There, a ghost from the past waits to confront him, and the reclusive Marise - haunted, lovely and dangerous - hides a terrible secret behind her closed shutters. All these events lead to the entire city shunning the family, and following one situation too many, they flee in separate directions, barely in time escaping death by the neighbors' wrath and need to designate a scapegoat. Of course, there is also the love aspect, a childhood friend, Paul, whom she eventually lets in. Together they learn to heal. If not forget, but to accept the past, their indivual secrets, and Framboise finally makes amends with her mother. I really enjoyed this. I liked the setting (England and France) and the magical quality of the story. I liked the old character, Joe and in my mind saw one of our library patrons playing his part. It made me want to read more of Harris's books. I like the way she conveys that there is more going on in our lives than meets the eye. The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.

Joe is the reason why I'm giving this book four starts and why I loved it despite the somewhat predictable plot and undeveloped characters. The magic realism of this book was wonderful- the present day events and plot- not so much. I didn't find the plot credible at all. Everything works out way too conveniently for Jay, the protagonist of this book. The only thing that made Jay relatable and real was his relationship with Joe- and his struggles at the writer. There was no chemistry in the love story part of the plot. It's only a matter of not losing hope completely and let others surprise you, with one foot in the Earth and the other one suspended in the air, letting the wind blow where it has to. This scandalises Francis Reynaud, the village priest, and his supporters. As tensions run high, the community is increasingly divided. As Easter approaches the ritual of the Church is pitted against the indulgence of chocolate, and Father Reynaud and Vianne Rocher face an inevitable showdown.Josephine is the owner of a local café. She first appeared in Chocolat, and in this book she plays a minor, yet significant role. She welcomes Jay to the village and gives him important information about his fellow-villagers. 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. Tensions between them increase when a group of about two dozen river gypsies, led by unflinching and stoic Roux, park their boats on the nearby river and Vianne and several others welcome them, whereas Reynaud is against their 'immoral' and 'sinful' way of life. Reynaud manages to convince most businesses in the village to deny the gypsies their service, although Vianne welcomes them and befriends some members of the group, namely Roux, Zezette and Blanche. In return, they invite her to their own celebrations by the river. However, most of them are forced to move up the river when Monsieur Muscat starts a petrol fire, while Roux squats in one of the derelict houses nearby. He continues doing odd jobs for Vianne, Armande and Narcisse and also comes to Armande's birthday party with Zezette and Blanche. Armande dies in her sleep later that night, while Vianne and Roux have sex in the garden after everyone else has gone home. This is a beautiful book, beautiful being the word here instead of good, though it is good as well. Under the influence of this magical home-brew, Jay finds himself behaving in a more and more erratic way. He buys a house he has never seen in the French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes and moves there, ostensibly to write, but in reality to escape from Kerry, the pressures of fame and the expectations of his public.