From these curious starting points, Harris investigates those timeless concepts of pride and prejudice using Lansquenet as a microcosm of France, or any Western nation, which faces issues of immigration, nationalism and cross-cultural (mis)understanding. He has been displaced as the centre of the community by a flashy new priest (who uses PowerPoint in sermons – the horror!) and is accused of setting fire to a Muslim school. Most potently for Vianne, her old enemy Father Reynaud (le Curé) who once disapproved so vehemently of her opening her chocolaterie near his church, is a broken man. The riverside, once home to Roux and his river rats, has been colonised by a community of Maghrébins (North African migrants) whose daily call to prayer rings out from the mosque as a reminder to the largely conservative, Catholic residents that the winds of change are blowing. Leaving Roux in Paris, Vianne and her daughters make their way back to Lansquenet, a place with bittersweet memories, eight years after the events of Chocolat.Īrriving in town, Vianne feels that little has changed however, as she begins to interact once more with the locals, she discovers that Lansquenet is on the brink of ‘war’. It is a letter from ‘beyond the grave’, penned by an old lady in her dying days, summoning Vianne back to the village to sort out a little unfinished business. On a particularly stifling day in early summer, Vianne wills a cool breeze to refresh the sweltering river dwellers, and a letter arrives, almost as if blown into her hands, from an old friend in the village of Lansquenet. Vianne operates a makeshift chocolate shop from the boat and the family has adapted to the city into which the wind has propelled them for the time being. In this latest tale, Vianne and Roux, along with children Anouk and Rosette, have made a home on a river boat in Paris.
In the film, Juliette Binoche – as the dignified and mysterious Vianne Rocher – and Johnny Depp – as the ‘river rat’ Roux (as tasty as the indulgent chocolates themselves) are perfectly cast and I must admit I had them in mind as I read Peaches. If you haven’t read the books (which you should), you may have seen the lush film based on the first novel in which the themes of expressing one’s individuality and appreciating the good things in life are woven around a story of two misfits who challenge the staid local ways of a small French village. Peaches for Monsieur le Cur é is the third instalment of Joanne Harris’ bestselling Chocolat series.
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