The Food Trilogy by Joanne Harris

Synopsis - Chocolat

Chocolat begins with the arrival in a tiny French village of Vianne Rocher, a single mother with a young daughter, on Shrove Tuesday. As the inhabitants of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes clear away the remains of the carnival which heralds the beginning of Lent, Vianne moves with her daughter into a disused bakery facing the church, where Francis Reynaud, the young and opinionated curé of the parish, watches her arrival with disapproval and suspicion.When he realizes that Vianne intends to open a chocolate shop in place of the old bakery, thereby tempting the churchgoers to over-indulgence, Reynaud's disapproval increases. As it becomes clear that the villagers of Lansquenet are falling under the spell of Vianne's easy ways and unorthodox opinions, to the detriment of his own authority, he is quick to see her as a danger. Under Vianne's influence an old woman embraces a new life, a battered wife finds the courage to leave her husband, children rebel against authority, outcasts and strays are welcomed... and Reynaud's tight and carefully ordered community is in danger of breaking apart. As Easter approaches, both parties throw themselves whole-heartedly into the preparations; Vianne for the chocolate festival she plans to hold on Easter Sunday, Reynaud into a desperate attempt to win back his straying flock. Both factions have a great deal at stake; the village is bitterly divided; and as the big day looms closer their struggle becomes much more than a conflict between church and chocolate - it becomes an exorcism of the past, a declaration of independence, a showdown between dogma and understanding, pleasure and self-denial.

Synopsis - Blackberry Wine:

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?
These are the questions which began Blackberry Wine: the second volume of my "food trilogy" and the story of Jay Mackintosh, a writer of pulp fiction with one literary success to his name and a dwindling grasp of reality. Trapped between an unresolved past and a humdrum present, suffering from writer's block and the beginnings of alcoholism, Jay has lost his bearings.
But the accidental discovery of six bottles of home-brewed wine, a legacy from an old and vanished friend, seems to hold the key to a new beginning, a means of escape, and a final reconciliation. For there is something magical about this wine; something which brings the past to life, an agent of transformation. Under its influence, time can work backwards and the dead return to life - as Jay finds, when, on impulse, he gives up his glamorous London lifestyle and escapes to a half-derelict farmhouse in a remote village in Gascony, where two mysteries await him; a ghost from the past whom no-one else can see, and Marise, a reclusive widow with ghosts of her own...

Synopsis - Five Quarters of the Orange :
This completes the "food trilogy" (Chocolat, Blackberry Wine) and explores some of the same themes, although this third book is much darker than the previous two. Set in a small village near Angers on the Loire, it deals with the fortunes of a widow and her three children, Cassis, Reine-Claude and Framboise, against the background of the German Occupation. With no father and only their harsh and overworked mother to care for them, the three children inhabit a strange and brutal world in which adults are a different race, and which works according to a completely different set of moral values. Into this circle comes Tomas Leibnitz, a German soldier who secretly befriends the three children and leads them step-by-step into a world of betrayal, blackmail and lies.

A lifetime later, Framboise, the last survivor of the ill-fated group, returns under a different identity to the village in which she was born, meaning to make a new start as the proprietor of a small crêperie-restaurant. But she is still haunted by the past and by an unresolved mystery, recalled once more to life by the encrypted writing in her mother's old book of recipes.

My Thoughts :

The movie - Chocolat - was what made me want to know more about other books from the same author. The other books proved just as tasty - Blackberry Wine and Five Quarters of an Orange..both are delicious, made me hungry reading them.. She really knows how to capture the taste and beauty of France and the countryside.. I found out that most are based on her personal experiences..some of the characters are actually real people in her life. I just love books by Joanne Harris!