Wine Talks Everybody Knows That

I will cover a little of my latest book which is Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris. I will give you the opening paragraph from the book so that you may get an idea of the style and a taste for the things to be enjoyed within it.

``WINE TALKS; EVERYONE KNOWS THAT. LOOK AROUND YOU. ASK the oracle at the street corner; the uninvited guest at the wedding feast; the holy fool. It talks. It ventriloquizes. It has a million voices. It unleashes the tongue, teasing out secrets you never meant to tell, secrets you never even knew. It shouts, rants, whispers. It speaks of great things, splendid plans, tragic loves and terrible betrayals. It screams with laughter. It chuckles softly to itself. It weeps in front of its own reflection. It opens up Summers long past and memories best forgotten. Every bottle a whiff of other times, other places; every one, from the commonest Liebfraumilch to the imperious 1945 Veuve Clicquot, a humble miracle. Everyday magic, Joe called it. The transformation of base matter into the stuff of dreams. Layman’s alchemy.´´

So it begins and leads you into a wonderful tale which is split between the time of a man’s youth in 1977, as he spends his holidays in the dying coal mining town of Nether Edge and his adult life set in 1999, which has become ever more complex and fraught with the angst, of living up to a reputation as a successful writer. The story interweaves the narratives from both periods and it introduces us to an old retired coal miner named Joe who believes in everyday magic and lives a life that centres around his garden full of exotic fruits and vegetables. The true stars of this story are the product of Joe´s special talents, as he weaves his so called,``everyday magic´´ and makes strange and unusual wines from the plants that he grows. It is nice also to have the story return to the idylic little french village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes where ``Chocolat´´ was based and with a few of the original characters from that tale making a very welcome re-appearance.

As with her first book ``Chocolat´´ she has managed once again to capture smells, scents and perfumes and to deliver an overall literary bouquet that you can palpably taste in your mouth as you read. I can not recommend both books highly enough. I have been given for my birthday a copy of, ``Five Quarters Of The Orange´´, which is the third in this series of books. It sits on the bedside table even as I write this, begging me to turn off the laptop and give it the attention which I am sure it deserves. Doubtless, there are more late nights on the way. All of the books I have read so far by Harris are hard books to put down once you begin and they will certainly remain in memory as great moments in your literary life. I have noted that there appear to be 2 earlier books preceding these but I will have to wait until I can find a bookstore stocking them before I will now more about them.