Vianne by Joanne Harris - Spotlight
Remember the novel Chocolat by Joanne Harris? Published in 1999, it’s the story of a young single mother named Vianne Rocher, who appears in the little French village of Lansquenet with her six-year-old daughter at the beginning of Lent. She opens a chocolaterie opposite the church, much to the chagrin of the local priest. With the magic in her sumptuous chocolates, she gently changes the lives of the folks who come to her shop. The beloved film adaptation, Chocolat, directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, Lena Olin, Alfred Molina, and Johnny Depp, was nominated for eight BAFTAs and five Oscars.
Now, twenty-five years later, Joanne Harris provides the origin story of Vianne Rocher in the novel, VIANNE (PegasusBooks) Readers who have loved and followed Vianne through the four-book Chocolat series will discover how she became that magical, miraculous, life-changing chocolate maker.
Six years before the events of Chocolat, a young woman scatters her mother’s ashes in New York and finds her way to the French coastal city of Marseille. She goes by the name of Sylviane Rochas—one of many aliases under which she travelled in her young, wayward life with her mother—and arrives with little money, few possessions, some forged papers , and a baby on the way. Hoping to create her own destiny, she changes her name to Vianne and charms her way into a job as a waitress in a local bistro. She tries to fit in, make friends, and come to terms with her pregnancy, all the while knowing it’s inevitable that she’ll soon feel the urge to move on once again. Vianne gains the trust of the bistro’s curmudgeonly owner and discovers she has an innate talent for cooking while trying out his late wife’s recipes. As she finds joy in making local dishes her own by adding bittersweet chocolate spices, she learns that her culinary gifts have the power to unlock secrets and change lives—of both her friends and her own.
Joanne Harris says: “Vianne and I have followed parallel paths for over twenty-five years. We’ve experienced motherhood together—its unexpected grief; its joys; its laughter, and its surprises. But Vianne and I are both at an age at which it’s important to look at the past, to understand where we come from to move ahead. Which is why I’ve chosen to write this book now, a book that feels almost like travelling in time. I hope those readers who care about Vianne will recognize where this story leads—and perhaps, for those who don’t know her yet, I hope it will make them eager to know more.”
Joanne Harris (OBE, FRSL) was born in Barnsley in 1964, of a French mother and an English father. She studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at Cambridge and was a teacher for fifteen years, during which time she published three novels, including Chocolat (1999), which was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche .
Since then, she has written 19 more novels, plus novellas, short stories, game scripts, the libretti for two short operas, several screenplays, a stage musical (with Howard Goodall) and three cookbooks. Her books are now published in over 50 countries and have won a number of British and international awards. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, has honorary doctorates in literature from the universities of Sheffield and Huddersfield, and has been a judge for the Whitbread Prize, the Orange Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Prima Donna Prize and the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science, as well as for the Fragrance Foundation awards for perfume and perfume journalism (for which she also received an award in 2017). She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.
She is a passionate advocate for authors’ rights, and was the Chair of the Society of Authors (SOA) for four years. She was a member of the Board of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) between 2018 and 2024.
Her hobbies are listed in Who’s Who as: “mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion of the system”, although she also enjoys obfuscation, sleaze, rebellion, witchcraft, armed robbery, tea and biscuits. She is not above bribery and would not necessarily refuse an offer involving perfume, diamonds, foreign travel or pink champagne. She works from a shed in her garden, plays in the band she first joined when she was 16, and lives with her husband in a little wood in Yorkshire.
Awards and Honours
This is a list of awards and honours I’ve been awarded over the years.
Creative Freedom Award: 2000
Whitaker Gold Award: 2000
Author of the Year: 2002
WH Smith Award: 2002
Premio Grinzane Cavour: 2003
Golden Ladle: 2005
Whitaker Platinum Award: 2012
MBE: 2013
Hon. fellowship of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge: 2017
Jasmine Award: 2017
Pink News Ally of the Year: 2022
OBE: 2022
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature: 2022
Photographs
If you’re writing an article, and need a rights-cleared photograph to use, please don’ t just screengrab something ten years old from the Web. Contact me at enquiries@joanne-harris.co.uk, and I’ll send you something up-to-date!
Extras
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