Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris

If you’ve read Chocolat by Joanne Harris or seen the marvelous film version with Juliette Binoche, you’re familiar with the magical French town of Lansquenet sous Tannes. It’s a deceptively calm, quiet and simple place; yet there are always goings-on and drama in this place. It’s too bad that it’s a completely fictional place, but in a way, perhaps that’s good because it would likely have been taken over and destroyed by vacationers, tourists, developers and greedy millionaires, which is part of the general outline of the book.

The story is told by Jay Mackintosh, a disillusioned writer living in London who is still making profits and fans from his breakout novel Jackapple Joe. Problem is, Jackapple Joe is over 10 years old and the publishing industry – as we amateur writers well know – has changed significantly over the years and arguably not for the better. Anyway, Jay is in a pedestrian relationship, has a pedestrian lifestyle and urgently wishes for change as his agent nags him to finish his next book. Jay, while perusing real estate ads one day, is struck by a farmhouse in the French countryside – guess where! – and proceeds to impulsively purchase it, setting into motion a sequence of events that bring both joy, comfort, unease, discomfort, and Jay essentially being booted out of his comfort zone.

Lansquenet is still the lovely little town where we first met Vianne Rocher, her daughter Anouk, the river gypsy Roux, the formerly abused wife-turned-café owner Josephine Muscat, the uptight priest Reynaud, and all the other whimsically down-to-earth characters from Chocolat. Here, Jay moves into the house that he inadvertently bought right from under the nose of the woman who originally wanted it, Marise. Marise is shunned by the town for being a single mother and for the impression that she is a snob, that she doesn’t hobnob with other town residents, and that she may have killed her husband, the son of a matriarchal and bossy woman in town.

Women being cast out of society, shunned for being different, and being abused – either mentally, verbally, physically or societally – is a theme that wends its way through all of Harris’ books and you can see why. There is no better way to show up and demonstrate the unfairness and iniquities of society than seeing how they deliberately ostracize and marginalize those who are different, those who prefer to march to their own tunes, those who intentionally keep away from the expectations of what society says you should do. Particularly as women, and unfortunately even for all of the strides our gender has made politically, economically, societally over the years, there still seems to be so many expectations about what women should do, what women have to do, what women need to do, in order to be accepted.

Jay, being a kindly man, attempts to make friends with Marise out of guilt for essentially stealing the house out from under her. She, having been ostracized by many in the town, is understandably wary and maintains her distance. Her daughter Rosa, who is mute, befriends Jay and it is her friendship with him that thaws Marise’s heart. It’s pretty clichéd but her back story goes a long way toward giving this particular storyline some heart.

Jay goes between memory flashbacks of his youth when he spent time with Jackapple Joe, who was a manic gardener and who helped Jay navigate the usual issues of childhood and teenage years – school, parents, crushes, bullies – and his life in Lansquenet, where the ghost of Jay appears to him on a regular basis. Not in a frightening way, but in a more magical realistic way, where he appears as just another person living in the house with Jay. I always find spirits as a magical realism device fascinating, precisely because their presence is just so extraordinarily ordinary.

The book is not anywhere near as compelling as Chocolat or any of the three sequels to that magical novel. Jay is an interesting character, and his trips back in time in his memory, his reminiscences of the real Joe and how Joe influenced his youth, are charming but the book overall is really just an excuse to go back to Lansquenet and allow it to weave its spell back over you again. As usual, there are wondrous mentions of food and wine, and by far, mine was this one, evoking as it does the loveliness of rural countryside small towns in France, as well as Italy, Spain and Greece.

Josephine must have spread the word about him at last. Jay found people became more friendly. Many of them greeted him as he passed,, and Poitou in the bakery, who had spoken to him only with shopkeeper’s politeness before, now asked about his book and gave him advice on what to buy. “The pain au noix is good today, Monsieur Jay. Try it with goat’s cheese and a few olives. Leave the olives and the cheese on a sunny window ledge for an hour before you eat them to release the flavors.” He kissed his fingertips.

Doesn’t that sound just marvelous? Homemade walnut bread generously smeared with a delicious slab of room-temperature goat’s cheese, some fat, squashy green or black olives, and of course a glass of wine to accompany such a repast. So that’s what I did, making walnut bread from scratch, adding in some sliced dried figs because I had them lying around and thought they’d be good in the bread. I was right. It was surprisingly easy and unsurprisingly delicious.

INGREDIENTS
3 cups unbleached flour
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 packet active dry yeast
2 cups warm water
Rosemary leaves from two fresh sprigs
1 cup sliced dried figs
1 cup halved walnuts

METHOD
Mix together the flour and sea salt in a large metal bowl.

Add the warm water into a mixing cup and add in the dry yeast packet. Stir well to combine.

Gradually stir the water and yeast mixture into the salted flour, stirring with a bread whisk. The dough will look shaggy as it comes together.

Finely mince the rosemary and add it to the dough mixture.

Add the sliced figs and the walnuts to the dough, mix thoroughly to ensure the fruit and nuts are well distributed through the dough, then cover with a kitchen towel, and leave in a warm space to rise overnight.

Heat the oven to 450F and oil a cast-iron skillet before adding the dough into it. Bake for approximately one hour, checking to ensure the bread doesn’t burn. Serve warm or room temperature with olives, goat cheese, a glass of wine, and Jackapple Joe beside you.