Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Readalikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Feb 1999, 304 pages
Paperback:
Jan 2000, 306 pages
A timeless novel of a straitlaced village's awakening to joy and sensuality - every page offers a description of chocolate to melt in the mouths of chocoholics, francophiles, armchair gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere.
Illuminating Peter Mayle's South of France with a touch of Laura
Esquivel's magic realism, Chocolat is a timeless novel of a
straitlaced village's awakening to joy and sensuality. In tiny Lansquenet,
where nothing much has changed in a hundred years, beautiful newcomer
Vianne Rocher and her exquisite chocolate shop arrive and instantly begin
to play havoc with Lenten vows. Each box of luscious bonbons comes with a
free gift: Vianne's uncanny perception of its buyer's private discontents
and a clever, caring cure for them. Is she a witch? Soon the parish no
longer cares, as it abandons itself to temptation, happiness, and a
dramatic face-off between Easter solemnity and the pagan gaiety of a
chocolate festival.
Chocolat's every page offers a description of
chocolate to melt in the mouths of chocoholics, francophiles, armchair
gourmets, cookbook readers, and lovers of passion everywhere. It's a must
for anyone who craves an escapist read, and is a bewitching gift for any
holiday.
Chapter One
February 11.
Shrove Tuesday
We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter. There is a febrile excitement in the crowds that line the narrow main street, necks craning to catch sight of the crêpe-covered char with its trailing ribbons and paper rosettes. Anouk watches, eyes wide, a yellow balloon in one hand and a toy trumpet in the other, from between a shopping basket and a sad brown dog. We have seen carnivals before, she and I; a procession of two hundred and fifty of the decorated chars in Paris last Mardi Gras, a hundred and eighty in New York, two dozen marching bands in Vienna, clowns on stilts, the Grosses Têtes with their lolling papier-mâché heads, drum majorettes ...
If you liked Chocolat, try these:
by Patrick Ness
Published 2014
Read ReviewsA magical novel, based on a Japanese folk tale, that imagines how the life of a broken-hearted man is transformed when he rescues an injured white crane that has landed in his backyard.
by Katharina Hagena
Published 2014
Read ReviewsShimmering with the incandescence and irresistible magic of the novels of Alice Hoffman, Joanne Harris, and Aimee Bender, Katharina Hagena's smash international bestseller, The Taste of Apple Seeds, is a story of love and loss that will captivate your heart.
The Tea Planter's Wife
by Dinah Jefferies
An utterly engrossing, compulsive page-turner set in 1920s Ceylon.
Darling Days
by iO Tillett Wright
A devastatingly powerful memoir of one young woman's extraordinary coming of age.
William Boyd's Sweet Caress captures an entire lifetime unforgettably within its pages. It captivates.
About the book
Blood at the Root
"A gripping, timely, and important examination of American racism."
- PW Starred Review
Visitors can view some of BookBrowse for free. Full access is for members only.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends books that we believe to be best in class. Books that will whisk you to faraway places and times, that will expand your mind and challenge you -- the kinds of books you just can't wait to tell your friends about.
Subscribe to receive some of our best reviews, "beyond the book" articles, book club info & giveaways by email.
