Product Description

As a boy, writer Jay Mackintosh spent three golden summers in the ramshackle home of "Jackapple Joe" Cox. A lonely child, he found solace in Old Joe's simple wisdom and folk charms. The magic was lost, however, when Joe disappeared without warning one fall.

Years later, Jay's life is stalled with regret and ennui. His bestselling novel, Jackapple Joe, was published ten years earlier and he has written nothing since. Impulsively, he decides to leave his urban life in London and, sight unseen, purchases a farmhouse in the remote French village of Lansquenet. There, in that strange and yet strangely familiar place, Jay hopes to re-create the magic of those golden childhood summers. And while the spirit of Joe is calling to him, it is actually a similarly haunted, reclusive woman who will ultimately help Jay find himself again.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #288607 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.com Review
Joanne Harris's first novel, Chocolat, was set in the sleepy French village of Lansquenet, where enchantment, romance, and soft-centered truths issued from the local confectioner's shop. She returns to the same location for Blackberry Wine. But as the title suggests, she's shifted her focus from food to drink, choosing a half-dozen bottles of homemade plonk as the catalyst for her "layman's alchemy." And even the narrator is no human being but a faintly tannic Fleurie 1962: "A pert, garrulous wine, cheery and little brash, with a pungent taste of blackcurrant!"

There are, of course, some less vinous characters in the novel. Harris's protagonist, Jay Mackintosh, is a former literary star, now sadly stalled. He spends his time writing second-rate science fiction, leading a hollow media life, and drinking: "Not to forget, but to remember, to open up the past and find himself there again." Yet the nice, expensive wines don't do the trick. Instead, six "Specials"--a gift from his old friend Joe--function as Jay's magical elixir. Like Proust's lime-blossom tisane, they give him the gift of his memories but also unlock his future, which encourages him to flee the rut of his London life and buy a house in Lansquenet.

As Jay settles in, he contemplates his childhood friendship with Joe, whose idiosyncratic outlook was the inspiration for his only successful book. Meanwhile, he becomes involved in village life, encountering some familiar faces from Chocolat. Caro and Toinette, the snooty troublemakers, soon put in an appearance, and Josephine, the bar owner and battered wife of the earlier novel, becomes a real friend. But it's a new character, the enigmatic Marise, who becomes the focus of Jay's attention--and who helps to restore his literary joie de vivre. This feat of resurrection makes for a hugely enjoyable read. It also goes one step further in adding Lansquenet to the map of imaginary destinations, where daydreams can come true with intoxicating frequency. --Eithne Farry

From Publishers Weekly
Like her well-received 1999 novel, Chocolat, Harris's latest outing unfolds around the arrival of an outsider in a tiny French town. This time wine replaces chocolate as Harris's magic elixir, and the newcomer to the village of Lansquenet sur Tannes is Jay Mackintosh, a 37-year-old has-been writer from London. Fourteen years have passed since Jay's debut novel, Jackapple Joe, won the Prix Goncourt. Since then, he has been churning out B-novels under a pseudonym; he currently lives with his girlfriend, Kerry, an aggressively successful 25-year-old celebrity journalist. Flashbacks reveal that Jay's only recollections of happiness are the golden summers he spent as a youth with old Joseph "Jackapple Joe" Cox in the small English town of Kirby Monckton. Joe, a colorful character who made wines from fruits and berries, inspired Joe's successful first novel. But one day he disappeared. When Jay stumbles across an advertisement for an 18th-century "chateau" in wine-growing country, the spell of his misery is broken. After downing a bottle of Joe's '75 Special, which he has been hoarding for 24 years, Jay decides to buy the house sight unseen. Leaving Kerry in London, Jay moves to Lansquenet and starts a new rural life, beginning to write under his own name again. He is bewildered by his reclusive neighbor, Marise d'Api, who apparently coveted his derelict house and land, and is ostracized by the townspeople. Jay's quest to discover why everyone, including Marise's former mother-in-law, blames Marise for her husband's suicide keeps the plot moving at a steady clip. Despite some unbelievable twists and a slightly uneven paceAit begins slowly, but by the last quarter races aheadAthis is an entertaining narrative, equal parts whimsy and drama. (July)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The new novel by the author of the delectable Chocolat [BKL S 15 99] lacks its voluptuous perfection but entrances nonetheless. We're back in the tiny French town of Lansquenet, where some of the major players in Chocolat now have supporting roles. On a whim, struggling writer Jay Macintosh has bought an old farmhouse near Lansquenet that reminds him of the summers he spent as a teenager with Joe, a combination of faerie godfather, Jerry Garcia, and Johnny Appleseed. In Joe's tender regard for growing things, his wondrous stories, and the magic he places in bottles of strange fruit wine, the teen Jay finds both solace and fury. It's those wine bottles that whisper to Jay and send him to the French cottage; he is even more amazed when Joe, absent for decades, appears and disappears abruptly, slightly transparent but still somehow present. Chocolat lovers will be pleased, and new readers satisfied. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

A sparkling, delicious novel...
Joanne Harris has done it again. After indulging myself in Chocolat, I was a little nervous about reading Blackberry Wine. So many times after a smashing debut, the sophomore effort doesn't match up. However, that wasn't the case with this one. Blackberry Wine is utterly intoxicating.

Thirty-seven-year-old writer, Jay Macintosh, is stuck in the past. During his childhood, Jay spent three magical summers in rural England with retired miner and eccentric gardener, Joe Cox, a man who would become a source of inspiration for Jay. Joe, with his talismans, good luck charms and rituals, taught Jay many things, mostly about luck, magic, gardening and winemaking, before disappearing without a trace one day and impacting Jay for the rest of his life. And several years later, after the overwhelmingly success of his only novel, Jackapple Joe, Jay has found himself struggling with writer's block. On a whim, Jay purchases a small cottage in a remote village in France where he hopes to recreate those magical summers and let his imagination and creativity flow. But there are all sorts of surprises in store for Jay -- for one, a mysterious woman with a secret past that influences Jay in more ways imaginable.

Blackberry Wine is a beautiful, lush piece of work. However, I couldn't fully appreciate it until I'd read the whole story -- it was too hard to decide if I liked it or not when all the pieces were unread. Now having reflected on the complete story (and after ravishing the last few chapters), I realize that Joanne Harris's touch is still magical. Blackberry Wine will seduce you little by little, and it is so worth it by novel's end.

Uncorking magic
Joanne Harris' latest book, Blackberry Wine, picks up on some of the themes of her earlier book, Chocolat. Magic and its application to modern life... the hurtfulness of prejudice, especially religious prejudice against those who don't follow the locally prescribed formula... and the folly of blindly accepting what is too often mistaken as progress and success... are central to both works.

In Blackberry Wine, Jay Mackintosh needs a little magic. An unproductive novelist living in a depressing English lifestyle earmarked by alcohol and an unfulfilling relationship, Jay is haunted by a childhood defined by bullies and detached parents but redeemed by the quirky Joe Cox, who planted vegetables and made magical wine. Now, on a whim, Jay sets out to rediscover Joe's magic in the French village of Lansquenet, a place which is quaint and remote but beginning to go to seed and also needs a little magic. Jay carries with him the last six bottles of Joe's Special wine. The house that Jay purchases sight unseen except for a blurry picture in a brochure, is in disrepair but reminds him of Joe, and in fact seems to be inhabited by Joe's ghost.

In the house over the next several months, Jay uncorks the Special wines one by one, releasing their magic and allowing himself and the house to absorb their mysterious qualities. He begins renovations on the place, taking care not to lose its essential charm. He meets and learns about the people in the village and their concerns for saving their economy and their way of life. His writer's block lifts and he can hardly believe he is able to produce page after page of a new novel about the village and its inhabitants. He is most intrigued by his reclusive and alluring neighbor Marise, respected by some as a hard worker who bothers no one, but denigrated by others for being unsociable and irreligious. But the more he learns about her, the less she fits the character he had presumed her to be in the fiction he has been creating. Although his novel is coming along swiftly, he does not know where it is going, nor where he himself is going. The village also is waffling through the same process, unclear about how to define its future. Should it embark on tourism and commercial development schemes or sit back and submit to its inevitable economic decline? Through a blending of magic and hard reality, Jay rediscovers what is important in planning his own future and that of the village of Lansquenet.

Worthy follow-up book to Chocolat
Joanne Harris peoples her stories with characters who are more than a little fey, individuals who possess a touch of magic and who live in the realm of myth or fairy tale. In Blackberry Wine, the magical character is Joe Cox, the pivotal character of Jay, an author's, youth in a small English village. Joe had a magical cottage and garden and made wine from the fruits and berries on his squatter's land by a river, and was the main character in Jay's award-winning novel. Joe's sudden disappearance devastated Jay. When he suffers depression and writer's block, he buys, sight unseen, an 18th century chateau. Joe's bottles of wine, which he's been carting around with him for the past 2 decades, also move to the French chateau. As Jay begins drinking them, magic happens, and there's the over-riding question of, Where is Joe now, and could it be that he's that guy who...?
To say more would be to say too much.
Lovely book.