Chocolat by Joanne Harris
Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment.
MY BOOK BEGINNING
We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy sense 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 anecdote to winter.
-- from Chocolat by Joanne Harris.
I saw the movie adaptation of Chocolat with Juliette Binoche Johnny Depp back when it came out in 2000. But the book has sat unread on my shelf for years. I have this weird hang up about watching an adaptation and reading a book (or vice versa) back to back. I think it stems from my deep love of plot that makes me wait until the plot has faded in my mind before consuming the story in the other format. The problem is, I often forget to read the book (or watch the movie). That's what happened with Chocolat. I put it on my TBR 26 in '26 list to push myself to read it.
Now that I am almost finished with the book, I regret having it take up shelf space for so long. It's a fun romp of a story, but Harris paints it with such a broad brush it's cartoonish. The sexy cholate-making stranger blows into the village and squares off with the mean priest. She's good. He's bad. Get it? It might be the rare exception to the rule and the movie is better than the book. At least the movie condenses the simplistic story into two hours.
Have you read Chocolat or watched the movie? What did you think?
YOUR BOOK BEGINNING
Please add the link to your book beginning post in the linky box below. If you participate or share on social media, please use the hashtag #bookbeginnings so other people can find your post.
This preview will disappear when the widget is displayed on your site.
If this widget does not appear, click here to display it.
I remember now; the boy supporting his mother's arm as they passed on their way to church. Alone of all Lansquenet's children, he has never bought chocolates from La Praline, though I think I may have seen him looking in at the window once or twice.
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.
