I'm totally fascinated. Blackberry Wine is yeat an other wonderful Joanne Harris-book. I love them. This time it is writer Jay Makintosh who has to make up with his past involving the betrayal of an old friend. Harris keeps writing about the same themes in book after book. But that's really nothing negative. It's great. There definitely is a great bit of nostalgia over her books.

Besides haunting pasts one of her themes is small villages and the speciall kind of societys they make. Everybody knows everybody and that's very bad when you are excluded, but when yua are included it's really great. An interesting thing about Backberry Wine is that it is set in the sam small village, Lansquenet, where Harris' most famous book Chocolat is set. We do actually meet the same characters again, and only the main charcters are different. So as always, Harris is a master of describing "the French idyl". This time, however, a importatnt part of the book is set in England. Maybe England and France aren't so differnt after all. Well...

As for the symbolism. Harris is a master of thet also. Blackberry wine reveals secrets. There's a gret deal of magic over it, just like over the chocolate in Chocolat. Blackberry wine is something mysterious, but this time not dangerous like the oranges in Five Qyarters of an Orange. It rather stands for safety and comfort, being what Jay has left of his old friend Joe.

Förrästen så har Blackberry Wine inte översatts till sveska vad jag vet, men Harris Engelska är faktiskt väldigt bra och hennes böcker är värda att läsas på orginalspråket.

Betyg 4

Harris bästa bok, enligt mig. De flesta av hennes böcker innehåller många mat- och drycksensationer, men steget från gammalt fruktvin till magi har aldrig varit så kort som i denna bok - på alla sätt... Harris mörka undertoner görs sig inte lika påminda här som i t.ex. "En doft av apelsin" men de finns där hela tiden.

Betyg 5