Book Title: VIANNE
Character Name: Right now, it’s Vianne Rochas. Who knows what it will be tomorrow?
How would you describe your family or your childhood?
I didn’t have a childhood. My early years were spent travelling with my mother, moving from place to place, hiding our tracks, learning the skills we needed to survive, surviving on as little as possible. Life on the road makes a child grow up very fast. It has to. The few toys I had were left behind when I got too attached to them. She said: “too much baggage slows you down.” I sometimes wondered, if that was the case, whether some day, she would leave me behind. Some days, I even wanted her to.
What was your greatest talent?
I used to think it was my ability to see into other people; to read their moods and lift their thoughts and the burdens they are carrying. But now I have other, less dangerous skills. I make a mean chocolate truffle.
Significant other?
All others are significant.
Biggest challenge in relationships?
I don’t really have intimate relationships. I take what I need and move on. I’ve never been allowed to believe that any connection I make can last. But soon I will be a mother, and I want my child to be different. I want her to have a real home. Toys that don’t get left behind. A family. Friends. A room of her own. But I don’t know how to give her those things. I hope I can learn before it’s too late.
Where do you live?
I’ve lived in many places. Moscow, Seville, Genoa, New York. Today, it’s Marseille, on the south coast of France. I think I might even stay here.
Do you have any enemies?
I thought I did: the Man in Black, whom my mother and I fled for so many years. I never knew who he was, though. I never got to meet him. He was a shadow over us, making us run. But now I’m alone, I wonder whether he was even real, or whether my mother invented him.
How do you feel about the place where you are now? Is there something you are particularly attached to, or particularly repelled by, in this place?
It’s a city of two halves. Immense wealth and terrible poverty. The people are both warm and suspicious; generous and ungiving. I’ve seen a lot of cities like this; but this one draws me because of the gold statue of the Holy Mother that stands on the basilica that dominates the city. She makes me feel seen, somehow; perhaps because my own mother died so recently, or perhaps because I too am about to become a mother.
Do you have children, pets, both, or neither?
Neither: although this will change.
What do you do for a living?
I work in the kitchen of a bistrot in the Old Quarter of Marseille. I cook traditional recipes from the owner’s cookbook. I wash the dishes; serve the food. And sometimes I help out in my friend Guy’s chocolaterie.
Greatest disappointment?
I don’t count disappointments. Like baggage, they just slow you down.
Greatest source of joy?
I have recently found a great deal of joy in that oldest of alchemies, cookery. It’s new to me, but I have a knack. And I like the way it makes me feel; putting raw ingredients together to make a dish that will change someone’s mood, sweeten their day, give comfort, joy, or peace.
What do you do to entertain yourself or have fun?
Fun is a complicated concept, and one that I know mostly from books. I’m not altogether sure what it means.
What is your greatest personal failing, in your view?
I don’t know how to trust myself. Or how to trust other people.
What keeps you awake at night?
The sound of the wind.
What is the most pressing problem you have at the moment?
Money. I need to earn enough to care for this child when she is born. But it’s hard to do that when you’re like me, travelling on forged documents. I’ve never had the kind of life I want to give my child. And yet I already know that she is going to change everything.
Is there something that you need or want that you don’t have? For yourself or for someone important to you?
I’d like to finally escape the shadow of my mother.
Why don’t you have it? What is in the way?
I sometimes think when my mother died, I became my mother.
A Novel
Million-copy bestselling author Joanne Harris returns to the world of Chocolat with the long-awaited story of Vianne, which begins six years before she opens her scandalous chocolaterie in the small French village of Lansquenet.
Secrets. Chocolate. A touch of magic.
On the evening of July 4th, a young woman scatters her mother’s ashes in New York and follows the call of the changing winds to the French coastal city of Marseille.
For the first time in her life, Vianne feels in control of her future. Charming her way into a job as a waitress, she tries to fit in, make friends, and come to terms with her pregnancy, knowing that by the time her child is born, the turning wind will have changed once again.
As she discovers the joy of cooking for the very first time, making local recipes her own with the addition of bittersweet chocolate spices, she learns that this humble magic has the power to unlock secrets.
And yet her gift comes at a price. And Vianne has a secret of her own; a secret that threatens everything…
Horror | Romance Fantasy [Pegasus Books, On Sale: September 2, 2025, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781639369591 / eISBN: 9781639369607]
Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley in 1964, of a French mother and an English father. She studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and was a teacher for fifteen years, during which time she published three novels; The Evil Seed (1989), Sleep, Pale Sister (1993) and Chocolat (1999), which was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. Since then, she has written seven more novels; Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, Coastliners, Holy Fools, Gentlemen and Players, and, most recently, The Lollipop Shoes and Runemarks, plus; Jigs & Reels, a collection of short stories and, with cookery writer Fran Warde, two cookbooks; The French Kitchen and The French Market. Her books are now published in over 40 countries and have won a number of British and international awards. In 2004, Joanne was one of the judges of the Whitbread prize (categories; first novel and overall winner); and in 2005 she was a judge of the Orange prize. Her hobbies are listed in Who’s Who as: “mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion of the system”, although she also enjoys obfuscation, sleaze, rebellion, witchcraft, armed robbery, tea and biscuits. She is not above bribery and would not necessarily refuse an offer involving exotic travel, champagne or yellow diamonds from Graff. She plays bass guitar in a band first formed when she was 16, is currently studying Old Norse and lives with her husband Kevin and her daughter Anouchka, about 15 miles from the place she was born.
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