Peaches for Monsieur le Cure
by Joanne Harris
Doubleday
Joanne Harris' 1999 novel, Chocolat, introduced Vianne Rocher, a free-spirited woman with special talents, who arrives in the French village of Lansquenet with her daughter, Anouk, and opens a chocolaterie.
Rocher's magical confections transform the villagers' lives - despite the best efforts of adversarial local priest Francis Reynaud; the book also became a hit film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.
The 2007 sequel, The Lollipop Shoes, portrayed a changed Vianne - now wary, reserved and, while still unmarried, the mother of two girls - now living in Paris. In Peaches for Monsieur le Cure, Harris not only returns to these characters but also sends them back to the village where Rocher made her bow.
A letter from a dead friend, Armande, urges Rocher to go back to Lansquenet. 'They say that no one ever dies as long as someone remembers them,' Rocher tells us. 'Perhaps that's why Armande remains so very clearly in my mind ... that's why I couldn't refuse her, even though I wanted to, even though I'd promised myself never to go back.'
Back she goes and much in the village - the inhabitants, cobbled streets and abandoned tannery - are as before. Yet things have changed: many Moroccans have settled there - the women veiled in black behind hijabs - and built a mosque, with a minaret. And Rocher's former rival, Reynaud, is now in disgrace.