Joanne Harris

Blackberry Wine

Sarah Sammis

Blackberry Wine is sickeningly sweet in its sentimentality but it does score points for having a unique narrator. The flashbacks to Pog Hill distract from the present day story. The book is tighter and more compelling a read when those chapters are skipped. When the story finally moves away from Jay's fond memories of how great Joe was and goes to the mystery of Jay's neighbor and her daughter Rosa the story hits its stride. I wish it had focused more on them and less on "Jackapple Joe."

Everyday Magic, He Called It. The Transformation Of Base Matter Into The Stuff Of Dreams. Layman S Alchemy.Jay Mackintosh Is Trapped By Memory In The Old Familiar Landscapes Of His Childhood, More Enticing Than The Present, And To Which He Longs To Return.A Bottle Of Home-Brewed Wine Left To Him By A Long-Vanished Friend Seems To Provide Both The Key To An Old Mystery And A Doorway Into Another World. As The Unusual Properties Of The Strange Brew Take Effect, Jay Escapes To A Derelict Farmhouse In The French Village Of Lansquenet, Where A Ghost From The Past Waits To Confront Him, And The Reclusive Marise Haunted, Lovely And Dangerous Hides A Terrible Secret Behind Her Closed Shutters. Between Them, A Mysterious Chemistry. Or Could It Be Magic?

Blackberry Wine

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