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…
Background:
Every story starts somewhere. But not always at the beginning. Some stories have many beginnings; some characters have many stories. One character, especially, has followed me throughout my career.
Her name? Well, that’s the story.
It has been over twenty-five years since a woman called Vianne Rocher found her way into my life, and into the lives of my readers. It was 1998. I had a job teaching in a boys’ grammar school in Leeds; I had a three-year-old daughter; I’d published two books, with little success. I was 34 years old, and I’d more or less given up hope of ever making a career from writing. Still, I’ve never really thought of my work as a career, more as a compulsion. Whether my stories made it onto the shelves or not, I wasn’t going to stop writing them. The question was, what next?
And that’s where Vianne Rocher came along. Very suddenly, one Saturday, during the Easter school break. My husband was watching a football match; our daughter was playing with her toys. I was in my usual spot; on the floor, with my laptop, back wedged against the radiator. And suddenly, there she was, as if she’d been there all my life; calling herself Vianne Rocher this time, although somehow I already knew she’d had many, many names.
Her story was a familiar one: a stranger blows into a small town; falls foul of the authorities; stages a showdown, wins, and leaves, without revealing who they were, or where they might be heading next. Basically, A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, with chocolate.
Except that Vianne was always much more than a gun (or even a spoon) for hire. Vianne was a mother, an artist; a witch; an observer of human nature. But most of all, Vianne was a storyteller, and it is largely through her stories that I learnt to be one, too.
I wrote CHOCOLAT in a matter of months – working full-time, with a small child, no money, no room of my own. It felt almost like dictation: the story was fully-formed in my mind, and the characters seemed to know me, too, reflected as they were in the people around me; my daughter; my great-grandmother; friends and colleagues from teaching. I didn’t know much about chocolate, but I learnt what I needed to know from recipe books, and made up the rest. And when the book was finished, my agent sent it to numerous publishers, who said they loved it, but didn’t know if there was a market for that kind of thing.
26 years later, it turns out that perhaps there was.
I’ve written three more books about Vianne on her journey to find herself. I think we’re both on the same journey, although we took different directions. But although we’re not at all alike, Vianne and I do share some things. Maybe we have taken on aspects of each other. We’ve followed each other through the various stages of motherhood; through victories and defeats; bereavement and loss. We have travelled the world together. We have surprised each other many times. And throughout our travels, I’ve always known that Vianne had secrets she hadn’t told me, secrets I might learn someday.
Every story starts somewhere. I’ve told Vianne’s story largely from the perspective of motherhood, magic and chocolate; but this is the story of a Vianne who does not yet have a daughter; who has never cooked a meal; who doesn’t know the first thing about chocolate. It’s the story of how Vianne became Vianne – how she began her journey, and what lies behind her restlessness, her fear, her compulsion to move on. To write this book, I had to forget everything Vianne has taught me so far: to go back in time to a moment when I had no idea where this journey would lead, to try to remember what it was like before I became a mother.
Both Vianne and I have reached an age where, in order to understand who we are, we have to look back at who we were. This is our story, hers and mine. I’m glad you chose to read it.
The story:
Content warnings for the book: bereavement; miscarriage; implicit racial prejudice; homelessness.
The story begins in the mid-1990s, in the French coastal city of Marseille: a place of great poverty and of great wealth, dominated by its basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde. A young woman going by the name of Sylviane Rochas – one of many aliases under which she has travelled throughout her life – arrives in the city, with little money, few possessions, some forged papers and a baby on the way, having scattered her mother’s ashes in the harbour on July 4th, thus leaving behind her previous life.
Or so she thinks. In fact, the past is harder to escape than she knows, as is the influence of Jeanne Rochas, the woman she thinks of as Mother. For Vianne and her kind are travellers, subject to the changing winds, and their power – which allows them to look into other people, and sometimes, change what they find there – is dependent on this lifestyle that keeps them perpetually on the move. But Vianne wants more for her baby, a child she already sees in her dreams. Choosing a new trajectory and a new name – Vianne – she sets out to make her own destiny. She charms her way into a job in a run-down bistrot, and, gradually gaining the trust of Louis, the curmudgeonly owner, discovers a talent for cooking, via his late wife’s recipes. Vianne feels a real kinship with Margot, a woman who desperately longed for a child, and who died tragically in childbirth, leaving behind her recipes as her only legacy.
The customers are less easy to understand, especially Louis’s friend Emile, who seems to mistrust Vianne from the start. But when Vianne makes friends with Guy and Mahmed, a pair of chocolatiers who plan to renovate an abandoned shop in the Old Quarter of Marseille, Vianne discovers the transformative and visionary properties of chocolate, and secretly incorporates it into her cooking. In her new role, Vianne gets to know all Louis’s regular customers as well as the community around the chocolaterie, which is already facing financial difficulties, largely due to Guy’s belief that chocolate can solve everything.
Disregarding her mother’s warnings about using her gifts on the behalf of others – as well as the warnings delivered by the mysterious Khamaseen – Vianne sets out to help her friends. But the more secrets she uncovers, and the more she tries to help others, the more complicated Vianne’s life becomes…
Q & A :
Q: Why tell this part of Vianne’s story now?
Because, to move on, you have to look back. For Vianne, who has changed her identity repeatedly throughout her itinerant life, it’s time to finally stop running, and be herself. That means taking a long, hard look at how far she has come on her journey.
Q: How hard was it, writing a version of Vianne who doesn’t know anything about chocolate?
Harder than I’d imagined. Chocolate and cooking are so much a part of her character that it’s hard to separate them – and yet, that’s just what I had to do. I had to keep reminding myself that this was a very young, unformed, naive version of Vianne; one who doesn’t quite understand her skills; who is uncertain of her fitness to be a mother; who is completely unaware of the contradictions within her. And yet she is still the Vianne we know; warm; affectionate; fiercely independent; well-meaning, if not always completely successful in her attempt to bring joy into the world.
Q: Without giving too much away, who else do we meet in this story?
There’s the sombre Louis Martin, who celebrates the memory of his dead wife by re-creating her signature dishes; and Guy Lacarriere, whose overriding passion for chocolate has led him down a dangerous path. Both have a secret to hide; and both are instrumental in putting Vianne in touch with her destiny. And there’s Margot, Louis’ wife, who, through her book of recipes, teaches Vianne a new kind of magic.
Q: Did you always know you were going to write this story?
I thought I might, one day; although nothing I write is planned that far ahead. These books tend to follow the beats of my life – and those of my main character – which makes them hard to predict. But I always knew Vianne had a past – I just didn’t know what it was.
Q: The concept of home (and homelessness) is a recurring in this book. Why?
Because Vianne has never had a home: she and her mother have always lived from suitcases and hotel rooms. Part of her longs to be like other people, to settle down and belong somewhere, but she also knows that she is different, and that her difference comes at a price.
Q: Grief runs heavily through this book. Why?
I lost my father this year: I guess loss has been on my mind. And Vianne has always had a vein of melancholy running through her; a kind of foreshadowing of what’s to come. And I suppose that the best way to process grief is to share it with other people. But there’s a lot of joy in here too, and friendship, and forgiveness, and compassion. And cooking, of course. Lots of cooking. Because food makes so many things better…
Q: I’m glad you mentioned that. Just how much food is there?
Not enough for a cookery book, but enough for a tour round southwestern France. In this story Vianne discovers that magic doesn’t have to be arcane or exotic: it can be domestic, too, and the part of her that craves security is drawn to this. I don’t pretend to be a marvellous cook myself (I’d rather write about food than make it!) but I do appreciate the transformative quality of food, its multisensory appeal, its ability to cross social and cultural barriers, and its power to affect the emotions. I hope some of that comes out in this story.
Q: Will there be more books about Vianne and her daughters?
There are certainly more stories. Whether I get to find out what they are – and to tell them – I really don’t know…
Thinking of making VIANNE a part of your book club or discussion group? Check out my handy reading group guide here! (Caution: contains spoilers!)
Extras:
Blue Diamond Garden Centres and Nurseries and Tantau Roses have named a beautiful new rose after the heroine of VIANNE. Read all about it in this article…
And Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays has helped me create a scent based on a passage from the book. Read about it here…
And as if that wasn’t enough, artist Lydia Thornley, who designs Sarah’s bottles, has created this sweatshirt. Read more about it here…
