Book-It '10! Book #38
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: Holy Fools: A Novel by Joanne Harris
Details: Copyright 2004, Harper Collins
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): " With her internationally bestselling novels Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, and Coastliners, Joanne Harris has woven intoxicating spells that celebrate the sensuous while exposing the passion, secrets, and folly beneath the surface of rustic village life. In Holy Fools, her most ambitious and accomplished novel to date, she transports us back to a time of intrigue and turmoil, of deception and masquerade.
In the year 1605, a young widow, pregnant and alone, seeks sanctuary at the small Abbey of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer on the island of Noirs Moustiers off the Brittany coast. After the birth of her daughter, she takes up the veil, and a new name, Soeur Auguste. But the peace she has found in re-mote isolation is shattered five years later by the events that follow the death of her kind benefactress, the Reverend Mother.
When a new abbess - the daughter of a corrupt noble family elevated by the murder of King Henri IV - arrives at Sainte Marie-de-la-mer, she does not arrive alone. With her is her personal confessor and spiritual guide, Père Colombin, a man Soeur Auguste knows all too well. For the newcomer is Guy LeMerle, a charlatan and seducer now masquerading as a priest, and the one man she fears more than any other.
Soeur Auguste has a secret. Once she was l'Ailée, "The Winged One," star performer of a troupe led by LeMerle, before betrayal forced her to change her identity. But now the past has found her. Before long, thanks to LeMerle, suspicion and debauchery are breeding like a plague within the convent's walls - fueled by dark rumors of witchcraft, part of the false priest's brilliantly orchestrated scheme of revenge. To protect herself and her beloved child, l'Ailée will have to perform one last act of dazzling daring more audacious than any she has previously attempted. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've been enjoying Joanne Harris's books this year, first Chocolat, then (my favorite) The Girl With No Shadow, then Sleep, Pale Sister.
How I Liked It: The book, as noted by other reviewers, shares some common ground with Harris's other works. Our protagonist is a single mother with a fierce devotion to her daughter who knows a bit of Witchcraft(Chocolat and its sequel The Girl with No Shadow) and is involved with a sly trickster (Sleep, Pale Sister).
The story also utilizes an apparent staple of Harris's work, the multiple narrators, in this case the heroine and LaMerle, the trickster.
The book has a promising beginning, if a widening cast of characters that Harris could've devoted more time differentiating. The nuns in the abbey specifically involved in the various plots intermingle after awhile and it's difficult keeping their respective stories straight.
Also slightly jilted is the heroine's backstory, interspersed with the present. The same difficulty arises with LaMerle's history.
In what should be the sweeping crescendo of the book, it instead comes off as slightly stilted-- we're aware something momentous is happening, but it's not as momentous as it should be since Harris's plot and characters have gotten hazy.
Nonetheless, it's still an enjoyable read and Harris's prose is lovely, as is her brilliant recurring themes (a signature of her work along with the multiple narrators).
Notable: The protagonist is suggested to be a Witch (or at least of the Pagan faith), keeping Tarot cards which she consults regularly, as well as herbs and tinctures to heal her sisters in the abbey. All of this comes under scrutiny of course. Her worship of "the holy mother" suggests not the Christian Mary but the Great Goddess, and she even tries to tell a fellow sister of her "female god". A giant statue (allegedly of the Virgin Mary) is a local monument outside the church and is subsequently removed by the new abbess for reasons suggesting that it's too Pagan (by the end of the book, an identical statue is restored to the church).
Title: Holy Fools: A Novel by Joanne Harris
Details: Copyright 2004, Harper Collins
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): " With her internationally bestselling novels Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, and Coastliners, Joanne Harris has woven intoxicating spells that celebrate the sensuous while exposing the passion, secrets, and folly beneath the surface of rustic village life. In Holy Fools, her most ambitious and accomplished novel to date, she transports us back to a time of intrigue and turmoil, of deception and masquerade.
In the year 1605, a young widow, pregnant and alone, seeks sanctuary at the small Abbey of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer on the island of Noirs Moustiers off the Brittany coast. After the birth of her daughter, she takes up the veil, and a new name, Soeur Auguste. But the peace she has found in re-mote isolation is shattered five years later by the events that follow the death of her kind benefactress, the Reverend Mother.
When a new abbess - the daughter of a corrupt noble family elevated by the murder of King Henri IV - arrives at Sainte Marie-de-la-mer, she does not arrive alone. With her is her personal confessor and spiritual guide, Père Colombin, a man Soeur Auguste knows all too well. For the newcomer is Guy LeMerle, a charlatan and seducer now masquerading as a priest, and the one man she fears more than any other.
Soeur Auguste has a secret. Once she was l'Ailée, "The Winged One," star performer of a troupe led by LeMerle, before betrayal forced her to change her identity. But now the past has found her. Before long, thanks to LeMerle, suspicion and debauchery are breeding like a plague within the convent's walls - fueled by dark rumors of witchcraft, part of the false priest's brilliantly orchestrated scheme of revenge. To protect herself and her beloved child, l'Ailée will have to perform one last act of dazzling daring more audacious than any she has previously attempted. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: I've been enjoying Joanne Harris's books this year, first Chocolat, then (my favorite) The Girl With No Shadow, then Sleep, Pale Sister.
How I Liked It: The book, as noted by other reviewers, shares some common ground with Harris's other works. Our protagonist is a single mother with a fierce devotion to her daughter who knows a bit of Witchcraft(Chocolat and its sequel The Girl with No Shadow) and is involved with a sly trickster (Sleep, Pale Sister).
The story also utilizes an apparent staple of Harris's work, the multiple narrators, in this case the heroine and LaMerle, the trickster.
The book has a promising beginning, if a widening cast of characters that Harris could've devoted more time differentiating. The nuns in the abbey specifically involved in the various plots intermingle after awhile and it's difficult keeping their respective stories straight.
Also slightly jilted is the heroine's backstory, interspersed with the present. The same difficulty arises with LaMerle's history.
In what should be the sweeping crescendo of the book, it instead comes off as slightly stilted-- we're aware something momentous is happening, but it's not as momentous as it should be since Harris's plot and characters have gotten hazy.
Nonetheless, it's still an enjoyable read and Harris's prose is lovely, as is her brilliant recurring themes (a signature of her work along with the multiple narrators).
Notable: The protagonist is suggested to be a Witch (or at least of the Pagan faith), keeping Tarot cards which she consults regularly, as well as herbs and tinctures to heal her sisters in the abbey. All of this comes under scrutiny of course. Her worship of "the holy mother" suggests not the Christian Mary but the Great Goddess, and she even tries to tell a fellow sister of her "female god". A giant statue (allegedly of the Virgin Mary) is a local monument outside the church and is subsequently removed by the new abbess for reasons suggesting that it's too Pagan (by the end of the book, an identical statue is restored to the church).