As a boy, writer Jay Mackintosh spent three golden summers in the ramshackle home of “Jackapple Joe” Cox.

A lonely child, he found solace in Old Joe’s simple wisdom and folk charms. The magic was lost, however, when Joe disappeared without warning one fall.

Years later, Jay’s life is stalled with regret and ennui. His bestselling novel, Jackapple Joe, was published ten years earlier and he has written nothing since. Impulsively, he decides to leave his urban life in London and, sight unseen, purchases a farmhouse in the remote French village of Lansquenet. There, in that strange and yet strangely familiar place, Jay hopes to re-create the magic of those golden childhood summers. And while the spirit of Joe is calling to him, it is actually a similarly haunted, reclusive woman who will ultimately help Jay find himself again.

First published January 2000

My Review

Blackberry Wine was the May choice by the book club I joined recently. I read Chocolat many years ago (and saw the film with Johnny Depp). I loved Chocolat but I had mixed feelings about this one.

I listened to it on Audible and said that I would report back at our next meeting about how it was different to listen rather than read. The narrator is Joanne Harris herself, about which I was somewhat dubious, but she does a pretty good job with the English and also the French, which is few and far between. The only exception is the wife whose Irish (I think) accent is atrocious – thank goodness she’s not in it very much. The main character is Jay Mackintosh, a one-hit wonder who hasn’t written anything else of note since his book Jackapple Joe for more than a decade.

I was very conflicted about the book. It starts with the ‘special’ wine bottles talking (not my thing at all). We then move back and forth from Jay as a teenager in the 1970s and Jay at 36 years old in 1999 when he moves to the small village of Lansquenet in France, to a ramshackle house that he hasn’t even seen.

The chapters in the 70s with the elderly, wistful Joe were OK, but after a while I just wanted to move on. Once Jay had relocated to France I lost interest in his early life. The chapters in Lansquenet with his fascinating next door neighbour Marise and her daughter Rosa were the best part by far. Her life and experiences were far more interesting than Jay’s, who is really rather selfish, self-absorbed and at times pathetic. As for his now ex-wife – well she just gets worse. What she does towards the end staggered me – no wonder he left.

But all in all I enjoyed it, particularly the real drama around Marise. I just wish it had started earlier on in the book which dragged a bit until we got there. Would I read another book by the same author? Yes definitely.

About the Author

Joanne Harris is an Anglo-French author, whose books include fourteen novels, two cookbooks and many short stories. Her work is extremely diverse, covering aspects of magic realism, suspense, historical fiction, mythology and fantasy. She has also written a Dr Who novella for the BBC, has scripted guest episodes for the game Zombies, Run!, and is currently engaged in a number of musical theatre projects as well as developing an original drama for television.

In 2000, her 1999 novel Chocolat was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, and in 2022 was awarded an OBE by the Queen.

Her hobbies are listed in Who’s Who as ‘mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion’. She also spends too much time on Twitter; plays flute and bass guitar in a band first formed when she was 16; and works from a shed in her garden at her home in Yorkshire.