[.ca] The Lollipop Shoes CD (ISBN 0552153672)

A Sumptuous Box of Chocolates:
Think of free spirit Vianne personified in the film version of "Chocolat" by the lovely Juliette Binoche blowing into a small French village on the north wind, tempering the richest, darkest bittersweet chocolate, fashioning it into truffles rolled into powdered balls infused with her special brand of domestic magic and the sole intent of changing people's lives. Remember her daughter, Anouk, with the part phantom-familiar Pantoufle trailing at her heels desiring only a permanent home like any other child. Add to the mix four-year-old Rosette, a special child who doesn't speak, but perpetrates "accidents" that cannot be explained or ignored and change the venue from Lansquenet, the Midi hill town's chocolaterie to the urban "village" chocolate shop located on the butte of Montemartre crowned by the white marbled Sacre Coeur de Paris. In "The Lollipop Shoes," novelist Joanne Harris whips up another batch of pure enchantment, this time bringing her white "witch" protagonist's special skills out of the closet while pitting her against a red-shoed force much darker than the "kindly" but bothersome convention and respectability of Lansquenet's traditional religious contingency. The questionable Zozie could pass for the old Vianne with her bohemian attitude, bon-bon colored costumes and her uncanny ability to tantalize the Parisian shoppe's clientele with their "favorite" confection. Impressed with the latent supernatural talent possessed but untried by now preteen Anouk, Zozie intends to manipulate Vianne's lapse into conformity to her own advantage by mimicking Vianne's own gentle yet paranormal methods of persuasion. In the ultimate play on identity theft, Zozie attempts to steal a few lives while interrupting the shaky existence that Vianne has molded to solidify the impression of stability established for the benefit of her two irrepressible children and buttressed by the presence of a boring but stalwart fiancé. The delicate balance tips over a confused and emotionally charged edge when the rakish redheaded Roux reappears with his riverboat and his practical but moody gypsy desires causing Vianne's past to careen into a future that oscillates with a frightening yet comfortably recognizable uncertainty. This cunning battle of wits shines like the glossiest couverture; Harris's alternating three person narrative keeps the reader turning the pages while divining the speaker with the same delightful impetuosity and impulsiveness that nonsensically urges even the most fastidious dieter to eat one chocolate after another from a naughty beribboned gold-leafed ballontine. With an adept panache worthy of a ganache fashioned by Pierre Hermé, Harris assembles the usual cast of secondary eccentrics that adds bitter to the sweet, keeping the chocolatier cash register stuffed with euros and the atmosphere redolent with both requited and unrequited hopes and dreams. Zoxie's ample allusions to Aztec gods and goddesses as she flicks off a cantrip and Vianne's constant consultation of the tarot cards adds the necessary off-kilter authenticity that Harris utilizes in all of her culinary fairy tales. Bottom Line? "The Lollipop Shoes" entertains as only a Joanne Harris novel can. Interjecting magic with the everyday ups and downs of an adolescent searching for self-identity, a mother seeking peace and security while sacrificing her own desires and an opportunist willing to destroy for destruction's sake alone, this "Chocolat" sequel offers a different take on the usual good versus evil fable that is built upon the foundation of Harris's other books, weaving in already explored places, characters and a magical heredity that here reaches a thoroughly enjoyable crescendo. Recommended not only as the sequel to "Chocolat", but as a good story with a moving, albeit somewhat over swollen plot line in its own right. Diana Faillace Von Behren "reneofc"