“Give into temptation…”: Chocolat by Joanne Harris
To those of you who plan to steer clear of the biscuit tin this January, indulge instead in Chocolat, and see how long it takes from the first chapter for all of your good new year’s intentions to fade slowly away into nothing but a lovely, sugar-scented haze. Chocolat tells the heart-warming story of Vianne Rocher, a wanderer, who decides upon a whim to open up a chocolate shop in the tiny rustic town of Lasquenet. She begins her work, all beneath the general scrutinizing gaze of the inhabitants, as well as that of the pious local priest. He believes her shop is a work of evil and will become a corrupting influence upon the village, especially during the week of Lent and disapproves of her more mystical beliefs. The ability Vianne terms as her ‘power’ of ESP enables her to discern as soon as her customers walk over the threshold , what their favourite chocolate will be, to their endless delight.
Sometimes it seems that an endless procession of ghosts from the past are forever sliding past the shutters of Vianne’s shop window. Her preoccupation of never staying long in one place, suggestive of her desire to flee frommemories, a preoccupation which is challenged by the arrival of the handsome, inherently Byronic figure of Roux, whom Vianne falls in love with. Harris writes beautifully, and her message of living for the moment is simple and uplifting. Chocolat is certainly a fantastic novel to sink your teeth into, with a plotline literally oozing with mouth-watering description, romance, rebellion and the ever present pleasure of companionship. I can guarantee that before the closing pages of this book, your resolutions will have already been shattered by the desire to run sobbing to the nearest newsagents for a Twix.
SOPHIE TAYLOR
“Grow old gracefully”: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
January can be seen as a time of vanity: a time to dispense with that depressing bodily reminder of too many mince pies and to use the New Year to take a long, lingering look at oneself in the mirror. But don’t linger there too long, and like the narcissist Dorian Gray, fall fatally in love with what you see. The hero of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is flawlessly beautiful, a model of aesthetic youth and purity. Yet when this is captured on canvas he despairs that these ephemeral blessings will soon fade, and wishes that the picture would grow old and wither instead of himself. He gets his wish, and falls under the influence of the devilish Lord Henry Wotton, whose silver- tongued and honey-dripped words induce him to fall into the decadent and intoxicating pleasures of Victorian London, whilst the portrait, hidden in his attic, slowly ages, hideous to behold, each of Dorian’s evil pleasures becoming etched on its face. The lacklustre and gratuitously violent film version starring Ben Barnes comes nowhere near capturing the subtle sensuality of Wilde’s prose and the combination of black humour and moments of thrilling suspense that have made the book a timeless favourite.
CLEMMIE VAN HASSELT
“Abandon dreams of happiness. They cause nothing but trouble.”: Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The film adaptation of Richard Yates’ masterpiece Revolutionary Road, whilst remaining admirably faithful to the story (and containing Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, which is always a good thing), unfortunately does not do the novel full justice- after all, it can be a tad difficult expressing an existential crisis through the medium of film. Much more suited to the task are the harrowing internal monologues of protagonist Frank Wheeler, the smooth-talking, slick, rebel-without-a-cause family man whose life of drudgery- set against the clinical backdrop of a 1950s American suburb- causes him to dream of a life of diversity and meaning. Thus, he prepares to leave his dead-end American life behind to move to Paris with his enigmatic, glamorous yet infinitely melancholy wife April and their children so he can pursue his life’s ambition- despite the fact that he still hasn’t quite decided what his life’s ambition actually is. Without giving too much away, things start off promisingly, but through a series of increasingly unfortunate events involving an unwanted promotion, a sweaty and fumbling encounter in the back seat of a Cadillac, the quintessential affair with a hot secretary and a highly unfortunate incident with a turkey baster, Frank and Aprils’ dream of a Parisian escape turns into the American nightmare. Perhaps Revolutionary Road is not the greatest option if you’re looking to pull yourself out of the January blues, but if you’re nursing dreams of ambition and happiness, well! That’s an entirely different story.
PHILIP WATSON