![]() ![]() Jay's quest to discover why everyone, including Marise's former mother-in-law, blames Marise for her husband's suicide keeps the plot moving at a steady clip. He is bewildered by his reclusive neighbor, Marise d'Api, who apparently coveted his derelict house and land, and is ostracized by the townspeople. Leaving Kerry in London, Jay moves to Lansquenet and starts a new rural life, beginning to write under his own name again. After downing a bottle of Joe's '75 Special, which he has been hoarding for 24 years, Jay decides to buy the house sight unseen. When Jay stumbles across an advertisement for an 18th-century ""chateau"" in wine-growing country, the spell of his misery is broken. ![]() Joe, a colorful character who made wines from fruits and berries, inspired Joe's successful first novel. Flashbacks reveal that Jay's only recollections of happiness are the golden summers he spent as a youth with old Joseph ""Jackapple Joe"" Cox in the small English town of Kirby Monckton. Since then, he has been churning out B-novels under a pseudonym he currently lives with his girlfriend, Kerry, an aggressively successful 25-year-old celebrity journalist. Fourteen years have passed since Jay's debut novel, Jackapple Joe, won the Prix Goncourt. This time wine replaces chocolate as Harris's magic elixir, and the newcomer to the village of Lansquenet sur Tannes is Jay Mackintosh, a 37-year-old has-been writer from London. Like her well-received 1999 novel, Chocolat, Harris's latest outing unfolds around the arrival of an outsider in a tiny French town. ![]()
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