Joanne Harris, VIANNE: A Novel
[0:00]Hi, this is Zibi Owens, and you're listening to Totally Book to Zibi.
[0:06]Formerly, moms don't have time to read books.
[0:08]In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best-selling, buzziest, or underrated authors
[0:14]and story creators whose work I think is worth your time.
[0:18]As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously a podcaster, I get a comprehensive
[0:24]look at everything that's coming up and spend my time curating the best books so you don't
[0:29]have to.
[0:30]Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do, every single
[0:35]day.
[0:36]For more information, go to zibimedia.com and follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens.
[0:44]Joanne Harris is the author of The Anne, a novel.
[0:48]Joanne is the internationally best-selling author of over 20 novels, including Shakala,
[0:53]which became a movie in 2000 and was nominated for five Oscars and seven baptists.
[0:58]Her work spans a variety of genres from magical realism to psychological thriller, and has
[1:03]won a series of literary awards.
[1:06]She has judged numerous literary prizes, including The Women's Prize, The Whitbread
[1:10]Prize, and The Royal Society, Winter and Prize for Science Books.
[1:13]She was the chair of the Society of Authors for Six Years, and remains active on issues
[1:18]of authors' rights, the use of AI, and copyright.
[1:21]She lives in a little wood in Yorkshire, England, with her husband, and still performs
[1:25]with The Band.
[1:26]She first formed when she was 16.
[1:28]Welcome, Joanne.
[1:29]Thank you so much for coming on totally booked to discuss The Anne.
[1:33]The Anne?
[1:34]How should we pronounce it?
[1:35]The Anne?
[1:36]In French, it's The Anne.
[1:37]Yes.
[1:38]You can pronounce it any way you like.
[1:39]Okay.
[1:40]The Anne.
[1:41]Thank you so much.
[1:42]I loved Shakala when it came out.
[1:43]I read it.
[1:44]Then I was so excited that you had a new book, and then I devoured this book, start to finish.
[1:50]Absolutely loved.
[1:51]Why don't you tell listeners a little bit about The Anne?
[1:55]But also, if they didn't read Shakala, how this all connects, if you don't mind.
[2:00]Well, absolutely.
[2:02]Well, this is, in many ways, the book to start with, if you're new to The Anne Hoshy
[2:06]and her story, because it precedes Shakala by Six Years, and it is The Anne's origin story.
[2:12]Now she and I have travelled together around the world for 26 years now, and so we have
[2:19]grown together.
[2:20]We've seen our children grow, and we've both reached the age where it's actually
[2:24]quite important to look back before moving forwards.
[2:27]And so I wrote this as a prequel to Shakala.
[2:30]In this, The Anne has not yet learnt to become The Anne.
[2:34]She has just lost her mother.
[2:35]She's moved to Marseille on the coast of France, from New York.
[2:40]She is in the very early stages of a pregnancy that she didn't plan.
[2:44]She's completely alone.
[2:45]She's homeless.
[2:46]She has no money.
[2:47]She isn't even called The Anne at this point.
[2:49]She is about to discover who she is and where she's going, and because she's alone for
[2:53]the first time in her life having been travelled with her mother for 21 years, she has choices.
[3:01]But all of them come with the price.
[3:03]Beautiful.
[3:04]You write so beautifully about grief, about losing her mom, but also there's so much, there
[3:10]are so many other forms of grief, Louise, who's paths she crossed very early on, and who kindly
[3:15]offers her a room when he sees her in the state you described, has lost his wife.
[3:21]And you write, can I just read this little line?
[3:23]Is that okay?
[3:24]Of course.
[3:25]You say grief is love with nowhere to go.
[3:28]That's what my mother used to say.
[3:29]And there is love inside him.
[3:31]It's like a seam of something bright between two layers of bitter rock, but he has learned
[3:36]to live with his grief, at least it is familiar.
[3:39]Love on the other hand is not.
[3:41]Love and it's dangerous sibling, hope, beautiful.
[3:45]Speak to me a little bit about grief, about how you're able to tap into this grief,
[3:49]how you write about it so eloquently, and what you want readers to take away from their
[3:54]experiences with loss.
[3:57]I think everybody who lives to a certain age is going to discover grief at some point,
[4:02]grief and loss.
[4:03]In my case, I lost my father, the year I was writing, Yann.
[4:08]And I tapped into that to a certain degree, but I also wanted Yann to be a character who sees
[4:14]the damage in people who sees their sadness, because she has her own burden of damage
[4:20]and sadness.
[4:21]And she gravitates to a man called Louis, who is the owner of a beast, who in massays
[4:26]old quarter.
[4:28]And he is not particularly pre-possessing person to start off with.
[4:31]He's rude, he's grumpy, he's crossed.
[4:34]He doesn't really want to give her a job, but he does because she sort of charms him
[4:38]into it, but she realizes that he has lost his wife 20 years ago.
[4:43]He is still working through the grief of losing her, and also the guilt of living without
[4:49]her.
[4:50]And he keeps her memory alive through her recipe books, which are also full of her observations
[4:55]on life.
[4:56]And she becomes one of the voices that Vyann's hearing that help her take her, her path
[5:02]through life and make the choices she needs to choose to become the kind of mother she
[5:05]wants to be.
[5:07]The way you described how she conjures her spirit, Louis's wife, and all of her recipes
[5:13]and the soulful little notes that she writes in the margins and how she literally feels
[5:21]her soul sort of around her, like a thin blanket or something.
[5:27]You wrote it so much more eloquently than that, but she brings her back to life through
[5:31]her food and her cooking in the smells and senses.
[5:34]Talk about that a little bit and where that comes from.
[5:37]Well, I think some of this book comes from the idea that memory at least helps to bring
[5:43]the dead to life in one way or the other.
[5:46]Louis is treasurering the memory of his wife through her, her cooking, and he is cooking
[5:51]her recipes just as he did without changing a thing because he doesn't even want to change
[5:55]what's in her kitchen, which is quite scruffy and uncamped because he's afraid of cleaning
[6:02]the dust of her way, the memory of her way.
[6:05]Vianne, of course, is trying to escape the memory of her mother, and her mother's voice
[6:09]also talks to her, telling her that she has to move on, that she has to be aware of getting
[6:13]attached to people because if she gets attached to people to place, she is going to lose
[6:18]her freedom.
[6:19]So I wanted these two women's voices in Vianne's mind to be both of them very strong,
[6:26]powerful voices directing her down to different option paths.
[6:31]And both through memory, both of them live through memory and through the things that
[6:35]they've left in the world in Marco's case, her cookery book, but also the secrets that
[6:41]Louis is carrying through Vianne's mother, the secret of who Vianne is, which is something
[6:46]that at the beginning of the book, Vianne doesn't really know.
[6:49]It's lots of secrets that get revealed in this book, which we will not talk about, but
[6:53]all of which surprised me and made the book even richer by the end of it.
[6:58]And you write about her making friends, like Vianne makes friends with the local, these
[7:04]two young guys who are starting this soretical nude chocolate store that at the time is
[7:10]something that was not done and sort of a back alley of an old herbalist place, and
[7:15]they teach her and you teach us how to make chocolate and how to take the cocoa beans
[7:21]and what, how you process them, and then not only do we learn the ins and outs of that,
[7:26]through fiction, but then we see the magic of how chocolate really helps the people
[7:34]who come to the end and the grumpy old man, Emil, who sits at the bar and all the other cast
[7:40]of characters as she sprinkles it in or gives them chocolate in the morning or any
[7:45]of that.
[7:46]Talk a little bit about that piece of the story, sculpting those men's story, which again
[7:52]evolved in such an interesting way throughout the book and chocolate itself.
[7:56]Well, when Vianne arrives in this community, she doesn't know anybody at all, but she knows
[8:00]that she needs money, she needs a job.
[8:02]And so she finds a community in the old quarter of Marseille, which is a community of
[8:07]grumpy old men centered around Louis Mater, who is also a grumpy old man, and his rather
[8:13]rundown cafe.
[8:15]And because she has an ability to see into people and to understand which it is that
[8:19]they need and to understand their grief, she manages to charm her way into the lives
[8:24]of these people to a certain extent.
[8:26]She is not accepted at first.
[8:28]She is an outsider.
[8:30]She is possibly ethnically different, nobody quite knows where she's from, including
[8:34]Vianne herself, but she's very good at making connections and finding the things that bring
[8:39]them together.
[8:40]And in the case of the men at this cafe who come for their lunch every day, it's food,
[8:44]it's cooking.
[8:45]And she manages to learn Marcos recipes and to adapt them slightly to make them her own.
[8:53]And from this, she establishes the most elementary connection there is because food is possibly
[8:59]the simplest way of connecting with somebody and expressing feelings towards them.
[9:04]And from that, she gains an in-road into the community and some form of acceptance.
[9:09]But she is also making friends with us.
[9:11]You said these two young men in a back alley, Gilak al-Héf and his partner, Mamed, who
[9:17]are trying against all odds and with great financial burden to create a boutique chocolate
[9:23]shop in the old quarter of Marseille, when nobody's that interested in chocolate and nobody
[9:27]really sees why they need that kind of thing.
[9:29]But their passion for chocolate, for its history, its folklore, the transformative aspect
[9:35]of chocolate from bean to bar, which they are trying to control.
[9:40]This is something that pulls Fianin and although she's never actually eaten chocolate,
[9:43]not of that sort.
[9:45]And she doesn't really like it when she first tries it.
[9:48]She doesn't understand their enthusiasm and their passion and the transformative nature
[9:53]of what they're working with.
[9:54]The way you write about chocolate in the US, I think you called it, I don't know.
[10:00]when you're oily or something that made me think,
[10:02]oh my gosh, as I unwrap the Hershey bar
[10:05]for a smore or something,
[10:06]how imitation chocolate this really is.
[10:09]And of course, I love like a good dark chocolate bar,
[10:12]but the vast difference between the two
[10:15]and how chocolate has become repackaged, repurposed,
[10:20]you know, filled with artificial stuff
[10:23]as we do in the United States with everything
[10:25]is quite the contrast.
[10:26]So I appreciate it in that little,
[10:29]that little thing in there.
[10:31]I think we do that everywhere,
[10:33]because chocolate has been so very successful globally.
[10:37]It has been globalized and homogenized
[10:39]and has mostly palm oil in it now
[10:41]and has very much lost contact with what it used to be
[10:45]with, you know, this special, strange bitter substance
[10:49]that was valued not just for its effect on the body,
[10:52]but also for its spiritual side too.
[10:54]And I wanted to get back to that, some of the story
[10:57]and the folklore of chocolate and the mythology
[10:59]and the endless history of chocolate,
[11:01]to try to get to the bottom of why chocolate
[11:04]is different from anything else that you can eat.
[11:07]And where did your fascination with chocolate begin?
[11:11]Well, I've always been interested in folklore and myths
[11:14]and what people believe and have believed
[11:17]over the centuries and chocolate just has this vast
[11:20]folklore attached to it and this incredible history
[11:23]and it has been incredibly popular.
[11:25]It started in Europe as a very niche substance,
[11:30]something that was thought of as a kind of bizarre,
[11:33]tribal concoction and it gained traction
[11:37]and became a massive industry.
[11:39]And it's now, you know, it's one of the driving industries
[11:42]in the world, it's everywhere, it's in every country.
[11:45]It has had phenomenal success.
[11:47]And it has still polarized people, people still,
[11:50]you know, divided into people who accept chocolate
[11:54]and people who for some reason think
[11:56]that it will do terrible things to their bodies
[11:57]if they have even the tiniest bit of it.
[11:59]You know, this idea that it has always divided people
[12:03]and made them feel that it had perhaps more power
[12:06]of them than it should.
[12:08]Yeah, the ultimate drug here.
[12:10]First, the first drugs.
[12:13]You highlight a few words that have similar, similar sounds
[12:17]but different spellings to contrast various things.
[12:22]For example, roots and roots are O-O-T-S
[12:25]and R-O-U-T-E-S, which I found particularly interesting
[12:29]because it has come to go as hell with my translators,
[12:32]I know, but it's true because putting down roots
[12:37]and the roots that you take in life seem completely opposite
[12:40]and yet sound so similar.
[12:41]Tell me a little bit about that and where the end sort of comes,
[12:46]you know, she wrestles with this the whole book.
[12:50]Yes, and she's going to continue wrestling with it
[12:52]throughout the other four books, in fact,
[12:54]because she is divided between her mother's policy,
[12:59]which has always been to deny putting down roots,
[13:02]to deny connections with people.
[13:03]She's even denied giving Yann the kind of toys
[13:07]that she can take with them on their journeys
[13:09]because the idea that Yann could become too attached
[13:12]to something has always been anathema to her.
[13:14]And so the idea that they have to be free from attachment
[13:18]and from place has always been very important
[13:21]to Yann's mother, but now Yann is going to be her mother.
[13:24]She is trying to go a different way for her own child.
[13:27]And so the idea that from a journey to a making of a home,
[13:33]that one root can become another.
[13:36]And she's hoping that her daughter will grow to her friends
[13:39]and toys and a home and that she will be able to have
[13:42]a kitchen with her own things in it
[13:44]and all the things that she's never had.
[13:46]She doesn't quite know how to do this
[13:48]and her mother's voice is still very strong in her mind,
[13:50]telling her that that is terribly dangerous
[13:53]and that there is something pursuing her
[13:55]and if she stops it will, it will catch up with them.
[13:58]And this notion of the man in the black coat, what is that?
[14:03]What is that for you?
[14:04]Is that death, is it bad luck?
[14:06]What does that represent?
[14:08]I think it represents a lot of things too.
[14:10]To Yann's mother, it is the reason she can't stop.
[14:14]And there is a secret, of course,
[14:16]because everybody has a secret in this book
[14:17]that she is carrying, which I won't reveal at this point,
[14:20]but we do find out what it is at the end.
[14:22]But I think it's also a manifestation
[14:24]of all the things that Yann's mother fears.
[14:27]Being found out, being discovered, losing her daughter,
[14:31]having to stay in one place when she doesn't want to,
[14:34]losing the freedom that she's had
[14:36]and the life that she's made, all of this is summarized by
[14:39]the man in black, who might also be a figure of authority,
[14:43]the church, a father figure.
[14:45]And he changes aspect as we go through the story,
[14:48]because he's not just one thing, he's many.
[14:52]And back to the food just for a minute,
[14:54]and your history in general is a writer.
[14:57]How did you become an author yourself?
[14:59]And how did you learn to write about food and meals
[15:03]and cooking in such an eloquent, captivating way?
[15:08]I didn't learn.
[15:08]I'm completely self-taught.
[15:10]I read a lot as a child.
[15:12]I wrote a lot of stories as a child.
[15:14]I fell into becoming published as a sort of experiment.
[15:19]I wasn't expecting to give up my day job as a teacher
[15:23]to write full time, because I was told
[15:25]that the kind of things I was writing were not commercial,
[15:27]were not fashionable, were not easily quantifiable
[15:31]in literary terms.
[15:32]But I was having fun, and I've always just written
[15:34]what I wanted to write, and in the case of Shokala,
[15:37]I think there was a pivotal point there,
[15:39]because Shokala was my third book.
[15:40]I'd written two other books that were not quite in my voice.
[15:44]I was having difficulty understanding
[15:46]what my voice was, and I was very good at doing other
[15:48]people's voices, but I hadn't really come to my own.
[15:52]And then I had my daughter, and I wrote Shokala.
[15:55]And that was the story of a woman with a young daughter.
[15:59]And I realized that that was my voice.
[16:01]And so I took into that story a lot of stuff
[16:03]about my French heritage, the things that I remember
[16:07]from my French family, a lot of stuff about motherhood.
[16:10]And I thought, okay, this is what I sound like.
[16:14]And from then on, all my books were,
[16:17]were very much centered around those things.
[16:20]And because I've always thought that books
[16:23]should be as immersive as possible,
[16:25]and would involve ideally as many senses as possible.
[16:29]I started to include scent and taste primarily,
[16:32]partly because I have seen this easier
[16:34]and I smell colors.
[16:35]And so, this is my primary access to the world.
[16:39]But also because I wanted it to be an immersive experience
[16:42]for the reader.
[16:43]And so, I think inevitably, a lot of sense
[16:46]and tastes found their way into the stories that way.
[16:49]You explain it's in this easier for people
[16:51]who are not as familiar with it.
[16:54]This is a form of neurodiversity whereby two senses
[16:59]and they can be any senses are emerged in a sort of way.
[17:04]So, you know, sometimes a color can paint a sound
[17:08]or sometimes in my case, a color pings a scent.
[17:13]So, I would be very happy in your library there
[17:15]because all your books are all different colors.
[17:17]I would have a great time working out what they all smell of.
[17:21]When did you realize you had that?
[17:24]I only realized that not everybody else had that.
[17:28]When I was in my 30s, it wasn't a topic
[17:30]that people discussed.
[17:31]And, you know, I just took it for granted
[17:33]that everybody smelled colors.
[17:35]But I've talked to so many other synesthesias
[17:37]who have said the same thing
[17:38]who've said that it took them in some cases decades
[17:41]to understand that not everybody processed the world
[17:45]in which, in the way that they did.
[17:48]Because actually, I think we just assumed
[17:49]that we are entirely normal
[17:51]and that everybody else is exactly like us.
[17:53]And of course, the more we realize about neurodiversity,
[17:55]the more we realize that that's quite untrue.
[17:58]And very likely we all have idiosyncratic ways
[18:02]of processing reality.
[18:05]Very true.
[18:06]Well, what a gift to put it all into fiction,
[18:08]so the rest of us can benefit from the senses that you evoke.
[18:13]Where do you see your writing going after this book?
[18:16]Well, I've written 20 odd books now
[18:19]and I have never quite known where it was going.
[18:21]I've always written the books that needed to be written
[18:23]at the time.
[18:25]And so writing and publishing, being what it is,
[18:28]I've already finished my next book,
[18:29]which I've just finished editing this week,
[18:32]which is very different from Fian,
[18:33]which is a kind of supernatural folk horror set
[18:36]on the Yorkshire murs.
[18:38]But I have written now five books about, Jan.
[18:41]She keeps coming back.
[18:42]I think we've grown alike with age
[18:44]although we were very unlike when I started writing Shokala.
[18:48]And I think it's not unlikely
[18:50]that she will come back at some point with the story
[18:52]or one of her daughters will come back with the story
[18:55]and I will write about her again.
[18:57]Amazing.
[18:58]What advice would you have for aspiring authors?
[19:01]Well, first art ditched the word aspiring
[19:04]because it's unhelpful
[19:05]and it makes a kind of us and them division
[19:08]between people who are published
[19:09]and people who are not published
[19:10]or people who want to be published.
[19:12]I think anyone who wants to write should write
[19:15]should give themselves permission to write
[19:16]and to find it as important as they want to find it.
[19:20]Not everybody needs to be a professional
[19:22]to enjoy writing and to get joy from writing.
[19:25]And I think joy is really at the heart of this.
[19:27]Just do it, love it.
[19:30]And hope that somebody else loves it too.
[19:33]What are you reading right now?
[19:35]Right now, I am reading a collection of short stories
[19:39]by Sunny Singh, who has been collecting these
[19:42]for quite a long time, who is writing about war
[19:45]and the victims of war in one way or another.
[19:47]It's very interesting, very well written, very beautiful.
[19:51]And what about your cooking pursuits?
[19:53]Are you as good a cook, a chef?
[19:57]What do you make dinners like this every night?
[20:00]I don't spend a lot of time in the kitchen.
[20:05]I do enjoy cooking.
[20:06]I think it's therapeutic, but I don't do it every day.
[20:09]I'm very good at assembling things.
[20:11]At the moment, I'm mostly assembling things
[20:13]because I've got so little time to do any cooking
[20:16]that I might cook a meal at the weekend,
[20:18]the rest of the time.
[20:19]If it takes longer than 30 minutes to make it,
[20:23]I am not interested in making it right now.
[20:26]Well, I was feeling ashamed at my lack of cooking proud
[20:31]as I read this book and I'm like, she must cook
[20:33]and she writes so much.
[20:35]Oh, my gosh, this is amazing.
[20:36]So anyway, glad to know that.
[20:39]Selfish.
[20:40]I think John's a thought better cooking than I am.
[20:43]I think she's much better at following a recipe, too.
[20:45]I'm incapable of following a recipe.
[20:48]Well, it would be really neat to go to Von Mayer.
[20:51]That's the name of the name of the cafe.
[20:54]I would love to see a pop up of that on your tour.
[20:57]Like maybe, I don't know if you have any plans of that,
[21:00]but I would love to just go in and get a little meal
[21:03]and maybe try the boulevés.
[21:05]Wouldn't that be nice?
[21:06]Well, I shall suggest it.
[21:08]I'm coming to the Boston Lit Fest in October.
[21:10]So maybe somebody can do something there.
[21:13]Otherwise, I shall have my bottle of scent
[21:16]that I made to a company this book.
[21:19]And I shall be spritzing books and people
[21:22]if they want to be spritzed.
[21:23]And they will get the scent illustration of Jan,
[21:27]which is what I've been working on alongside writing the book,
[21:29]and which I think gives an extra little dimension
[21:32]to the story.
[21:33]Absolutely.
[21:35]Well, thank you so much for coming on.
[21:36]Thank you for the joy you gave me
[21:39]in reading the book and all the different paths
[21:43]that took me down and sort of the mystical element
[21:46]that makes you just sit back in your chair a little bit
[21:48]and wonder, so thank you.
[21:50]Thank you so much.
[21:50]And I do appreciate that.
[21:52]Thank you.
[21:53]Thanks so much, bye.
[21:54]Thank you, bye-bye.
[21:55]Bye-bye.
[21:56]Thank you for listening to totally booked with Zibi
[21:59]formerly momstone after time to read books.
[22:02]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review,
[22:05]follow me on Instagram at Zibi Owens,
[22:08]and spread the word.
[22:09]Thanks so much.
[22:10]Oh, and bye the books.