She draws much-needed new customers by redecorating the shop and charming patrons while encouraging Vianne to make her own delicious, if no longer magical, candies. Iago-like Zozie insinuates herself into Vianne’s family. Zozie is attracted to the energy of the chocolatier and particularly to Anouk, who is struggling with heightened preteen anxieties and resentments, a desire both to fit in and remain different. Enter Zozie de l’Alba, flamboyant, charming and soulless, a woman who lives by stealing identities, whether by literal theft of credit cards or by more supernatural means. Her middle-aged, well-meaning but conventional landlord, Thierry, has become her suitor, and she has exchanged her red dress for basic black. Vianne herself no longer makes her own “special” candies. Using an assumed name, she lives above her chocolate shop in Montmarte with 11-year-old Anouk (now called Annie by schoolmates) and four-year old Rosette, who does not speak but possesses special gifts for drawing, signing and creating her own “accidents” despite her mother’s attempts to avoid them. In Harris’s sequel to Chocolat (1999), the paranormally gifted chocolate-maker Vianne Rocher has moved from rural France to Paris, where she tries to create a life of anonymity.Īfter an unfortunate “accident”-a child’s magical impulse gone astray-Vianne has forsworn her paranormal power to ensure her family’s stability.
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