Joanne Harris
Holy Fools
2004
355 pp.
* * * *
If the name Joanne Harris doesn’t ring any bells, how about the glorious little film Chocolat? Harris wrote the novel upon which the 2000 film was based. I loved that film so much that I vowed to check out Harris’s other work. Holy Fools was my second exposure to Harris, but it won’t be my last.
Speaking of vows, the heroine of Holy Fools is a former tightrope-walker-turned-nun named Juliette. Don’t expect a Catholic conversion story, though; Juliette is in the nunnery because she needed a place to escape the law, protect her illegitimate daughter, and hide from the man who left her in desperate straits, the dashing-but-dastardly Guy LeMerle. What better place than an island in Brittany detached from the mainland by a tidal causeway? (Think a larger and more pastoral version of Mont Saint-Michel.) Not only is Juliette no Christian mystic, she’s a pantheist raised by gypsies, tutored by Jews, and skilled in the sort of herbal and healing arts that easily invited charges of witchcraft in the 17th century, the time period in which the novel is set. If one factors in her former show career—one tainted by charges of commercial promiscuity—and her unwed status, Juliette positively needs a place to hide.
She finds it at Sainte Marie-de-la-mer, an abbey time forgot and whose patron saint is probably as pagan as Juliette. The impoverished abbey is a collection of misfits, cloaked lesbians, damaged souls, and sisters whose theology tends toward the heretical. All is well for Juliette and her daughter Fleur until the longtime abbess dies. In her place comes an eleven-year-old, placed there because of family connections. Mother Isabelle may be young, but she’s a pious fanatic hell-bent on reforming the abbey, restoring orthodoxy, and returning the nunnery to past days of glory. She brings with her something the abbey hasn’t seen in decades, a priest.
Father Colombin is none other than LeMerle under an assumed identity. He is even less religious than Juliette, but is posing as a priest so that he can exact revenge. What follows is a complex mix of emotions, double-dealing, and danger. LeMerle is a delicious villain, the sort of two-parts-charming-three-parts-rogue role that Alan Rickman plays so well on the screen. Juliette doesn’t trust LeMerle any further than she can spit, yet her fate and Fleur’s rests in his hands. Everyone involved in the plot is dancing on a thin rope; one slip and an auto de fé awaits.
If you think that a novel about nuns set in the 17th century can’t be a page-turner, repent! Is Harris a great stylist? Probably not; I doubt her writing will win literary awards. But as a storyteller she is first rate. Put this book in the category of being a righteous good read. I’m glad I kept my vows.
Holy Fools
2004
355 pp.
* * * *
If the name Joanne Harris doesn’t ring any bells, how about the glorious little film Chocolat? Harris wrote the novel upon which the 2000 film was based. I loved that film so much that I vowed to check out Harris’s other work. Holy Fools was my second exposure to Harris, but it won’t be my last.
Speaking of vows, the heroine of Holy Fools is a former tightrope-walker-turned-nun named Juliette. Don’t expect a Catholic conversion story, though; Juliette is in the nunnery because she needed a place to escape the law, protect her illegitimate daughter, and hide from the man who left her in desperate straits, the dashing-but-dastardly Guy LeMerle. What better place than an island in Brittany detached from the mainland by a tidal causeway? (Think a larger and more pastoral version of Mont Saint-Michel.) Not only is Juliette no Christian mystic, she’s a pantheist raised by gypsies, tutored by Jews, and skilled in the sort of herbal and healing arts that easily invited charges of witchcraft in the 17th century, the time period in which the novel is set. If one factors in her former show career—one tainted by charges of commercial promiscuity—and her unwed status, Juliette positively needs a place to hide.
She finds it at Sainte Marie-de-la-mer, an abbey time forgot and whose patron saint is probably as pagan as Juliette. The impoverished abbey is a collection of misfits, cloaked lesbians, damaged souls, and sisters whose theology tends toward the heretical. All is well for Juliette and her daughter Fleur until the longtime abbess dies. In her place comes an eleven-year-old, placed there because of family connections. Mother Isabelle may be young, but she’s a pious fanatic hell-bent on reforming the abbey, restoring orthodoxy, and returning the nunnery to past days of glory. She brings with her something the abbey hasn’t seen in decades, a priest.
Father Colombin is none other than LeMerle under an assumed identity. He is even less religious than Juliette, but is posing as a priest so that he can exact revenge. What follows is a complex mix of emotions, double-dealing, and danger. LeMerle is a delicious villain, the sort of two-parts-charming-three-parts-rogue role that Alan Rickman plays so well on the screen. Juliette doesn’t trust LeMerle any further than she can spit, yet her fate and Fleur’s rests in his hands. Everyone involved in the plot is dancing on a thin rope; one slip and an auto de fé awaits.
If you think that a novel about nuns set in the 17th century can’t be a page-turner, repent! Is Harris a great stylist? Probably not; I doubt her writing will win literary awards. But as a storyteller she is first rate. Put this book in the category of being a righteous good read. I’m glad I kept my vows.
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