The Girl with No Shadow, by Joanne Harris

It’s four unkind years after the events of Chocolat, and the vivacious, nonconformist Vianne Rocher of Harris’s previous bestseller has fallen on hard times. Dressed in drab colors, suppressing her talent for magic, and worst of all, selling factory chocolates from her Montmartre storefront, she’s close to selling out for financial stability by marrying a man she doesn’t love. Where is the Vianne Rocher we knew and admired?

Her daughter is wondering the same thing. Anouk, Vianne’s precocious eleven year old, is just hitting her rebellious years, arguing with her mother and struggling at her first regular school. She finds a badly-needed confidante in the book’s third narrator, who is unfortunately also the villainess. Charming and amoral, Zozie de l’Alba shows up like a fabulous fairy godmother in stiletto heels and before long has insinuated herself into every aspect of their lives. She chats up the customers of the suddenly thriving chocolaterie, counsels Anouk on the social politics of the schoolyard (while teaching her a few forbidden spells behind her mother’s back), and generally makes herself indispensable. But among her other secret foibles, Zozie acquires and discards identities like another woman might change purses. As an identify thief, she’s professionally interested in other people’s secrets, and the Rocher family are hiding quite a few.

The writing in this novel is livelier and tighter than in Chocolat, even while its tone is darker. Themes of adolescence, mother-daughter relationships, identity, and identity theft play off of one another well, supported by the language and symbolism of fairy tales. You may as well acquire some Godiva or Ghirardelli before you start, the darker the better. Harris’s writing appeals to the senses and you’ll be craving something chocolate before long.

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