Rating: Summary: Boil, boil, toil and tribute Review: Joanne Harris is a witch--and I'm spellbound. A tale of tides, flotsam and jetsam, water's both kissing and slamming the shore, its withdrawal to boredom and silent seas, the unpredictability of currents, changing winds, stale pools, all of which are featured in not only the plot of the story but in how the story's told, Coastliners casts a spell upon the reader who can't help but feel like Arthur manipulated by the magic of a benevolent mystic. Its subdued French and Irish references to Celtic literature entrance the reader on one hand and encourage ennui on the other--just like an island, just like a sea. Having been captured by Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, and Five Quarters of the Orange, I was nonetheless unprepared for Coastliners , a work which weaves island yarn into a complex net of doubts, suspense, duplicity, sustainability, disaster, surprise, deception, but, above all, substance and, ultimately, delight. Ms. Harris moves, like the tide, in and out. She tosses things ashore and carries them away. Her novel's sensitivity clashes with its self-destructiveness. It deadens occasionally in its own stupor. Its plot seems to change yet manages a phenomenal consistency. It appears to blow without direction, but its purpose remains steadfast. Its dull passages, like a tide pool, hide, as Oscar Hammerstein wrote for the musical Pipe Dream , "holy hell." Even her characters reflect the sea's temperament: silent, unforgiving, tempestuous, argumentative, changing, calm, pleasant--the reader has it all. This woman creates magic, and this novel finds me a willing subject for her charms. Expect nothing from her previous works as you read Coastliners. This book differs from the rest. Enthralled? Absolutely! Enchanted? Damned right I am!
Rating: Summary: Slow-moving island tale Review: Joanne Harris tells the story of Mado, a young woman who returns to the island off the coast of France where she was born. She and her mother had left the island 10 years previously and her mother was now dead. When she meets her father again, she can see that he has deteriorated physically and emotionally and he is just as uncommunicative as she remembers him to be. People on the island seem frozen in time. The same customs, feuds, and supersitions are all in place, as Mado remembers them. The book is very difficult to get into and moves at a maddeningly slow pace, much like life on the island. Things do pick up a bit towards the middle of the book, and at the end numerous secrets are revealed. Several of the characters in the book are not who they seem to be, and the secrets in their lives have caused them to live in self-destructive ways. I loved the movie, "Chocolat" and had high hopes for this book, but I was disappointed in it.
Rating: Summary: Best Yet? Review: Mado has been away from the remote Breton Island of Le Devin for ten tears. She returns from Paris to find that little has changed. Her father remains locked in his own silent world. The rivalry between families in her home village of Les Salants is as strong as it has been for decades. The village itself still lives under the shadow of the more affluent La Houssiniere. Her efforts to drag the village out of its defeatism have little support apart from the enigmatic Flynn. Who is he? Against this backcloth we have Joanne Harris' usually brilliant evocation of the senses. You can feel the sand between your toes and the sea breeze in your face. You feel like shaking these characters out of their shells. You want to take the next ferry to a remote French Island. This is certainly her best since Chocolat. Maybe better.
Rating: Summary: Immature protagonist Review: Mother always did like you better; for that matter, so did Dad. This is the theme upon which Harris's new novel is based. The critics are saying it's about returning but it's really about self-pity as well as self-aggrandizement. Every time a problem arises, Mado races to the rescue (probably in an effort to prove to Dad that he should have loved her best) And if that's the point, then Harris failed to show me that the issue was with Mado and not with Harris herself. This felt like a first book. You know the ones--thinly veiled autobiography where the author airs a tired old grievance. And because of her past success, her editor and the critics let her get away with it. She also got away with my money and now I have a grievance to air.
Rating: Summary: Not what was expected, but so good! Review: Not a lot of Harris' special blend magical realism here, but her prose is as lush and elegantly lyrical as in all her past works. Her exploration of the metaphorical sea, ocean, salt water, etc. is an enchantment to read. I was particularly awed by the amazing similarities between COASTLINERS and a couple of recent Maine novels, ERNIE'S ARK by Monica Wood and THE WOODEN NICKEL by William Carpenter. Harris' characters on their French island could readily swap places with the salty, earthy, gutsy folk who populate the not-so fictional Maine coast of Wood and Carpenter, likely even recognizing kindred spirits. Even if this is somewhat of a departure for Harris, it's still as grand a reading experience as CHOCOLAT or FIVE QUARTERS OF THE ORANGE.
Rating: Summary: Don¿t waste your time. Review: Painful, painful, painful! The slowest book I've ever attempted to read. I made it though the first 150 pages, but only because I was stuck at the DMV.
Rating: Summary: Yawn... Review: Sorry, but even on tape I could not get to the end of this. It could use a bit of editing and the accent of the speaker is a bit annoying. Oh well, perhaps a good read?
Rating: Summary: Coastliners Review: The plot--Coastliners is about the day-to-day life, struggle, and jow of the people who inhabiot a small island off France's mainland. The narrator returns home after years in Paris to find her father and her village overcome by despair by the increasing hardships that seem to pile on them. Desperate to change things to feel less guilty of her desertion, Mado solicits the help of a stranger who has recently settled in her village and starts turning things around. The characters--well rounded and with real-life problems, Harris' characters evoke immediate understanding from the reader. From the simple fishermen, to the "villains" they are well drawn and interesting. The athmosphere--this is the novel's strongest aspect. The reader feels the wind, tastes the salt, sees the people and their surroundigs clearly. At the same time, despite all the antiques of a small island life, the novel deals with issues and problems that surpass its setting.
Rating: Summary: I Really Wanted to Like this Book ! Review: This is the fourth novel of Joanne Harris's that I have read. I started with "Chocolate", which I loved, and read them in order as they were published. I have become more disappointed with each successive book, and "Coastliners" was the worst. This time, Harris did not use food as a theme, but rather used the imagery of the unpredictable nature of the sea and its effect on a fragile coast. I thought that with this change, and my own love of the sea, perhaps this book would be better than her last two, but it wasn't. Instead, I found a novel cluttered with characters who are wooden, cliched, and undeveloped --and too numerous to keep track of, as well as a rambling, formulaic, and ridiculous story. These characters include Mado, the beautiful returning exile; Cappuchine, a tart with a heart of gold; Brismand, rich and evil; Flynn, the mysterious, enigmatic drifter; and GrosJean, Mado's reclusive father with a tragic past. By page 50, I had resorted to writing down the names of the characters and descriptions so I could keep all of them straight in my mind! Mado Prasteau returns to her tiny Breton island home of LeDevin from Paris after the death of her mother. She has been gone for ten years and the two villages on this island are still feuding. La Houssiniere is prosperous due to its beach and businesses, including tourism. At the other end of the island, where Mado's father lives, the impoverished and dying village of Les Salantes has an eroding coast and a bunch of dilapidated fishermen's shacks. The populace apparently has given up and is totally apathetic. This is the fourth time Harris has had an outsider appear in a backwater area ready to stir things up and/or improve conditions in the area. Personally, this plot device has gotten really old, as is her theme of "good versus evil". The heavy writing is bad enough, but the predictable and cloying romantic storyline is worse. Something that I found incredibly annoying was the author's constant insertion of French words. It made the flow, what there was of it, even more awkward than it already was. I really wish I could find something positive to say, and wonder why I am even giving this 2 stars. I kept hoping to find something redeeming that I could say in this review....well, it does have lovely cover art. I am sure Joanne Harris fans will read the book no matter what I or any other reviewer says - she has a huge fan base and I understand the film rights have already been sold. The most relevant comment I have seen about this book was : "Coastliners" feels like "Chocolat" without the chocolate ...which is just about nothing. I would have to agree.
Rating: Summary: So-so tale of life on a tiny island Review: This novel is somewhat reminiscent of Chocolat, although I think that story was far superior to this one. Chocolat had a magical, fairytale quality about it that Coastliners fails to pick up on. Like Chocolat, it is the story of an outsider coming into an insular small town and turning the world of its residents upside down. Unlike Chocolat, the main character (Madeline) is actually returning to the place where she grew up. I skipped through many descriptions of the little island featured in this story. How much is there to say about an island that you can walk across in one hour? I also found the characters tiresome and irritatingly quirky--some of them were downright unlikeable. Madeline's father was a man who communicated with grunts and mutterings--why she came back to the island for this troglodyte I do not understand. The novel has a rather soap-operaish quality to it, with all sorts of family secrets being revealed. But I had such a hard time getting through it that when the secrets were revealed, I really didn't care.
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