Joanne Harris

A bit more about the author known for her pastoral French settings, and her newest novel, set in the online world...

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Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley in 1964, to a French mother and an English father. Her parents lived with her grandparents – who had a corner shop – at the time, and she and recalls one of her earliest memories as being “in a cot underneath the till and seeing the sun shining through the jars of boiled sweets.”

Educated at Wakefield Girls High School and Barnsley Sixth Form College, Harris went on to study Modern and Mediaeval Languages at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and subsequently became a teacher for fifteen years, teaching French at a boys’ grammar school. During this time she published three novels; The Evil Seed (1989), Sleep, Pale Sister (1993) and Chocolat (1999); the first two were published with limited success, but it was the popularity of her third book, Chocolat – and the ensuing film adaptation – that made her into a household name: Chocolat reached No 1 in the Sunday Times bestseller list, was shortlisted for the 1999 Whitbread Award, and saw its movie rights sold to Miramax Pictures, with the resulting Oscar-nominated, star-studded film featuring Juliette Binoche, Judy Dench and Johnny Depp.

Since then, she has written a number of other books, including Jigs & Reels, a collection of short stories; two cookbooks with cookery writer Fran Warde, The French Kitchen and The French Market, plus eight more novels; Blackberry Wine; Five Quarters of the Orange; Coastliners; Holy Fools; Gentlemen and Players; The Lollipop Shoes; Runemarks and most recently blueeyedboy which was published in March 2010. She has said that blueeyedboy (of which more below) was inspired by a time in her life when she “spent too much time online, hanging around various sites and searching out ever more ingenious ways of evading reality”. She began to become interested in the way that people interact and portray themselves online, and gradually realised that “the small communities that have always informed my writing also exist in the virtual world”. She goes on: “It’s not exactly a whodunit...[it’s] a kind of murder-mystery with no detective, no apparent crime and a couple of quite unreliable narrators”.

Her books are now published in over 40 countries and have won a number of British and international awards, and she has also more recently been on the other side of the judging panel: in 2004, she was one of the judges of the Whitbread prize and in 2005 she was a judge of the Orange prize.

According to her website, “her hobbies are listed in Who’s Who as: “mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion of the system”, although she also enjoys obfuscation, sleaze, rebellion, witchcraft, armed robbery, tea and biscuits. She is not above bribery and would not necessarily refuse an offer involving exotic travel, champagne or yellow diamonds from Graff. She plays bass guitar in a band first formed when she was 16, is currently studying Old Norse and lives with her husband Kevin and her daughter Anouchka, about 15 miles from the place she was born.” So there you have it, from the Harris’ mouth...

blueeyedboy
'Once there was a widow with three sons, and their names were Black, Brown and Blue. Black was the eldest; moody and aggressive. Brown was the middle child, timid and dull. But Blue was his mother's favourite. And he was a murderer'. Blueeyedboy is the brilliant new novel from Joanne Harris: a dark and intricately plotted tale of a poisonously dysfunctional family, a blind child prodigy, and a serial murderer who is not who he seems. Told through posts on a webjournal called badguysrock, this is a thriller that makes creative use of all the multiple personalities, disguise and mind games that are offered by playing out a life on the internet.

Read more about blueeyedboy, including a free downloadable extract, at Lovereading.co.uk