Chewing the fat with ...

Joanne Harris

Q: You were a French teacher. Have you given that up now?

A: In theory, I'm still on sabbatical ... I think it looks more and more like I'm set not to go back. I did enjoy teaching and I was good at it, and while I was doing both things pretty much effortlessly side by side, there was no problem, but unfortunately the writing has expanded to such a degree, it's not really possible to run them parallel any more.

Q: Chocolat is very much about sin and redemption, or about sin and virtue. What gave you the idea to use chocolate as a metaphor for what you wanted to say?

A: Most of it was the time ... I got the idea at Easter, when I was surrounded by chocolate and reminders about what chocolate means and things about Easter, so it seemed to be a kind of easy way. Besides which, I didn't want to write something that was utterly serious. I wanted to write something which was quite quirky and fun as well, so the idea of chocolate as a metaphor for all these kind of serious matters rather appealed to me.

Q:It's very celebratory, isn't it?

A: I think so. I think it is ultimately a life-affirming idea.

Q: You seem to have a great faith in what you call 'life-affirming' or New Age ways of thinking. Are you religious at all?

A: Well, I think it depends very much on your definition of religion. Certainly, I'm not a member of any kind of conventional religion. I believe what I believe and I tend to think that religion is fine as long as you keep it to yourself and that it's a personal thing, but as soon as you start going round trying to convert other people --and particularly to harm other people if they don't want to believe what you believe --then you are on a slippery slope.

Q: Who or what has influenced you in the past?

A: I've got all kinds of influences. I'm interested in everything. I read so much and so many different kinds of things. I'm sitting in front of my bookcase now and I've got all kinds of different things stacked against each other and people would think I was completely mad if they walked in here and saw the kinds of things I've got because I've got great big classics rubbing shoulders with trashy paperbacks.

Q: What do you think of what reviewers have said of your books?

A: You know, I always take what reviewers say with a pinch of salt, because they all seem so sure of themselves, that it seems slightly churlish to say: "Well, forgive me, actually, I didn't really have this in mind." I don't usually have things that concrete in my mind when I'm writing.

Q: Chocolat has been very successful. Was that unexpected?

A: Oh absolutely. Because the things I've written before have had let's say a modest success, if that, and have then disappeared without trace. Then all of a sudden this book which it took me --what, less than four months to write -- at the very busiest time of year and which I just sort of did as an exercise in could I write a story this absurd and manage to pass it off, suddenly becomes a bestseller.

Q: If you were to say: "These are the books I could not be without", what would they be?

A: I think I would have to take Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy, which I think is one of the first authors who really struck me as a child who I really couldn't get over how good he was. I think I would also take something by Nabokov. It would probably be Lolita, but pretty much anything by Nabokov. Because again, I got exactly the same thing I got 20 years after that I got with Mervyn Peake. I couldn't get over how good he was. The rest ... I'm never very far away from Wuthering Heights. It's one of the books I keep returning to. I would have to have a low-brow book. I have a huge bookcase of books which I use uniquely for reading in the bath. They're all paperbacks which have, at one point or another, fallen into the bath. I'm not sure whether I'm going to hideously impair my literary reputation here but I have to say I read an awful lot of trashy horror. I read huge amounts of things like Stephen King and I'm also quite addicted to Georgette Hayer.

H Harris is the best-selling author of Chocolat and, most recently, Coastliners.