Book Review: The Girl with No Shadow - Joanne Harris

The Girl with NoShadow

Joanne Harris

We are reunited with Vianne Rocher four years after her victory over the Man in Black as recounted in Chocolat.  She now lives in Paris, under an assumed name, living a mundane life and hiding like a fugitive. Her daughter Anouk is now nine, and Vianne has had another daughter, Rosette,  who is four years old.  Vianne works in a humdrum café in a tacky suburb, and is tentatively involved with a respectable but boorish businessman. She has closed her life to magic and meddling, wears drab clothes and tries to remain as insignificant as possible. This is because, we are told, of an Accident.

The familiy’s quiet, furtive existence is utterly transformed one day when a fantastic, outgoing and cheerful woman named Zozie appears in their neighborhood.  In no time at all, she has ensconced herself as the family’s new best friend and older sister and an inspiration for Vianne’s return to the chocolate arts. Everyone loves her.

However, Zozie is also a witch. She, too, has uncommon and powerful abilities, but unlike Vianne Zozie is happy to use them for her own personal gain, and against anyone she considers a suitable victim or potential foe. She is a master of identity theft and manipulation; and revels in her powers.  Vianne’s willful blindness allows her to welcome Zozie without recognizing her abilities or intent -- and Zozie, through manipulation and magic, slowly begins to take over.

Anouk is a far more important character in this second book. She is dealing with all the usual problems of growing up: friends, boyfriends, a loving but difficult mother.  She has inherited her mother’s abilities, but has agreed to keep them unused and hidden.  However, she misses her old life and old friends in Lansquenet, and resents her mother for this new, grey life where everything must be ordinary.

Quick to exploit a weakness, Zozie deliberately charms a very lonely Anouk. She begins to teach Anouk a much darker magic than her mother’s, and one more focused on revenge and self-interest.  Zozie’s influence grows quickly in Vianne’s emotional absence, and soon Anouk is using her abilities for petty revenge against schoolmates, thrilling at the potential benefits of using the very abilities her mother is trying to hide.  The story’s conclusion rests on Anouk, who has to make the decision about who she is going to be -- a coming-of-age milestone slightly more complicated than usual.

This sequel is a deliciously sweet as the last. My only complaint is that it may be too sweet: Chocolat was bittersweet, but The Girl with No Shadow is almost aspertame.