I was put off from reading 'Coastliners' by some grotty
reviews, and by the fact that I had not much liked Five
Quarters of the Orange. Also, the premise of the novel did
not appear to be so promising, involving, as it does, a tale of shifting
sands - which does not sound very riveting. The jacket blurb was
also not very encouraging, describing the book as a "tale of bitter poetry
that proves no man is ever an island... its twists and turns are salty
and powerful..." (yuck). I was beginning to think that Joanne Harris's
work would get very tired if it just restricted itself to French locations, and
as unimaginative as the rejacketing of Peter Mayle's Provence books as Joanne
Harris clones: Frencherns don't seem have a very distinguished heritage as a
genre. However, my enthusiasm for Joanne Harris's work has been
re-ignited by the excellent Holy Fools,
so I thought that it would be most remiss of me to pass over Coastliners.
To my pleasant surprise, I found
myself skimming my way through 'Coastliners' with the exact same speed that I
had devoured Holy Fools.
The island in question, Le Devin, was of course, mentioned in Holy Fools,
and it's not long before our heroine, Mado, has bumped into a couple of
Carmelite nuns on her first visit home in ten years. The mother who took
her away from Le Devin has passed away, and Mado's only immediate family is her
father, GrosJean Prasteau, and her sister, Adrienne. Whilst Mado is not
exactly loquacious, GrosJean is even more silent and barely says anything, even
when he is around. Adrienne is also away, living in Tangiers, but Mado
and she have never got on. Adrienne was the eldest child who was so
beloved that she even got a present on Mado's birthday, not that she repays
such spoiling in later years by attending, say, her own mother's funeral.
Adrienne also married outside Les Salants, the little settlement on Le Devin
where the Prasteaus have always lived. Her union with Marin Brismand, the
nephew and heir of the richest man on Le Devin, is seen as a good match,
despite the fact that the Brismands have always come from La Houssiniere, the
other village on Le Devin, whose inhabitants sometimes take on those of Les
Salants in war. However, Les Salants looks to be losing this war of
attrition, as their land is subject to flooding from the sea, whilst La
Houssiniere is protected by its sandbanks. It also helps that Claude
Brismand is so wealthy, that he can afford to build a jetty and run a ferry to
bring the tourists in. Despite the periodic invasions of day-trippers,
both Les Salants and La Houssiniere are threatened by the loss of the young
people, who go off to the mainland seeking a more exciting and stable
life. Les Salants and its inhabitants have been literally decaying, as
Mado discovers when she returns. Very few of the cottages in Les Salants
are being maintained, due to the continual incursions from the sea, and it is
evident that the little village is losing in its war of attrition.
However, despite this, there are still a few young people around, such as the
enigmatic Flynn, who has been helping Mado's father...
It's probably not a good
omen that practically the first thing Mado does when she arrives is to
surprise her father so much that he drops the beloved statue
of St. Marine-de-la-mer into the sea (the villagers are
carrying the statue as they are celebrating the saint's festival). Seeing
that everything has so stagnated since she has left, Mado embarks on an attempt
to save the village, although none of the inhabitants are much interested as
they are too busy fighting each other from decades' old feuds. Mado
thinks that she has found a way to protect the village from the perennial
floods from the sea, but only Flynn aids her, and he reluctantly.
However, he does throw himself into impersonating St. Marine-de-la-mer with a
great deal of relish, in a scene that is reminiscent of Holy Fools,
which I believe was written much earlier than this novel. There is also
the possibility that she could go to Claude Brismand for help - after all, he
did send her gifts whilst she was away on the mainland, and he has been trying
to help the stubborn GrosJean. Yet something keeps Mado away from
pursuing this route - most likely the traditional rivalry between the Salannais
and the Houssins. Despite this hostility with their close neighbours,
everyone seems to embrace and like the Englishman Flynn, who has made himself
useful by his seeming ability to fix almost anything. As he and Mado work
with the villagers to build an artificial reef to protect Les Salants, Mado
feels herself drawing closer to him (perhaps helped by her abilities as an
artist!), but notwithstanding his friendliness, he seems determined to
push her away from building a more substantial relationship.
Despite her heroic efforts for Les
Salants, Mado still feels like an outsider. Les Salants is after all, a
fishing community, whose people wage a daily battle against the sea. There
is also the spectre of her withdrawn father, who can only acknowledge his love
for her accidentally. Then there is the visit from Adrienne, the
favoured child to contend with, even more so since her two young children are
boys, and it has always been evident that GrosJean would much rather have had a
son for a second child than a girl, no matter how tomboyish Mado ever
became. Yet life for Les Salants is looking up. Old feuds are
buried as the village graveyard is recovered from the sea, and the inhabitants
begin to think more of the 'deserters' on the mainland than the deceased, like
GrosJean's brother. The Salannais are also being coming under attack from
the more malicious elements of the Houssins, such is their
success. The Salannais even dream of stealing the tourists from
La Houssiniere. Yet, could it also be that they are at their most
vulnerable when they are so confident?
'Coastliners' has been criticised in
some quarters for being too dark, yet not even Chocolat was
all that light and frothy. If Joanne Harris ever goes for Romance, then
it tends to be of the Gothic variety, as Holy Fools
proves. The theme of painting was also explored in the excellent Sleep
Pale Sister, and Joanne Harris's first novel Evil Seed,
and with the French setting, 'Coastliners' can be seen to fit very well into
the Joanne Harris canon, despite the welcome respite from the gastronomic theme
that got a little too risible in Five
Quarters of the Orange. However, what really keeps you turning the
pages here is the dense and intriguing plot, which generates quite a few
surprises for our little Mado. She's no Vianne, but you really do feel
for her by the end of this extraordinary novel. This book gave me some
much-needed entertainment, and I can safely that I really enjoyed the
voyage. I didn't even get seasick once.
Authortrek
Rating: 10/10
Les Salants - would appear to mean "the salty
ones"
Vareuse
- Chapter 1 p. 18 - see what one of these garments looks like
Soeur Extase - Chapter 1 p. 19 - the sister's name means
"ecstasy" in English
Soeur Therese - Chapter 1 p. 19 - is probably named after
St Theresa of Lisieux, the Carmelite nun, who, along with Joan of Arc, is the
patron saint of France
Les Immortelles - Chapter 1 p. 20 - means, of
course, "The Immortals". Good name for an old peoples
home/hotel
Quichenotte - Chapter
1 p. 22 - the photograph of this bonnet could almost be a scene from
Coastliners. As the following
webpage
relates, this hat does indeed come from the Noirmoutier region, and the
name is said to be derived from the English "kiss not, kiss
not".
Mado - Chapter 1 p. 23 - possibly short
for the French Madelaine, although it could also derive from 'Madone', the
French for Madonna. Maybe she was to have originally impersonated St.
Marine-de-la-mer in this novel, just as Juliette impersonates St.
Marie-de-la-mer in Holy Fools?
Belle Ysolde - Chapter 4 p. 42 - looks to be a reference
to Iseult, as in the famous love story of Tristan and Iseult that was tacked
onto Arthurian myth
Sage Heloise - Chapter 4 p. 42 - a reference to the 12th
Century lovers Abelard and Heloise who had a son and secretly married, but
Heloise was the niece of Canon Fulbert of Paris, who forced Abelard to be
castrated. Abelard, in turn, persuaded Heloise to join a nunnery whilst
he became a monk. Life as a monk did not rest easy with him, and some of
his writings were later considered to be heretical, but he and Heloise did keep
in contact by letters that later became famous
biniou
- Chapter 5 p. 51 - is a form of bagpipe
La Poule - Chapter 14 p. 130 - the French for
'hen', as in 'mother hen' no doubt
burnous
- Chapter 30 p. 224 - this is what onne of these garments look like
belote
- Chapter 37 p. 268 - here are the rules oof the game
Jojo-le-Goeland - Chapter 39 p. 281 - 'Goeland' is the
French for Seagull
