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Coastliners

By Joanne Harris

(15)

| Audio CD | 9781842833087

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Book Description

Joanne Harris writes fiction that engages every one of the senses: reviewers called Chocolat "delectable" and Five Quarters of the Orange "sweet and powerful." In her new novel, she takes readers to a tiny French island where you can almost taste the salt on your lips.

The isl Continue

Joanne Harris writes fiction that engages every one of the senses: reviewers called Chocolat "delectable" and Five Quarters of the Orange "sweet and powerful." In her new novel, she takes readers to a tiny French island where you can almost taste the salt on your lips.

The island, called Le Devin, is shaped somewhat like a sleeping woman. At her head is the village of Les Salants, while the more prosperous village of La Houssinière lies at her feet. You could walk between the towns in an hour, but they could not feel further apart, for between them lie years of animosity.

The townspeople of Les Salants say that if you kiss the feet of their patron saint and spit three times, something you've lost will come back to you. And so Madeleine, who grew up on the island, returns after an absence of ten years spent in Paris. She is haunted by this place, and has never been able to feel at home anywhere else.

But when she arrives, she will find that her father -- who once built fishing boats that fueled the town's livelihood -- has become even more silent than ever, withdrawing almost completely into an interior world. And his decline seems reflected in the town itself, for when the only beach in Les Salants washed away, all tourism drifted back to La Houssinière.

Madeleine herself has been adrift for a long time, yet almost against her will she soon finds herself united with the village's other lost souls is a struggle for survival and salvation.

Critics

  • 'Coastliners' by Joanne Harris

    Swapping food for a marine theme, Harris sets her story on the sparsely populated Breton island of Le Devin, where local girl Mado returns after a ten-year absence. Instead of the happy home-coming she had expected, Mado finds that her ageing father, ... (read full critics)

    readingmatters published on Mon, 27 Sep 2010

  • Sheer Gaul

    Coastliners Joanne Harris 479pp, Doubleday, £12.99 Le Devin, an island so small that it is only a bicycle ride from one end to the other, consists of two feuding villages. At one end is the thriving La Houssinière, with its ferry port, fish-packing p ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

1 Review

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  • Unfinished business, disturbed waters

    It is never too late to finish what needs to be finished from the past. Temper with nature and it always has a subtle way of getting even... This book comes with these very motion of waves.

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    iljlee said on Aug 27, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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9781842833087 Audio CD $99.95 -- The Book Depository
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