Joanne Harris: Coastliners

By MARGIE THOMSON

Fat and promising, one wonders what aromas, what desires, the new Joanne Harris will let loose once its smart little covers have been opened.

Will it saturate with rich sweetness the way Chocolat did, or induce a longing for the complicated simplicity of French farmhouse cooking, as did Five Quarters of the Orange?

Actually, the answer is no on both counts: this latest novel is more-ish, light but satisfying and sensual, but food rates barely a mention. Instead, Coastliners is full of the sound of the sea, the smell of salt, the dry scraping of sand between fingers, with low tones of decades-old hatreds and disappointments, all stirred in a cauldron of superstition that is part-Catholic, part-pagan.

If you're a fan of Harris, don't worry: it still bears most of the trademarks. There is the small, inward-looking community in a confined setting - this time the tiny Breton island of Le Devin, based apparently on the island on which Harris spent many of her childhood holidays - and the bunch of strongly drawn, eccentric characters.

There is the outsider, the catalyst for change, this time in the form of Mado, a twentysomething returnee who was born on the island but who has been gone for 10 years. And there is the terrific story, whose theme is the struggle between the dark forces of selfishness, deception and passivity, and bright, brave, active hope.

Mado has spent the past 10 years living in Paris with her mother, who fled the island because of her unhappy marriage, only to die shortly before this story opens. Mado, who has been making her living as a painter, decides to return to her father - just for a visit, she assures herself, leaving her tiny Parisian apartment with rent paid in advance.

But once she gets back it's soon clear that the island still has a peculiar hold on her, even though her reception is far from friendly. Even her father, GrosJean, landholder and erstwhile boatbuilder, will scarcely acknowledge her.

The island is divided, as it has ever been, between the mutually hostile residents of its two villages. La Houssiniere is relatively prosperous; Les Salants - where Mado was born and stays now in her father's silent house - is impoverished. It is a poverty born not only of reduced fishing catches and the steady erosion of its coastline by encroaching tides, but of the spirit. "Might as well spit in the wind as try," one of the villagers says, spitting, in response to Mado's attempts to fire some enthusiasm for trying to save the village.

Battling the shifting tides of nature, or God, or their seemingly indifferent patron Sainte-Marine, is one thing. But Mado starts to suspect that Les Salants' troubles have more to do with human greed than they do with shifting tides. Her suspicions reluctantly begin to focus on the one man on the island who has been kind to her, the businessman Claude Brismand.

Even once she has figured out how Les Salants' beach and livelihood are being stolen from under their noses, she must still find a way of uniting these moribund people to fight for their future. And it is at that point that the story really begins, when Mado enlists the support of a newcomer to the island, the attractive, practical-minded yet mysterious Flynn, who figures out a way of turning island superstition against itself.

It's hard to fight, though, when you don't understand who the enemy really is, and it is only as the book unfolds that we start to realise that Mado and her grumpy yet oddly charming villagers are at the mercy of forces even greater than mere greed. Ancient loves, betrayals, losses and guilt all wash the story like waves on the shoreline.

Despite her obvious delight in religious imagery and power, and the sense she creates of her characters living in the shadow of their own superstitious beliefs, Harris never hesitates to make utterly tangible the forces that shape people's lives.

Hopelessness is depicted as a disease; its corollary, hope, is like a miracle made manifest in a whitewashed wall or a garden planted. Belonging, which is partly what this book is about, is what happens when you've earned your stripes, when you'll risk your life and dignity for someone in trouble of their own making.

Harris is a romantic writer to the extent that she believes in the underlying redeemability of most of her characters. But she's clear-eyed about human folly, and about the violence the strong can wreak upon the weak. Best of all, she tells a good story, which unfurls its surprises at a steady pace, right up to the last page.

Doubleday

$39.95