An Evening With Joanne Harris, Forest Arts, New Milton
JOANNE Harris, the award-winning author of the popular book and film Chocolat, spoke eloquently and engagingly to a mainly female audience at a packed Forest Arts.
Publicising her latest work, Jigs And Reels, Harris asserted that a short story was actually harder to write than a novel, and more intellectually challenging for the reader.
She urged would-be writers to study the great French authors Camus, Gide, Maupassant and Balzac, and recommended Ray Bradbury and PG Wodehouse as masters of their craft.
Apart from some cheap anti-American jibes - "In Middle America they're all mad!" - (possibly because Chocolat was banned in five states?) Harris's conversation was fascinating.
She revealed that a novel would usually take her 12 to 18 months to complete, although Chocolat "wrote itself in four months", yet Holy Fools took six years.
During audience questions, Harris felt that Five Quarters Of The Orange was her favourite, most technically demanding work.
Her ambition now was to produce a fantasy book. Characters who swim against life's currents were always worth writing and reading about.
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