Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
Taste and scent are very important in this book, though not necessarily in a pleasant way. How does the author use this to heighten scenes of emotional significance? Delivers an almighty twist in the tale late on...brilliantly atmospheric and at times heartbreaking' -- The Times Not exactly. Most of the time I was writing it, I wasn’t sure what (if anything) had been dun, or indeed, by whom. I see it now - like Gentlemen and Players, its close relative - as a kind of murder-mystery with no detective, no apparent crime and a couple of quite unreliable narrators - Joanne Harris with a twist. Colours are very important in this book. What do colours mean to you? What colour associations do you have? It will be easier for them to read. And less emotionally draining for me to write.” She pauses. “But books should not just make you feel good. I feel, strongly, that if you don’t explore the dark side from time to time, then the rest of it has no meaning.
I have a friend who spends most of her life online. She’s in a wheelchair and cannot speak. The internet is her window on the world. In the street, she is a victim in a wheelchair, but online she is ebullient, funny and kind of flirtatious. It’s an interesting new personality. Before her stroke she was a quiet, timid person.”
Sign Up to the Newsletter
Joanne Harris was born in Barnsley in 1964, of a French mother and an English father. She studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge and was a teacher for fifteen years, during which time she published three novels; The Evil Seed (1989), Sleep, Pale Sister (1993) and Chocolat (1999), which was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. To what extent do you think BB is playing out his fantasies in real life? Why do you think he is attracted to the idea of being a murderer? Not exactly. Most of the time I was writing it, I wasn’t sure what (if anything) had been dun, or indeed, by whom. I see it now – like Gentlemen and Players, its close relative – as a kind of murder-mystery with no detective, no apparent crime and a couple of quite unreliable narrators – Joanne Harris with a twist. There is some evidence to suggest that the fictional Malbry is based on Harris' home village of Almondbury, near Huddersfield, in Yorkshire. In the Rune books, Red Horse Hill is sometimes referred to as " Castle Hill", a noted Huddersfield landmark. Other real-life places referred to in Runemarks and Runelight are: Farnley Tyas (which is also the name of a village near Almondbury) and the nearby Molly Carr Woods. Find sources: "Malbry"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( August 2012) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Unable to write books, she wrote online, enjoying the freedom of role play, as she entered various communities there. The main narrator, BB, has a very unique perception of the world. In what way does it change his outlook on things? In what way does it direct his behaviour? It’s getting difficult to find my cookbooks in physical form, but they’ve recently all been published digitally right here… The author writes in a very graphic, sensually evocative style. In what way does this shape the narrative? I got impatient to read blueeyedboy. You sort of expect Joanne Harris' work to show up in charity shops in short notice: I've found most of the rest of her work there, in my charity shop binges, after all. But I got tired of waiting, and didn't want to wait until Christmas, so I actually bought it for the Kindle app on my phone. That made it very convenient to read a chapter here and there -- even two chapters while I waited for Delta Maid to get off the stage so Seth Lakeman would come on! -- so that meant I read this quite fast, but in snatches, whenever it was convenient...
On the other hand, I liked the exploration of the mind of a complex character like a serial killer, I liked the playful way the author blends reality with fiction (you can’t trust what you read on the net, besides how can you tell who is behind a screen?) and there were some thrilling suspenseful moments and delightful passages like the descriptions of sensations (a pretty good rendition of synesthesia) where Harris’ talent shines.
To sum up: blueeyedboy is not a bad book, it is a different book than I am used to from Harris. There were parts of the book that I really enjoyed and felt that I was getting into, but unfortunately they were outweighed by the parts that were dark and cynical and uncomfortable to me. I do believe that this may have been the point of the book – afterall, can we really believe anything we read on the internet? No, necessarily – we can be anyone we want on the internet; we can invent a whole new persona. It’s just that for me, as a reader, it felt too chaotic, and too much dark with not enough light.Is this the best book ever written? Harris’s achievement is not only in her story, in her insight and humour and the wonderful picture of small-town life in rural France, but also in her writing. (Literary Review) French novels From all this came Blueeyedboy, a dark psychological thriller set in the world of the internet, where no-one is quite what they seem to be, and every taste is catered for, even the ones to which we dare not confess.
Great Deal 
New Comment