I have been a non-fiction aficionado for many years now. With the last of my teen years, I lost my taste for innocence, popular boys, mixed fruit jam and along with these, my love for fiction. I grew up on a heavy dose of fiction, Famous Five being my most beloved memory of them all. I would like to dedicate an entire blog to profess my love for Julian. Yes, I wanted to grow up and marry him, but that’s a tale for another day.

Non-fiction had steadily found its way to my heart and skin, as it became my sidekick to face the discomfort of growing up and leaving childhood, and all imagination behind. I had forgotten what it was like to get transported to a different world after Fred Weasley died taking with him my last remnants of connection to the fictional world. Yes, there had been an occasional effort here and there, by me to get back into the realms of fiction. The one book I have to mention is “The girl on the train” by Paula Hawkins that I finished in one smooth go, taking off from work on a weekday. But it wasn’t powerful enough to shake me out of my non-fiction journey.

Then one day just like that, I got introduced into an unfamiliar world, a world full of secret temptations, chocolates, gypsies, and magic. Yes, magic. I must thank my dear colleague who introduced me to the world of Joanne Harris and her book “Chocolat”. Being a huge chocolate lover and a bookworm herself, I can see why the book has her heart. It was a more a struggle for me than I estimated. The book is a masterpiece no doubt, but I realized I have lost the ability to build visuals of imagination from a fictional book and I tried really hard to concentrate and finish it. Nevertheless, I finished it. It was a seductive story – one of the chocolates, of sins and a healthy dose of magic.

I turned to my friend again, who entrusted me with her beloved copy of the next book in the series — “The Lollipop Shoes”. I realized I may be on to something here, maybe this was a sign for me to enter the world of fiction. This time though, I need it so much more than it needs me. With restlessness and mindnumbing reality, this was happening just when I needed it the most.

I am not one to review books, but I somehow am not able to contain my thoughts on Vianne Rocher and Anouk and their fearless spirit. The book cuts too close to my heart. We may argue that magic and reality are two different things, but if you look closely, we all are living a life of magic, but the amount of magic varies. It depends on how open our hearts are and how deep our fears. Vianne is all of us, isn’t she? A colorful soul by nature, yet in this book, for some reasons, she hides her bright colors and casts a veil of black and white just to blend in, to become one of them, to be ordinary. If you understand her fears, you understand why she does what she does. It is so relatable to each of us and our lives. How we let our fears dull our shine, making our colorful spirits black and white, just so we can survive and we can blend in and we can seem normal.

The Lollipop shoes cut me deeper than Chocolat, because of the complex layers it built and then it just culminates into so much reality, so much truth and so much into our own individual lives. This book is so dear to me because you cannot not fall in love with Vianne and her spirit, even when she is at her most naive and her weakest. And little Anouk, she is the symbol of that one thing we all value the most, the one thing that controls our thoughts, actions, and words ultimately resulting in all our choices. It could be our career, our dog, our fame, or like in Vianne’s case her child. It is the one thing, over which we lose all control. And then there is the dark man masked as the kindly one, the thing we fear to protect the one we value the most. I think this can be applied to my life easily. Magic does not always come in the form of signs and potions, it can very well be our own intuition and the energies we choose in every situation.

After what seems like ages, I finally felt like I can feel a character creep under my own skin without me realizing it. I was a living, walking Vianne Rocher with her precious Anouk and her darkest fears. The book also makes me realize my belief in magic has been strong all along. Like I said earlier magic is how you live your life and the energy you choose and surround yourself with. I used to be fearless once. Now I am not. Every day I try to dig a little deeper to find answers on what is that fear the most. What is it that keeps me away from my own magic? What is it that has made me transform from a Vianne Rocher to a Yanne Charbonneau?

Don’t we all have a Vianne inside of us? Until a Zozie comes along with her lollipop shoes, pretends to be our best friend learns our secrets, our darkest fears and threatens to take away our Anouk along with our own identity. The book is genius in a way that makes us realize the more you succumb to your fears, the more distant you grow from the things you love, the things that make you who you are.

There is only one way to truly live. To live accepting who you really are, to be vulnerable, and to be proud of the unique abilities that speak your magic. There is only one way to truly live. To live like Vianne and Anouk!

There is only one way to truly live your life, like it’s a tale of chocolate, of secret temptations, of Pantoufle, of charms, of neon signs and of MAGIC!