Fortunately I have rather more to keep me grounded in the real world than Jay – living with an eight-year-old is a terrific antidote to living in the past – and I tried not to think too much about Chocolat as I was writing, knowing that all literary successes are heavily dogged by the curse of expectation. I’m relieved it happened that way, because if I had been able to foresee the success of Chocolat I might well have ended up like Jay, completely frozen by his own achievement and unable to write anything serious again. I finished Blackberry Wine before the publication of Chocolat. Under its influence, time can work backwards and the dead return to life – as Jay finds, when, on impulse, he gives up his glamorous London lifestyle and escapes to a half-derelict farmhouse in a remote village in Gascony, where two mysteries await him a ghost from the past whom no-one else can see, and Marise, a reclusive widow with ghosts of her own… Background For there is something magical about this wine something which brings the past to life, an agent of transformation. Trapped between an unresolved past and a humdrum present, suffering from writer’s block and the beginnings of alcoholism, Jay has lost his bearings.īut the accidental discovery of six bottles of home-brewed wine, a legacy from an old and vanished friend, seems to hold the key to a new beginning, a means of escape, and a final reconciliation. These are the questions which began Blackberry Wine: the second volume of my “food trilogy” and the story of Jay Mackintosh, a writer of pulp fiction with one literary success to his name and a dwindling grasp of reality. Archer Roose is available to order online at Drizly and at brick-and-mortar retailers and grocery stores including Bevmo!, Target, Total Wine & More, Sprouts and more.What if you could bottle a year of your past? Which one would it be? Which time of year? What would it smell like? How would it taste? See Banks’ book club “announcement” below. And I always recommend The Witches Are Coming by Lindy West for its sharp humor,” she reveals. I also finally read Salinger’s Nine Stories and they blew me away. “Dennis Lehane sent me his new book Small Mercies and I am hooked. In all seriousness, the Hollywood bibliophile shares three of her recent favorite reads. Imagine the pressure to control a dragon’s diet when it’s life or death. Dragon farts are actually so powerful that they can take down Middle Earth. Of the imaginary novels she’d like to see made into a film, Banks says, “Definitely Dragon Farts. She’s a natural leader who I knew would convince others that Archer Roose was going to succeed.”

“Although she knew business and economics, what impressed me was her passion and charisma. “She was a dynamo right off the bat,” says Banks.

The Hunger Games actress tells The Hollywood Reporter that she first connected with Archer Roose CEO Marian Leitner-Waldman over Zoom during the pandemic.

Blackberry wine novel