2025 & 2026 Reading Challenge discussion

This is the discussion thread to discuss Chocolate: Chapters 11-20.

One of the things I find most interesting about this chapter is the difference between the Easter I think of from my childhood, with great food, family, and of course lots of chocolate treats. Granted, my childhood was not very religious, but it seems like the pastor's crusade against the chocolate festival is pretty out of touch.

There seems to be a better way to promote the Easter tradition in this community. Why not have an Easter sermon and find a way to tie in the chocolate festival as a celebration of breaking the Lenten fast?

What do you all think? Has anyone gotten this far yet?

I think the priest is searching for a religion that he has very specific ideas about and the more he searches by restricting himself (with food, personal connections to the villagers, ignoring his apparent past of living in the village as a boy, etc.) and trying to admonish and bully others, the further he ends up getting from finding peace in his beliefs. Which leads to even more anger and disillusionment.

But he also seems to find the little comfort he has in this anger and self-denial which makes me think he feels very guilty/ashamed of something. That being along the lines of what Vianne keeps sensing/seeing.

I agree with you Cassandra about a better way to promote the tradition and tie in the festival. But I don't think he's able to rationalize his faith with an idea like that because he's so wound into whatever is going on with himself.

Whenever I come across a character (or someone in life) that has a lot of anger/judgement directed at a whole people or at people in general, I typically feel like they've also got a lot of anger/judgement rattling around in there towards themselves. Either that or a lot of confliction. Nothing is going to change until that personal baggage is worked out. I'm definitely interested to see how his character is fleshed out.

I agree that there should be and probably could be a way to tie in the festival, but I think Reynaud is just so pent on having Vianne being the "bad guy" that he won't/can't see that.
I think he feels very territorial and anything that would take "his" people away from him, Vianne, the river people, etc, is bad and has to go.