I'm so glad you liked it! x

Content Warning: contains scenes of graphic kindness; wokery; tolerance; profanity.

A few days ago, I posted a little Twitter poll, asking readers (and authors) what they thought of trigger warnings. I followed this up with a short thread, outlining my own thoughts on this, and how they have changed over the years.

The Daily Mail immediately seized the idea, and without contacting me, or asking for further clarification, published an article quoting my words, under a headline that was both inflammatory and untrue: Trigger warnings should be put on EVERY book to make readers feel 'safe', Chocolat author Joanne Harris says.

Predictably, this caused a frenzy of reaction from Daily Mail readers and Twitter trolls, including accusations of censorship and “pandering to moronic snowflakes”. Several people (who I suspect, have never even picked up one of my books) swore never to read them. One charmer wrote: “Fucking pathetic. What a dick the author must be.”

I don’t blame the writer of the article; most clickbait headlines are added by someone else - in this case, by someone who couldn’t even be bothered to read the article, let alone my original thread. It has since been quietly changed, presumably in response to my comments, although once again, without any communication with me. But as a result of these comments (and some more polite ones from people asking about the poll), I think it’s time I made it clear, both where I stand on trigger warnings, and why the public perception of them, fuelled by culture wars debates, is both skewed and inaccurate.

First, the result of my poll: about 35% of the people who answered were in favour of some kind of content warning. About 30% were against, and the rest were undecided, curious about the result. To me this suggests that most people are generally positive or undecided on the subject. From the comments, it seemed to me that many of the people who were against trigger warnings were afraid they might lead to censorship, or spoilers, or editing of the classics, or stopping people from reading the classics, or authors losing the right to free speech.

But here's the thing. Trigger warnings are nothing to do with those things. Here’s why people have been misled, and why it matters to put things straight.

First, this expression; “triggered.” Like “woke” and “snowflake” it has been weaponized to mean something like “upsetting the libs.” Reader, that's not what it means. The concept of triggering only applies to someone with PTSD or some kind of serious psychological trauma. That makes it irrelevant to politics. Anyone can have trauma. Anyone is potentially vulnerable to mental illness. And that’s why trigger warnings exist; to warn people who might suffer a relapse, or some other kind of serious harm, if exposed without warning to certain images, scenes or narrative strands. Some of the obvious ones might be sexual violence; graphic images; mental illness; eating disorders; suicide. I’m sure there are lots more. But we’ve had content warnings (if you prefer) on films for decades without any resistance, and TV shows routinely flag up scenes with flashing images, etc. that might trigger (that word again) an epileptic seizure in anyone susceptible.  

And yes, it makes sense. I mean, why would you want someone to have a seizure if you could just warn them against it? Who but a sadist would argue that people with epilepsy should be forced to have seizures, or that having regular seizures will make them more resilient somehow, or that people afraid to have seizures should just stop watching films and TV altogether, or that warnings against flashing lights would somehow spoil other people’s enjoyment of the show? And yet those are all things that people have said to me recently about content warnings.

To me content warnings in books are like content warnings on packaged food. Most people don’t read them, unless they have a special interest or need to know. Why do they need to know? There might be any number of reasons. Maybe they’re vegan, and want to avoid eating animal products. Maybe they have a religious dietary restriction. Maybe they have a mild allergy to peanuts or to shellfish. Or maybe it’s a more a serious allergy that could even result in their death. Either way, details are useful. Content warnings in books are the same, except that instead of triggering a physical attack, certain things trigger a mental one.

I'm not talking here about things that might simply cause offence. I sometimes use profanity in my books; I sometimes write about topics that people may find challenging. That's not going to change. I won't add content warnings for swearing, or nudity, or paganism, or LGBT issues. None of those things cause trauma, though I'm willing to believe they may in some cases cause offence.

But mental trauma is just as real as any physical injury. It’s not just “in your head”. It requires adjustments in the same way that any other condition may require adjustments - whether that's a wheelchair ramp, or subtitles on TV, or studs on the pavement to help the blind.

And yet, the culture wars narrative – led by a right-wing media - is leaning increasingly towards a “survival of the fittest” mentality; repeatedly encouraging able-bodied people to question disability, white people to question racism, rich people to question poverty, and urging those who have never experienced mental trauma to dismiss the needs of those who struggle with it daily. Empathy and kindness are presented as political gestures, earning “woke points” (whatever they are), rather than the elements of basic human decency. And of course, people who talk about “decency” in the context of nudity, LGBT issues and profanity often see no problem in labelling themselves “anti-woke”, or sneering at the “Be Kind brigade”, or making dismissive judgments about the lives of people they will never know. Somewhere along the line, somehow, basic human kindness has been reframed as a tool of the left, and those who hold right-wing opinions are encouraged to reject it.

Well, fuck that. People are better than this. Some people need content warnings, and it’s not up to you or me to decide whether their need is valid or not. That’s why, from now on, I’ll be adding including content warnings to my books, and to my author website. Ignore them or not, as you choose.

But to those who are offended by the concept of inclusion, here’s a trigger warning just for you: Contains tolerance; scenes of moderate kindness; depictions of graphic wokery. Read my books at your peril. Or don’t. Isn’t freedom marvellous?

35 years ago. Oh, man.

The Final Chapter

A review – well, sort of – of Chris Fowler’s WORD MONKEY.

There are books that you never want to end. Sometimes it’s because of the thrilling plot; or the fantastic world of the story;  or that the central characters are so engaging that it’s hard to say goodbye. Whatever the reason, it has taken me a very long time to reach the end of my old friend’s final book. Not because it was dull – quite the reverse; it may be the finest, funniest, most sincere, the wisest thing he has ever written – but because I didn’t want to reach the final chapter.

This is the memoir Chris Fowler always spoke of writing. The first instalment, PAPERBOY, was the story of his childhood; a life dominated by books, films and comics in a working-class household where no-one understood his passion. The second chapter, FILM FREAK, was the account of a young, ambitious gay man at the start of his career, obsessed with the movies, desperately seeking work in a collapsing industry. The third, WORD MONKEY, was to be the story of a successful career in books, his advice to budding writers, his thoughts on the industry, all presented with the same joie-de-vivre, keen observation, hilarious wisdom and lightness of touch that characterized the previous two. And it is – it’s all those things, and more. More, because it’s also the tale of the final chapter in a life, the last pages of which I read in real time against the backdrop of the pandemic and everything that came with it, including Chris’ diagnosis with terminal cancer and his final, dazzling flare of creativity before the end.

Before I go on, some context. Chris and I were friends a long time – over 30 years, in fact. It began with a letter I wrote as a very new author, thanking him for my only review. From there it developed into a regular correspondence (I still have a stack of those letters, many of them detailing things that later appeared in the books, always funny and generous, and illustrated with little cartoons); and then a growing friendship. We were different in many ways, but we shared a love of books and films, and it was in Chris’ nature to help other writers whenever he could. He saw the rise of my career from teacher to bestselling novelist. He was there at my highest and lowest points. He found me my first proper agent. His company did the advertising campaign for the movie of CHOCOLAT. When he moved from Kentish Town to King’s Cross, I bought a pied-à-terre down the road, and we met up whenever I was in town, usually for a breakfast that would go on till lunchtime.

At the beginning of lockdown, both of us were diagnosed with cancer. They found mine early. His, too late. Over the next three years I tried to come to terms with his terminal diagnosis. I didn’t really believe in it; he was still so full of life, so upbeat, so creative. We corresponded by e-mail and text from our respective chemo chairs; he told me funny stories about his life and his doctors. When lockdown ended, we met up again for our usual breakfasts in King’s Cross. I think I expected to see a change; but he looked and sounded just the same; and he was still writing furiously. In December 2022 he finished editing his memoir; by then he was unable to leave the flat, and I went to see him at home for the last time. I didn’t know it would be the last time, of course, but it’s rare to know these things as they happen. He was getting frail by then, but mostly he was just the same; clever and funny and cheery and filled with stories and book recommendations and accounts of obscure European films that I absolutely had to watch. And he was still writing furiously; short stories, blog posts, tweets, even a new Bryant and May book (he joked that it would have to be a short one). I told him I loved him. He said it back. That was the last time I saw him, although our correspondence went on right up till the end, in March, just weeks from his 70th birthday.  

I still find it hard to believe he’s gone. His voice is still so clear in my mind. And I still see him all over King’s Cross; in bookshops and theatres and cinemas. In the comics and record shops we visited together; in countless breakfast places. And it’s here, in this book, the final chapter of a life well lived, a quite extraordinary life, crowned with achievements (which he typically downplays) and filled with humour and stories. It’s all here, and it’s wonderful, and it fills me with admiration at the talent of the writer, as well as the courage of a man who can take something as bleak as a terminal cancer diagnosis, and work it into something like this; a celebration; joyous, true and filled with unflinching insight.

I don’t know why I feel surprised. I always knew how good he was. But this is more than just a dazzling piece of writing. It’s a testament to the power of words; a reminder that through them, you can shine even beyond that darkness; that life is short, and love is long; and stories can live forever. This is why we write, after all; to push away the shadows. To connect with each other across the years. To celebrate what brings us joy; to prove that we are not alone. So read this book, and read the rest of this astonishing trilogy. And be inspired – as writers, as readers – by the boy who dreamed of the stars, and learned to live forever.

Here's something nice for you, tumblr - BROKEN LIGHT, for the piffling price of just 99p on Kindle UK...

Mermaids and Mr Freud...

What do you think when you hear the word “mermaid”? Chances are, you’ll imagine a beautiful girl with a sparkling fish tail, naked breasts, flowing hair, gazing into a mirror: a scene straight out of early 20th-century Golden Age illustrators Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. Or perhaps you see Ariel, Disney’s 1989 cartoon version of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, with her cherry-red hair and purple shell bikini. That romanticized – and Disneyfied – picture of a mermaid seems fated to endure with this year’s live-action The Little Mermaid film (though the casting of Halle Bailey in the title role has prompted as much racist backlash as it has celebration. The mermaid of Andersen’s 1837 fairytale was white, say the purists.) But Andersen himself drew on a far older, stranger, and more subversive folklore to write his story. His tale of a mermaid who, falling in love with a human prince, is forced to sacrifice her tail and her voice in order to become human, was deeply influenced by Undine, the 1811 novella by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, which in turn was inspired by the 16th-century occultist Paracelsus, who coined the word “undine” to describe an elemental water spirit who can only gain a soul by marrying a human. And mermaid legends, like so many other fairytales, have been shared in many parts of the world for millennia. One of the earliest mermaid stories dates back to sometime around 1000 BC. In Assyrian mythology, the goddess Atargatis, who was venerated for thousands of years all over the Middle East, attains a half-fish, half-human form after throwing herself into a lake. The Yoruba spirit, Yemoja, who is represented as a mermaid, appears under other names as an ocean and river mother goddess – Yemaja, Yemanjá, Yemoyá, Yemayá – across half the world. Mami Wata – a water deity sometimes known as La Sirène - revered in Haiti and many parts of Africa, often appears as a mermaid, with a mirror that allows the passage from one plane of reality to another. And so it goes, from the ningyo of Japanese folklore to the sjókonar of Norse sagas. It is one of the most powerful archetypes in our shared dreaming. Nor were mermaids always understood to be mythological. Throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, European bestiaries and illuminated manuscripts portrayed mermaids as real creatures. On several occasions fishermen have claimed to have caught them in their nets. Early explorers reported mermaid sightings – although it is more likely that they were dolphins, seals or manatees, mistaken for mermaids by sailors expecting to encounter exotic beasts on their journey. Since then, humans have stubbornly continued to look for proof that mermaids are real (so far, without success).  What does the mermaid mean? Why is the half-fish half-woman such a potent, enduring legend? At the heart of these stories is the question of women’s power. Fairy tales and folklore have played an important role in challenging societal roles and giving people opportunities to discuss difficult or taboo subjects through the safety of metaphor – in this case, through the image of a woman whose irresistible sexual power over men is balanced by her own inability to function sexually or to reproduce. And in the days when pregnancy and childbirth often proved fatal, that might not have been such a bad thing. The mermaid cannot be raped, or forced to give birth. Not being human, she is not bound by the conventions of human society or the laws of the Church. She enjoys both the freedom and the sensuality of her element without any of the attendant dangers or discomforts. In folklore, the mermaid has independence, and can exercise sexual power over men, which makes her ultimately dangerous, unnatural: a monster. Perhaps this is why so many ancient myths and medieval bestiaries depict mermaids as untrustworthy, deceitful creatures, leading sailors to their doom. Their bodies are all sexual promise, but no sexual reward; and their voices are so enchanting as to drive men to madness. Unable to fulfil what some believe to be a woman’s biological destiny, they are often portrayed as soulless. Because a woman who uses without being used, who seduces without being seduced, who moves through water and air – whereas men are doomed to drown if they venture into the mermaid’s world – is a challenge to God, to the patriarchy, and to order itself.  In The Little Mermaid, Andersen tamed this older, more radical tradition. The moralism of his tale serves the dual purpose of mastering the mermaid – of making her fall victim to a human’s charms, rather than the more traditional way around – and taking away her power. The mermaid, made helpless by love of her prince, gives up her native element and the autonomy that comes with it, and exchanges it – via a witch’s spell – for a pair of feet, though walking causes her terrible pain. She also relinquishes the power of speech, which means that she is incapable of expressing her love in any way but the physical. And if her prince falls in love with someone else, then the mermaid is doomed to die on the instant, and to forfeit the soul for which she has sacrificed everything. Her entire being – her very existence – becomes dependent on the love and approval of her prince. Her independence, her challenge to the patriarchal status quo is gone. Though the ending of Andersen’s tale is – to a certain degree – redemptive (the mermaid, refusing to take the life of her prince in order to save her own life, is borne aloft by spirits of air and promised an eternal soul), it seems very cruel, especially as the heroine is only fifteen years old. A contemporary reader might well see in Andersen’s telling a warning to an emerging women’s movement – women’s power has often been seen as fragile, unnatural, and at the mercy of emotion. Unlike the tragedy of Andersen’s mermaid and prince (and of Fouqué’s Undine), the 1989 Disney film rewards Ariel and Eric with a happily-ever-after ending. And it tells their story in a cheery, colourful palette (a stark contrast to Kay Nielsen’s original dark, eerie concept drawings for the film), which while being pleasingly child-friendly, also reduces the mermaid’s essential alienness, and minimizes her sacrifice, thereby making her tale into little more than a love story with a little added jeopardy.

 But Disney also perpetuated other tropes. It is meaningful that the sea witch who provides the mermaid with the spell fits the older-woman archetype well represented in fairy tales: embittered by age, envious of the little mermaid’s youth and beauty. She is the one who demands the mermaid’s voice as payment for her services: a potent image of an older generation, silencing the voices of youth. (In Andersen’s telling, she too is the one who demands that the mermaid’s sisters cut off their hair in order to save their sibling.) The older woman is filled with rage and contempt for the younger woman; taking pleasure in their humiliation and the loss of their power. And as the tentacled Ursula in the Disney version, she is especially monstrous. 

  Over the centuries, fairy stories have always been reinvented to serve the needs of the changing times. And people have often fretted about this. (In 1853, Charles Dickens criticised the trend for rewriting fairytales to fit didactic, contemporary concerns.) But perhaps that the meaning of the mermaid has drifted further and further away from its origins in ancient folklore should not be cause for too much concern. Today, the mermaid has become the symbol of the trans community, whose members often feel the generational divide especially keenly. And there are endlessly imaginative ways to retell the tradition. (In 2008’s Ponyo, Hayao Miyazaki spins his tale of a goldfish who longs to be human into a charming meditation on childhood.) 

 Like the ever-evolving traditions of fairytales, magic, too, is transformative. In stories, magic acts as a metaphor for the change we seek to effect in our lives, in ourselves, in the world around us. Perhaps that is why fairy tales resonate so deeply with us. Why else would we cling to them, retell them in so many ways? They teach us not that magic exists, but that change is possible. They teach us not that dragons exist, but that monsters can be overcome. And they teach us to hope, in the face of a world that seems to be getting harsher and more confusing by the day, that sometimes love can save us, and that, even in the face of the cruellest kind of tyranny, we can still keep control of our fate, and hope for a happy ending –not just a Disney wedding, but something perhaps more satisfying. In films like Moana - or more recently Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken – the love story is with the sea; a story of claiming, rather than giving up power. Mermaids – in all their aspects – are still working their magic on us. And now, perhaps more than ever, it’s time to listen to their song.

Dear Mr X...

It’s hard to give up a relationship, even when it has become toxic. Even when it brings you no joy, it’s hard to accept the fact that you’re better off without it. To look at the time you spent building it, to write off those years and start again can feel like jumping off a cliff into a bottomless precipice. You start to think of all the things you’ll lose if the relationship ends; the good times, the shared friends, the laughter and the memories. Your heart sinks at the thought of trying to rebuild all that from scratch. The time. The work. The energy. It feels like a bereavement.

I feel like that about Twitter now. A relationship that began fifteen years ago, when I was someone different, and the platform was new and hopeful and designed for communication, rather than spreading division. Sometimes I still find myself mourning that time; the friends I made; the stories I wrote, the thousands of incarnations of the Shed. Some of my friends have been left there for good, their Twitter accounts frozen in time; their words all that remains of them. Perhaps that’s why I’m reluctant to leave, even though the bluebirds have flown, and even the logo is changing to something that looks to me a lot like a modified swastika – an apt comparison, given the way in which certain voices and political views have been given unasked-for prominence, while others seem to have vanished altogether from my feed. Feed someone garbage for long enough, and they start to sicken and die. That’s what happening via this site. I have watched it happening ever since Elon Musk arrived - a man so cartoonishly self-obsessed that it’s hard to even believe he’s real, except that no writer of fiction or game designer would dream of creating such a crass and substandard character.

X. What a choice of symbol.

X marks the spot for pirates in search of buried treasure. X is the mark of a person who is unable to write their name. X is the identity of someone who needs to stay anonymous. It’s a voter’s mark; an erasure; a mystery; a chromosome.

And it’s also an occult symbol, a rune: the rune Gyfu according to the Old English Futhorc, and Gebo in the Elder Futhark; both of which translate as “gift”.

The Anglo-Saxon rune poem that accompanies it goes like this:

ᚷ Gẏfu gumena bẏþ gleng and herenẏs, ƿraþu and ƿẏrþscẏpe and ƿræcna gehƿam ar and ætƿist, ðe bẏþ oþra leas.

which translates as follows:

Generosity brings credit and honour, which support one's dignity; it furnishes help and subsistence to all broken men who are devoid of aught else.

At first glance, this seems the opposite of what Elon Musk has done for the world. A man who sees social media as his own personal platform; a man who sees the cosmos as his own personal joy-ride.

The mistake we made was believing that Twitter was our playground. Elon Musk has made it his, and is currently in the process of breaking the toys, chopping down the trees and nuking the site from orbit, just to prove that play is overrated, and that only money counts. I can’t help feeling sorry for the little boy he must have been, and to wonder what he might have been like if he’d actually had any friends. But it’s time: and the change of branding makes it even easier to step away.

So maybe this is a kind of gift to the ones of us leaving Twitter. Misinformation, misogyny, transphobia, conspiracy theories and other kinds of social media poison have already made it increasingly difficult to feel safe there. (And fun fact, the word Gift in German happens to mean “poison”.) Perhaps the ultimate gift of X is the freedom from the toxicity that has built up in this most volatile of media; the gift of better mental health; of greater connection to our world; an escape from a toxic fantasy back into the open air.

I won’t leave altogether – Threads still isn’t open to Europe, and the jury’s still out on Bluesky - but I don’t want to give any more of my content to a man who values power and money over human connection. I’m @joannechocolat across all my social media - that’s Threads, Bluesky, Tumblr and Instagram – and I’ll still be posting stories on my ko-fi account at: https://ko-fi.com/story. But if you want to know what I’m doing, then sign up to my free newsletter on my website at joanne-harris.co.uk. I’m coming to believe that social media as I once knew it may have run its course for me: I won’t leave it altogether, but from now on I plan to invest more of my time and energy elsewhere.

And as for Mr X - I doubt you’ll be around forever. But while you are, my gift to you is this final story: written live on Twitter, as was, for all the little bluebirds.

There once was a boy who had no friends. His father gave him everything money can buy: toy cars, model aeroplanes, even rockets that really flew, but friends were impossible to buy, and the boy was lonely, angry, and bored. 

One day, when he was playing alone with one of his expensive toys, he saw a group of children playing in a nearby park. They sounded so merry and carefree that the boy was jealous. 

“Why don’t I have friends?” he cried. “I shall buy the park, and then everyone will notice me.”

And so the boy asked his father to buy him the park for his very own; and he settled there with his expensive toys, and put a notice on the gate, saying: Entrance fee, 8 shillings.

The children of the neighbourhood looked enviously at the empty park. Some of the wealthier ones paid the entry fee, but many of the children did not; instead, they waited outside the gates, and looked into the place where once they had all played together.

But still the boy was not content. None of the new children played with him. Instead they played their own games, and climbed trees, or played hide and seek, or lay on the grass watching the clouds. None of this served the boy at all, and he was sulky and discontent.

“If I have all the trees cut down, then maybe the others will notice me,” he thought.

And so he ordered his servants to cut down all the trees in the park. But apart from a few toadies and flatterers, the children still did not play with him, but mocked him secretly from afar, and fell silent whenever he passed by.

“How ungrateful these children are,” said the boy, getting angry. “I bought this park for them, and still they refuse to play with me! Very well, I shall cease to pay the groundsmen and the gardeners. The park will be overrun with weeds. Wild animals will roam there.”

And so the boy did as he had promised, and the park became a wilderness. No-one wanted to pay for it, and even the toadies and flatterers and children of wealthy families went elsewhere to see their friends.

The boy was very angry at this, but there was no-one to be angry with. All the other children had gone. And so he took out his rage on the deer who had begun to roam in the park, shooting them with his toy crossbow, and became known throughout the land as a mighty hunter.