REVIEW Novel 'Holy Fools' provides wicked fun

What is it about those bad boys?
By SUSAN HALL-BALDUF
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"Holy Fools," by Joanne Harris (Morrow, $24.95)
If you think you might be burned as a witch, take shelter in an abbey. On the minus side, you have to become a nun. On the plus side, you won't end up a marshmallow on a stick.
That was Juliette's plan in Joanne Harris' new novel, "Holy Fools." In 1605, she entered the abbey of Sainte Marie-de-la-mer on an island off France's Brittany coast. She told the Reverend Mother she was a wealthy widow, pregnant and in need of sanctuary. After the baby was born -- a daughter she named Fleur -- she took holy orders, and she and Fleur took up the routine of religious life.
But as the novel begins, five years have passed, and life is about to get unpleasantly exciting. The Reverend Mother dies, and a new abbess shows up, a prepubescent religious fanatic, accompanied by her priest.
Priest, my foot.
"As I stood there transfixed, I saw him with perfect clarity, the harlequin colors from the rose window illuminating his face and hands. His black hair was longer than I remembered, secured at the nape of his neck with a ribbon, but the rest was as my heart recalled him; the turn of his head into the light, the straight black brows, the woodland eyes. Black becomes him; consciously dramatic in his priest's robe, unadorned but for the gleam of his silver cross, he fixed his gaze directly at me and gave a small, audacious smile."
He's trouble
Oh, what is it about those bad boys that makes us good girls need to fan ourselves?
Once upon a time, the so-called Pere Columbin was the leader of a band of traveling entertainers, and one of them was Juliette. Then she was a tightrope walker famous as l'Ailee, the Winged One. He was her lover, and his betrayal was terrible -- see "marshmallow," above.
Now she's a nun, and this guy is nothing but trouble. She swore that the next time she saw him, she would kill him, but you don't go around murdering priests.
Scheming
He has some nefarious scheme to unfold. It begins with taking Fleur away from Juliette, the better to control her, and goes on with driving the less stable of the nuns out of their minds. The least stable of all is the child abbess who has power over everyone else. Water that turns to blood, sisters who speak in tongues and the Unholy Nun, who is a ghost or maybe a demon. The only one who can see through Pere Columbin, of course, is Juliette, and, of course, no one wants to believe her. P.S. If you're taking shelter in an abbey because otherwise you'll be burned as a witch, don't bring your tarot cards!
"Holy Fools" is exciting and dramatic and romantic in the way you'd expect from "Chocolat" author Harris. It lacks the redemption-for-all closure of "Chocolat," but I can definitely see Johnny Depp as the bad boy.
And it goes very well with Godiva.