Her novels are often much darker than the film adaptation of "Chocolat" would lead us to suppose, and characters are often emotionally damaged or morally ambivalent. Father-figures are frequently absent, and mothers are often portrayed as controlling, harsh or even abusive, as in "Blueeyedboy" and "Five-Quarters of the Orange". Harris favours a first-person, dual-narrator narrative structure, often revisiting past events to cast light on current developments. This generally makes for complex characterisation, and even minor characters are often unusually well developed. Her books have a very strong sense of place, with settings that play as significant a role as do the characters themselves.