Am?lie Nothomb: Sulphuric Acid

[Noumenon]

The time came when the suffering of others was not enough for them; they needed the spectacle of it, too.

Sulphuric Acid, by Am?lie Nothomb (trans: Shaun Whiteside)

Without warning, ordinary people are snatched from their world of casual freedom and transported en mass by cattle-tuck to a detention camp, boasting only one significant difference from those used by the Nazis ? everything is filmed. With great care, ordinary people are selected from the applicants to be the guards ? if they can look and act the part, the rest will come naturally. This is Concentration, where reality television has reached a new level ? it doesn?t get more real than unjust death.

Sulphuric Acid comes out of nowhere like a mugger, batters you (emotionally), then is gone as quickly as it arrived. It certainly snatches your attention; the difference is that it leaves something with you too ? exactly what it leaves is another matter. We enter this world alongside Pannonique, a lovely young woman amongst more ordinary victims, all of whom are forced to work hard pointless labour as they are slowly starved and harshly beaten, with the weakest or least entertaining contestants regularly taken away to die. Realising that to react plays into the hands of their captors, she closes herself off ? but her statuesque resilience makes her a national icon and makes the programme an astounding success.

Aside from having an enchanting name, Pannonique is presented as universally appealing: beautiful, generous, intelligent, well meaning, wilfully idealistic and courageous. Far more interesting then is her principle adversary, the superficially simple-minded Zdena. Less than unremarkable in life, she first seeks nothing more than to fulfil a role, any role; passing the tests to become a Kapo is the first achievement of her life. For embracing the twin excuses of ?they must have done something? and ?only following orders?, her cruelty towards the prisoners makes her a national scapegoat, reviled by the audience to salve their continued guilty pleasure. Zdena too becomes obsessed by Pannonique, first dimly seeing and hating her as the embodiment of everything she herself lacks, then growing enchanted; but they are on different sides of a crucial line and though Zdena wields all the power Pannonique refuses to bend.

The chapters flick by, channel-hopping between the elfin heroine, her butch and brutal Kapo admirer, the callously self-interested TV executives and the callously interested audience. I found it powerfully affecting stuff (I?d been reading it right before sleep and having rather unpleasant dreams the last few nights) right up until the finale. But I?m not sure if I enjoyed where it goes in those ultimate pages.

My impression on closing the book was that, after rapidly accelerating through the cruelties towards a cataclysmic finish, at the final moments Nothomb sheaths her claws and pulls that final punch ? but I?m not so sure it?s that simple. Like the fictional audience made complicit simply by watching, the reader is denied that sweetest taste of blood which Pannonique represented. I was certainly moved by the story throughout, it is angry, passionate material; yet I felt I had been cheated out of some bestial catharsis in the end, which may have been the intention, but still left me feeling cheated. A bit. I think.

[Stewart]

My impression on closing the book was that, after rapidly accelerating through the cruelties towards a cataclysmic finish, at the final moments Nothomb sheaths her claws and pulls that final punch ? but I?m not so sure it?s that simple. Like the fictional audience made complicit simply by watching, the reader is denied that sweetest taste of blood which Pannonique represented. I was certainly moved by the story throughout, it is angry, passionate material; yet I felt I had been cheated out of some bestial catharsis in the end, which may have been the intention, but still left me feeling cheated. A bit. I think.

I wasn't too keen on the ending myself. But then I don't know what I would have wanted. I'm a little hazy on the title. In my head, I'm seeing Pannonique as the titular sulphuric acid, as given by the listed components of the Molotov cocktail, and this all makes sense to me. Why, however? To me because the Kapo Zdena couldn't obtain her. Bit weak, so there must be more. Your thoughts?

[Noumenon]

I wasn't too keen on the ending myself. But then I don't know what I would have wanted.

I agree really. As with another potentially dark-ending euro fantasy fable, Jose Carlos Somoza's The Art of Murder, I think the more powerful option is to tear the throat out of the reader's moral expectations - but neither he nor Northomb do so, which makes them and the two books a bit soft in the final analysis.

I'm a little hazy on the title. In my head, I'm seeing Pannonique as the titular sulphuric acid, as given by the listed components of the Molotov cocktail, and this all makes sense to me. Why, however? To me because the Kapo Zdena couldn't obtain her. Bit weak, so there must be more. Your thoughts?

I took it to refer not to Pannonique but to Zdena - just as the bloodthirsty ignorance that she supposedly represents is misleading, the lethal sulphuric acid she claims to be in the bottle isn't that at all*; one is a (half) lie to free everyone of responsibility for permitting this inhuman horror show, the other a genuine lie to get everyone out of the death camp alive.

* and in both cases you have potentially explosive contents actually resulting in a fizzle...

[gonfler]

This book reminds me of a lot of things.

First, of Big Brother and Panopticon. It seems to me a mockery of our Reality TV culture. ETC channel doesn't seem to run out of them, right? Second, of Laura Mulvey's theory of scopophilia or the love of looking. But here it is the pleasure of looking at violence. It seems to say that we have a cathartic need to experience violence through our favorite TV shows. Third, I don't know how much Japan has influenced the writer, but her idea of beauty (reflected in Pannonique) reminds me of something very Japanese. Hmm, how do I describe it? It's been a while since I read Sulphuric Acid, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. (I'll add more next time.)

And yes, like others, I find the ending a bit soft and safe.

[Eric]

I've said on other threads that I really appreciate Nothomb's somewhat fairy-tale style, which nevertheless touches on the darker side of life. I acknowledge that Nothomb may be a little wrapped up in her own Japanese-cum-Belgian life but I admire her, not least for her brevity in this age of 1,000-page novels.

No one has yet given me a concrete reason why her books are thought of as so awful. I think that some younger males are not on the same wavelength as this rather private author with a kind of photogenic image who nevertheless gets on with writing books. This was Daniel's response to my awful, blushing confession that I had read and actually enjoyed, "The Book of Proper Names":

Seriously Eric, you can't be serious with this comment. Please tell me you were drunk!

This no chick lit, this is not literature at all. I felt like I was reading the script of a Latin American telenovela!

The characters are just plain and empty. The story is really weak and it goes worse to the end. The scene where she tries to commit suicide and what happens later is just implausible. Then the terrible resource to plunge herself into the story as a character just for half a page and with no purpose or reason it's just terrible.

Terrible in all senses, maybe the worst book I've read this year.

De gustibus..., and all that. I tried to borrow the Dutch translation of Sulphuric Acid from the public library yesterday, but had already reached my miximum borrowing level. There are plenty of things I can take back today or tomorrow. Such as Kader Abdolah...

[saliotthomas]

No one has yet given me a concrete reason why her books are thought of as so awful.

Shit smells bad,no reason for it,it just does.

I think that some younger males are not on the same wavelength as this rather private author with a kind of photogenic image who nevertheless gets on with writing books. ..

Have you ever thougt of writing Lit critic for Fashion magazin ?
Like say Elle or Biba, not vogue mind you.
You do have have style when it's a book you did read.
Really cute.