Amélie Nothomb

[Eric]

Am?lie Nothomb writes short novels in French. She was born in Japan, the daughter of a diplomat, a Belgian diplomat. She writes about growing up and the struggle that some children undergo when trying to remain themselves in the face of conformity.

When I read her novel "Robert des noms propres" in Dutch translation (my Dutch is a lot better than my French) a couple of weeks ago, I didn't realise that several of her novels have also appeared in English, four of which have been translated by British translator Shaun Whiteside.

Nothomb manages to clear away the dross, and pare down the story. I have no experience of being a small girl, being male, nor has ballet ever interested me. But I read the above novel, available in English as "The Book of Proper Names" quite swiftly. It kept my attention and, equally importantly, gave the reader the idea that the author really felt for her characters. The whole novel is a battle between this small girl, gifted at ballet, poor at academic work, and her stepmother, who wants to pour her into some mould to compensate for her own inadequacies. She is shunned and revered at school, by turns. But her greatest disillusionment comes when she, a devoted ballet addict, joins a real ballet school and suffers from the martinet mentality prevalent there.

The "Robert" in the French title of the book refers to the series of dictionaries, like those by Chambers, Oxford or Websters in the English-speaking world. This poor girl is given an idiotic dictionary-derived name by her mother - Plectrude - which is yet another cross she has to bear, along with the fact that her mother dies within a few pages, in prison for killing her husband while pregnant with the girl we will know as Plectrude who moves in with her aunt.

This is not chick lit. This is real lit. I have only so far tackled one other of her books - "P?plum". It is different, but Nothomb again finds a weird and clever angle to the thread story: this time, it is a woman, lifted into the future by a mentor and guardian who disputes in a long verbal duel with the protagonist about the seemingly abstruse subject of whether Pompeii was destroyed or whether in fact the art and architecture there was preserved for posterity. Again, the subject may seem odd, but Nothomb has a way of making the dialogue engaging.

Available in English are the following (French publication; first English publication):

Loving Sabotage (1993; 2000)
Human Rites (1994; 2005)
The Stranger Next Door (1995; 1996)
Fear and Trembling (1999; 2002)
The Character of Rain (2000; 2003)
The Book of Proper Names (2003; 2004)
The Life of Hunger (2004; 2006)
Sulphuric Acid (2005; 2007)

More on the Wikipedia, at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9lie_Nothomb

[Stewart]

This is not chick lit.

This seems to be a misconception I've had and why I've never thought to read her books.

[Stewart]

Sulphuric Acid (2005; 2007)

After a start-stop approach to a number of books this month, I bought Nothomb's Sulphuric Acid and started it this morning. It's early days yet, but the prose is engaginly punchy and I think Am?lie and I are going to get along just fine.

[Eric]

Funnily enough, I bought "Zwavelzuur" yesterday. Connoisseurs of Germanic languages will realise that this is the same book as "Sulphuric Acid". I've not started it yet, as I'm reading a translated novel by another author with the gloomy title of "Descent" (which I will review here when I've finished).

I absolutely agree with Stewart, and I too was put off Emily No-Thumbs, as I have dubbed her, for a good while, thinking her works were going to be another chicky-dreary take on anorexia and growing up. But to my great surprise, once I started reading "The Book of Proper Names", I was quite entranced, though its title had been a a bit off-putting. (Better and punchier in Dutch: "Plectrude".) Her "P?plum" (Epic) is somewhat harder to get through, and I don't think it has appeared in English, maybe for that very reason. The dialogue is a little too sustained, while "Plectrude" was more quick-fire, and varying in pace and setting.

[Noumenon]

Finished Sulphuric Acid last night. Not sure what I think - I was "loving" it right up until the death, but then... anyway, thoughts to follow.

[saliotthomas]

I never was a big fan of hers,my brother is.I find her a bit of an autor with a trade,like Neil Gaiman.One usualy enjoy one or two books,then the novelty wear off to leave a typical Nothomb.
Again she is a good writer,it's just a matter of personal taste.

[Eric]

What I want to find out over time is indeed whether she's someone that is varied enough that you can read several of her works. Some authors write very varied material, others have one string they strum time and time again. But "The Book of Proper Names" and "P?plum" are very different.

Another string to her bow I have not yet examined is her recent penchant for setting her books in Japan where she was, after all, born.

I'm allergic to cult writers, but I cannot deny that I enjoyed the one book I've now read to the end immensely. One good thing is that most of her novels are short. I too like getting stuck into a nice fat book, now and again, but at others I want the story to be rounded off quickly.

[Guillaume Barkero]

One of the biggest literary deceptions for me was Am?lie Nothomb; not all AN, of course, but La m?taphysique des tubes, which I read like five months ago (in French). Before reading it, I had read so many good and laudatory comments about her works, particularly La m?taphysique..., that I expected a masterpiece of some sort. But no, not at all. Although its beggining was brilliant (first six pages or so), the rest of it was not as good. The worst part is I'm not willing to buy any more books by her (the Folio ones aren't cheap in Costa Rica, believe me).

[Colette Jones]

I liked Fear and Trembling and The Book of Proper Names, but couldn't get on with Loving Sabotage at all.

[Daniel del Real]

Nothomb manages to clear away the dross, and pare down the story. I have no experience of being a small girl, being male, nor has ballet ever interested me. But I read the above novel, available in English as "The Book of Proper Names" quite swiftly. It kept my attention and, equally importantly, gave the reader the idea that the author really felt for her characters. The whole novel is a battle between this small girl, gifted at ballet, poor at academic work, and her stepmother, who wants to pour her into some mould to compensate for her own inadequacies. She is shunned and revered at school, by turns. But her greatest disillusionment comes when she, a devoted ballet addict, joins a real ballet school and suffers from the martinet mentality prevalent there.


This is not chick lit. This is real lit.

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.

[Eric]

Blimey, Daniel, it took you nearly a year to reply. Whence, all of a sudden, the pent up ire against Emily Nothumbs?

I, proud arbiter of taste and superiority, really liked what I've read by her. I can see only too clearly that her range or compass of subject is small (mainly herself) but enjoyed what I read.

I totally disagree with you on this one. Looking forward to your next comment during September 2010.

[saliotthomas]

Blimey, Daniel, it took you nearly a year to reply. Whence, all of a sudden, the pent up ire against Emily Nothumbs?

See there Rico,the difference is that Daniel READ a book before commenting on it.A concept completly foreign to you.
Blimey indeed.

[Eric]

I will admit, Saliot, that I've only read two of her novels.

[Daniel del Real]

I totally disagree with you on this one. Looking forward to your next comment during September 2010.

That's ok Eric, it's fine to disagree. I really found nothing in this novel, you did and this is what makes this forum rich in opinions and taste.
I don't think I'll be back on September 2010 commenting on Nothomb again. A tombstone has been set upon her name.

[lionel]

I read Stupeur et tremblements a few years ago, and quite enjoyed what I saw as a Kafkaesque way of looking at how an employee was treated in Japan. I wasn't aware of the Japanese word madogiwazoku, or 'window-seat tribe', used to describe employees that companies no longer have any use for, but don't sack them or make them redundant - they just shun them, make them feel dishonored, and give them a seat by the window with nothing to do but stare out of it. Nor was I aware that Nothomb had worked in Japan.

In the last two days I've read Péplum and Journal d'Hirondelle, and Nothomb is becoming fascinating. She's very interested in how the mind reacts under certain (sometimes extreme) circumstances, such as the loss of a loved one, the effect of magic mushrooms or alcohol, or even when someone is transported into the future. In Journal d'Hirondelle, for instance, she gets inside the mind of a hired killer who can only experience any emotion by blasting an unknown person's skull to bits: Patrick Bateman territory.

This is my comment on Péplum:
　
Péplum could have been a play, as it almost entirely consists of dialogue. At the beginning, shortly before entering hospital for a routine operation, A. N., one of the two main characters, who - like Nothomb, of course - also happens to be a writer, is talking to an unidentified person. She remarks that Pompei - buried under the volcanic ashes of Vesuvius in the year 79 - is the most wonderful gift to archaeologists, and suggests that the eruption was not a natural occurrence, but performed by future time travelers to preserve the most beautiful example of an ancient city.
　
This conceit provides an excellent excuse for A. N. to have a long conversation about the future and the past, as she awakens from the hospital anesthetic to discover that she has been kidnapped, and is now in the year 2580: her captors are responsible for the very idea she has had, and are worried that there might be a disturbance if her thoughts are believed.
　
Most of the book is an intellectual sparring match between A. N. and Celsius, a very major scientist of his time, and whose one true love is Pompei. This is not a book that takes its central conceit seriously, and there is much humor in the verbal interchanges, but the main interest is in what the future looks like. The book gets its title from the garment - a kind of apron - that A. N. must wear because clothing is outmoded: people wear holograms because they are relatively cheap, last a lifetime, and they don't interfere with any activities at all. There are no longer any countries, just two 'orientations', the Levant and the Ponant - which correspond to east and west - and the whole population of the south has been annihilated. Surprisingly, perhaps, there is almost no mention of computers, although they have replaced all administrative jobs.

A. N., who sees Celsius as a mass murderer, repeatedly asks to be taken back to 1995, arguing that he can't kill her as she's already dead. And eventually, Celsius - a man of colossal pride and arrogance - loads her into the 'transplanter', fully aware that she will write a book about him.
　
But then, who will believe her?

For readers of French, this is an interview with Nothomb:

http://www.evene.fr/celebre/actualit...ndelle-561.php

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[Daniel del Real]

In the last two days I've read Péplum and Journal d'Hirondelle, and Nothomb is becoming fascinating. She's very interested in how the mind reacts under certain (sometimes extreme) circumstances, such as the loss of a loved one, the effect of magic mushrooms or alcohol, or even when someone is transported into the future. In Journal d'Hirondelle, for instance, she gets inside the mind of a hired killer who can only experience any emotion by blasting an unknown person's skull to bits: Patrick Bateman territory.

No doubt you're a good review writer Tony, you almost make me feel like reading her again. But no, not yet. Stupeur et tremblements sure sounds as a interesting read, specially for me that enjoys Japanese culture related topics. But I just can't get out the bad taste I had after I read my first and so far only Nothomb: Robert des noms propres. One of the worst reads I've had in my entire life.
Probably later I'll read something else by her, but I'm still on Nothomb rehab.

[lionel]

No doubt you're a good review writer Tony, you almost make me feel like reading her again. But no, not yet. Stupeur et tremblements sure sounds as a interesting read, specially for me that enjoys Japanese culture related topics. But I just can't get out the bad taste I had after I read my first and so far only Nothomb: Robert des noms propres. One of the worst reads I've had in my entire life.
Probably later I'll read something else by her, but I'm still on Nothomb rehab.

I like it, Daniel! Actually, I can't comment on Robert des noms propres as I've not read it yet, but there may anyway have been a translation problem.

Ni d'Ève ni d'Adam (Tokyo Fiancée in English) is her other really autobiographical novel. Anyhow, Amélie Nothomb is a great open French/Belgian secret who should be shared with the world. Believe me, she's worth the effort. I've just acquired Hygiène de l'assassin, her first book and the one she claims is her manifesto, and I hope to read it over the weekend. Meanwhile, I'll leave a few comments about Journal d'Hirondelle here in due course.

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[Eric]

Funny how we differ in taste, Daniel; carry on rehabilitating. The only Nothomb I've read is still, two ago in Dutch translation, the Robert book. I loved it. I started "Peplum" in French, but I feel I would need an English, Swedish, or Dutch translation as a back-up, as I felt I was missing something of the quick-fire dialogue of the French. But I'm still enthusiastic about her as an author.

It's worth repeating that there are quite a few of her books available in English:

Available in English are the following (date of French publication; date of first English publication):

Loving Sabotage (1993; 2000)
Human Rites (1994; 2005)
The Stranger Next Door (1995; 1996)
Fear and Trembling (1999; 2002)
The Character of Rain (2000; 2003)
The Book of Proper Names (2003; 2004)
The Life of Hunger (2004; 2006)
Sulphuric Acid (2005; 2007)

Anyway, I hope that I can soon get hold of a copy of this latest one. Especially now that Lionel has read more than me by a long chalk. This may lead to another bout of Nothombism on my part.

[lionel]

Journal d'Hirondelle then:

This is the story of a madman. For the unnamed narrator of Journal d'Hirondelle - or rather, for the man whose real name is never revealed - the craziness begins after a love affair, when he decides to force upon himself a 'suicide sensoriel', or suicide of the senses: he becomes impotent in many respects, his world reduced to nothingness.

But it is Radiohead's experimental track 'Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors' from their album Amnesiac (2001), and the continuous playing of it, that opens up a breach in one of his deadened senses. He notes that he can't compare it to the Decadents' search for a deregulation of all the senses, but 'We're never happier than when we've found a way of losing ourselves.' He loses his job too, becomes a hired killer working under the name Urbain, and something unfamiliar occurs on his first assignment: on arriving home after the murder, he has his first orgasm in several months (by 'la veuve poignet', or masturbation), but the sensation is weak compared with the thrill the shooting itself gives him. What he had needed all these months was 'the new, the unnamed, the unnameable'. What he experiences is a kind of intoxication, something of great importance in Nothomb's work in general. And Radiohead seem to complement his new profession in their music's lack of nostalgia, making him feel 'indifferent to the poisonous sentimentality of memories'. He has a theory that the feelings experienced by the assassin - in the moment of assassination - are in accordance with the music which that person listens to: Alex's murders in Burgess's (or Kubrick's) A Clockwork Orange are inextricably linked to the ecstasy of Beethoven's Ninth, whereas Urbain's are inextricably linked to 'the hypnotic efficacity' of Radiohead. And like the drug of music, killing too becomes his drug, and on contract-free days he must go into the streets and kill a stranger.

Urbain's last authentic assignment - which is shortly followed by his bizarre redemption - involves killing a politician, along with his wife and three children, although the contract is invalid without bringing back the man's briefcase. Urbain performs his grizzly duty, and on returning home finds in the briefcase the diary of the politician's 18-year-old daughter, which the man has for some unknown reason confiscated. Urbain opens it, and then quickly closes it as he feels ashamed. This is when he thinks he's found the difference between good and bad: killing the girl is nothing, but reading her diary is an unforgivable crime. Perhaps.

From this moment everything changes, and the diary becomes both MacGuffin and sacrament. And Nothomb must have had great fun in choosing this name for the girl. Very short, but really riveting stuff.

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[sirena]

[QUOTE=lionel;77300]

I've just acquired Hygiène de l'assassin, her first book and the one she claims is her manifesto, and I hope to read it over the weekend.

My favourite Nothomb's novel! Go for it and let us know what you think!