The Character of Rain

Amelie Nothombe does it for me once again; I loved this book. It's my third Nothombe book, after Fear and Trembling and Le Sabotage Amoureux. Again this is an "autobiographical fiction" novel, as one can hardly trust Nothombe that she truly recounting her experiences and memories from infancy... Nothombe was born in Kobe, Japan, while her father was serving as the Belgian consul there. The family lived in a small village, Shukugawa, and the story begins with the birth of Amelie. Only she wasn't Amelie yet; she was only a tube. A tube that thought of itself as God. This God did nothing but eat, digest and excrete its food (hence the "tube") but as far as it was concerned, the tube was happy with its existence. Its parents and doctors, on the other hand, were at a loss. This tube did not develop as a normal child and up until the age of two, it is basically a vegetable and indeed it does not have a name. It is named "the plant" by its parents. But then everything changes. Suddenly "the plant" starts to cry and protest and from a baby that needed nothing but cleaning and feeding, it becomes an insufferable nightmare. Day and night it cries and cries, and its parents no longer know what to do. They miss the days of "the plant". The turning point in the life of the tube comes with the visit of her grandmother from Belgium (the visit is somewhat delayed due to the visitor's sartorial needs in preparation for the trip to the east). The grandmother enters the room where the tube is protesting, produces a piece of white chocolate (which the tube accepts after some hesitation), and the transformation occurs. The sweet taste releases the identity of the baby, and Nothombe switches to writing in the first person. Amelie is finally "born". I will stop here. But the story just begins, with many wonderful and dramatic events in the infant's life unfolding at a fast and spellbinding pace. It's a small book, but it succeeds where many a mightier book fail: a captivating story that is both amusing and dramatic.

The translation of this book into English has been done extraordinarily well and there is seemingly no loss of nuance and feeling in the strangely compelling storyline. The child protagonist is a mere tot when she starts to tell her story but in the beginning we are treated to her creation when she was a "tube" "a plant" "a vegetable" bought into life by sweet white chocolate and her Belgian Grandmother's hand. Now we all know the best chocolate comes from Belgian and whether the author meant us to realise this (somehow I think she did) we are drawn into the strange world of a child who has the mind of a little God but has the body of a baby girl. She can talk before she is two years old but for a long time she hides it from her family, but fluently speaks Japanese to her favourite Nanny Nishio-San whose simple outlook on life lets her accept without real question this anomaly. At first the characters in the book are one dimensional, the "little God's" parents and older siblings nothing more than card-board cut-outs but slowly with the turning of each page, everyone gradually comes to life, the two Japanese Nanny's are my favourite characters, one good and loving toward the "little God", the other arrogant and contemptuous of her European ward, all in all a complex relationship between various people and various levels of the mind. The book ends with the "little God" making a serious attempt to take her own life, she wants to die, and she wants to leave the world before she looses all her "Godhead," but she is saved and in being saved she is lost. This is a kind of Paradise Lost for the modern world and I would highly recommend it but only for those readers who like to read strange books like myself.

In the beginning before there is an Amélie, God exists as a tube eating, breathing, and excreting. However, the creators are a bit unhappy that this baby behaves more like a vegetable so these parents nickname the tube "la Plante". However, two years later la Plante abruptly moves and cries. Then the Tube's Belgium grandma arrives with the most devastating poison known in the universe, white chocolate. The Tube tastes the sweetness and a new conscience has metamorphosed. Life in the tube has turned quite sweetly though the awakening of Amelie makes her realize that paradise will be lost.This unusual autobiographical tale first is told in the third person until the pivotal moment in history, the infamous chocolate incident, when the plot is written as a first person narrative. Not everyone will want to read this metaphysical story, but those who do will find a clever, witty, and intelligent tale that even makes the earliest of days come across realistically. Except for the title, fans will appreciate Amelie Nothomb's work that does not miss a beat in the translation from the original French MÉTAPHYSIQUE DES TUBES.Harriet Klausner

This is a very unusual auto-biography telling the story of a little girl from her birth untill she reaches four.The beginning of the book is amazing, you really don't know where the writter is leading you-could this be reality, I mean is this every Human's reality or just a metaphoric approach of the beginning of our lifes...Are we just tubes that need a revelation to exist?This would be the metaphysical part of the book-very exciting not all boring like it may seem- leading to a more "normal" yet very intriging story.A fabulous tale written with an insatiable rythm inviting us into the world of a little Belgian girl born in Japan deeply touched by the grace and the culture of that country and surrounded by European and Japanese cultures in the same house.I never thought a four year-old could have led such an interresting and sometimes so scary life.No violence, no blood only inner-fears we might all have felt one day.This reefers to the French version of the book.Phil-Nicole's husband.

I have read this book in its original French version, and I hope the translator did a great job with it.It is a wonderful book.............the story is quite amazing, with an even more amazing ending......I read it in 2 hours, couldn't stop myself from turning page after page. I have read all the books written by A. Nothomb, and in my opinion, this is her masterpiece!