Mention Books During Les Catilinaires
| Original Title: | Les Catilinaires |
| ISBN: | 2253141704 (ISBN13: 9782253141709) |
| Edition Language: | French |
Amélie Nothomb
Mass Market Paperback | Pages: 160 pages Rating: 3.6 | 3023 Users | 174 Reviews
Specify Of Books Les Catilinaires
| Title | : | Les Catilinaires |
| Author | : | Amélie Nothomb |
| Book Format | : | Mass Market Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 160 pages |
| Published | : | January 1st 1997 by LGF (first published August 24th 1995) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Cultural. France. Contemporary. Roman |
Rendition Toward Books Les Catilinaires
In The Stranger Next Door by Amélie Nothomb, childhood sweethearts, Emile and Juliette Hazel, married for 43 years, decide to abandon city life for an idyllic retirement in the country. They have a burning need for solitude, to become true free spirits liberated from "what men have made of life." And so, in true fairy tale fashion, they buy a cottage in the woods, a house covered in blue wisteria set near a river, and get ready to begin their golden years in peace and tranquility.But then comes a knock at the door.
Soon their Garden-of-Eden getaway is interrupted by a visit from their neighbor, Palamedes Bernardin. At first, Emile and Juliette are delighted. Mr. Bernardin is a retired cardiologist (how convenient to have a doctor living so close!). Better yet, he isn't a nosy chatterbox, as they feared. But the man's behavior quickly takes a turn: first just odd and then boorishly weird. The Hazels are baffled though still amused after this first fairly innocuous visit. He stays exactly two hours and leaves without ceremony. Emile and Juliette laugh it off—easy cruelties: their neighbor is large and portly, and has the personality of a sack of boulders. But as Mr. Bernardin visits the next day, and the day after that, in succession, when it looks like the visits will never cease, a low-grade paranoia and anxiety begins to settle on them.
By the middle act, we meet Mr. Bernardin's wife, Bernadette. In an effort to fill the void of a conversation, Emile blurts out an absurd dinner invitation. He is morbidly curious. He wants to know who would marry such a man. When they meet Bernadette, Emile and Juliette are shocked. Nothomb's descriptions of Bernadette are grotesque: "a protuberance," a "cyst" who shakes hands with a "tentacle," has a mouth "like that of an octopus" and speaks in indecipherable grunts. She repulses the couple but also elicits their pity and sympathy. Juliette eventually makes it a personal crusade to 'save' Bernadette from what she sees as Mr. Bernardin's cruelties and oppressions.
The book darkens in tone with every turn of the page, like a stain that deepens on white carpet. The Hazels' sense of social obligation prevents them from saying what they mean. Soon their need to understand their neighbor, to understand why he acts the way he does, to ascribe some logical motive to his actions—gets turned inward. The inscrutable Mr. Bernardin becomes a psychological foil to Emile's own buried anxieties and fears. In fact, it reminded me of a psychiatrist and patient relationship, albeit inverted and corrupted. Emile is enraged by the intrusions, which evolve slowly in the book from being a nuisance to daily tortures. He can't sleep at night. He starts to babble and drone, just to fill the silences. He becomes so obsessed with the visits he is helpless to prevent them. "I hadn't realized that I was a coward," Emile muses. With wicked glee, Nothomb inserts small pinpricks into her characters. Nothing you can see or feel at first, but eventually it does serious damage.
The Stranger Next Door is a dark, absurdist comedy with existential edges that only novelists writing in French seem capable of pulling off. It is also a novel about change and transformation: in this case, Emile's mental descent (or ascent, if you're really cynical...). Nothomb captures this idea well when Emile starts musing about good and evil as different states of matter:
"Good is far less convincing than evil, but it's because their chemical structures are different. Like gold, good is never found in a pure state in nature: it therefore doesn't seem impressive. It has the unfortunate tendency not to act; it prefers, passively, to be seen. Evil on the other hand, is like a gas: it's not easy to see but it can be detected by its odor. It's most often stagnant, disbursed in a suffocating sheet; initially this aspect seems inoffensive, but then suddenly you see it at work and you realize the ground it has won, the tasks it has accomplished. And by then it's all over; gas cannot be expelled."
How are gases different from other states of matter? Well, gases expand; they are elastic and can be compressed; and they have weight. The Stranger Next Door is one part laughing gas, two parts gas chamber. It's a novel about a man's downward spiral to self-destruction. One criticism I have, though, is that you can guess the ending of the book fairly easily, but I suppose mystery isn't the point. (view spoiler)[By the end of the book, Emile's moral center is completely destroyed. In a kind of pathological reversal, Emile is driven to murder, a murder that he sees as an act of mercy. (hide spoiler)] Before that fateful visit, Emile thought his life was perfect. Then this impenetrable, impassive presence makes him reflect and think otherwise. It becomes a kind of violation from which he never recovers. These are just one of the many dark 'truths' that Nothcomb explores in this short but explosive book.
Rating Of Books Les Catilinaires
Ratings: 3.6 From 3023 Users | 174 ReviewsWrite Up Of Books Les Catilinaires
If Beckett copulated with Camus and gave birth to an easy moment, this might be the lovechild in their arms. The initial structure of the novel - similar to her first novel, Hygiene and the Assassin - is noticed immediately and one cannot fathom how the author will pull it off, but unlike that earlier novel she renders the whole story with aplomb. And while the writer's hand hovers over her usual finishing technique of the unexpected small noise maker, in the end she slides into her ending moreThe central character is a retired philosophy teacher and the book jumps right into the human psyche. I loved every word of this book and want to read everything by Northomb, although I don't know how many of her books have been translated into English from French. Her writing makes me contemplate learning French... that's how much I liked this book.
I loughed so hard !! Absolutely weird and hilarious.
In The Stranger Next Door by Amélie Nothomb, childhood sweethearts, Emile and Juliette Hazel, married for 43 years, decide to abandon city life for an idyllic retirement in the country. They have a burning need for solitude, to become true free spirits liberated from "what men have made of life." And so, in true fairy tale fashion, they buy a cottage in the woods, a house covered in blue wisteria set near a river, and get ready to begin their golden years in peace and tranquility.But then comes
Nothomb writes with so much insight and this story isn't any different. It deals with a couple who retire to the countryside to be on their own. There is only one house anywhere nearby. But when the doctor who lives there starts coming to visit between 4 and 6pm every day, it changes everything. The story is uncomfortable, psychological and excellent. I just didn't like it myself.
This story was very captivating and flowed well. I read this in a few days, but could have read it in one day.So Emile and Juliette buy a home about an hour out of town. They have a neighbour, a doctor, who comes to their house,without invitation, everyday from 4pm to 6pm without fail. Everyday Emile keeps letting him in, even though Juliette asks why? Emile cannot not answer the door.....the story continues.........This is a great book when you want to read something easy, nothing greatly deep
originally i thought i'd give the benefit of the doubt to the author for a possible translation muddle, but that is horribly unfair to the translator... the book had its moments, especially the build-up as the visits mounted, but then it just faded... not enough menace or weirdness or potentially devastating anything... maybe it is too cerebral of a tale, though that shortchanges me, and i'm a pretty smart reader, so i can say it wasn't that... just a disappointing book for me, more so if i
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