Newspaper of Swallow

Journal of Swallow is a Romance of the Belgian novelist Amélie Nothomb, published in 2006.

This novel, its thirteenth work published, is written with the first nobody by a dispach rider which becomes hired killer.

It belonged to the first selection for the Prix Goncourt 2006.

Synopsis

" It is a history of love whose episodes were mixed by a fou."

Following a sorrow in love, the narrator, dispach rider, become insensitive. It loses its job to find another, in conformity with its new state: hired killer. No states of heart to aim at the target, to discharge a perfect crime. If not a new excitation, a thirst to achieve a quasi divine gesture. One day, one asks him to carry out a minister and all his family and to bring back his towel. In this one, the diary of his/her daughter. Curiosity will be right of killer: it reads the book. Its behavior becomes erratic then and if the use of its five directions returns to him, it is for a metamorphosis that it never could before have considered.

Character nothombien par excellence, the hero, recluse, Misanthropist, detached of any contingent reality, wedged in his own logic, amputee of ordinary perceptions, acting beyond the good and of the evil, precisely discovers that there is beyond and that it names Amour.

Comment

This novel is single in the career of Amélie Nothomb to be the first published in which a man ensures the narration, which gives (for the reader accustomed to its literary services) a very strange effect: exit White D ` Antéchrista , the skeptic of Péplum , the nurse of Mercury , this time the auteure is delivered has a exercise of style pain-killer but however significant: a man tells his account. It is thus felt that Amélie Nothomb takes a voluntary and painful distance with its character who besides very seldom expresses his masculinity. It is also the first character of Nothomb which one is unaware of the exact first name (whereas in Acid sulphuric , the first name of Pannonique held place of point of intrigue).

Certain fans of Nothomb will be able to reproach the very great number of very melodramatic descriptions. Once again that breaks with the remainder of work: The auteure of the pearls of novel-dialog like Hygiène of the assassin or Péplum seems to want… to even assassinate itself it, to assassinate its own style, which made its glory. However the rare dialogs of this opus are funny, at least contain the humor which one is accustomed to perceive in works of the écrivaine. This novel thus resounds like a kind of great sentimental exploration, a novel intimist and moving as only Amélie Nothomb can write some.

Another theory: This novel seems to be a retrospective of its work. It is an assassin, and it is much question of washing the hands or of hygiene, which would bring back to its first novel . It was a question of notion of the crime in Péplum . One speaks there about beautiful as in Attentat . The word Combustible is employed and it is question of the destruction of a handwritten work. The assassin falls in love with his last victim, it would thus have sabotaged his love ( Sabotage in love ). One of the songs of the Robert singer for whom Amélie wrote songs calls “Return to me the birds”, but it is much question of birds in this opus. ( Robert of the proper names ). In any case that shows at least that the author controls his writing always as much.

All the charm of this work also shows through in the mystery which resides at it: Why did they want the newspaper of Swallow? This mystery which remains whole, makes from there the novel only more beautiful. Amélie Nothomb signs there, without question no sound more intriguing but not less interesting opus.

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