Review #58 - The Character of Rain by Amelie Nothomb

French literature is often highly acclaimed. Victor Hugo is basically god, while Albert Camus is regarded as a genius. I read Bar Balto and didn't love it so I decided to give French Literature another shot. I discovered that my opinion on French literature is similar to my opinion on French food. It's highly overrated.

The Character of Rain is an authors autobiography of her first three years of life. I'm pretty sceptical about this claim as there are few things that I remember before the age of three, and none are particularly profound whereas this book oozes pretentious philosophy. 

The main premise is that in Japanese culture a child is a god before the age of three and at three the child falls from grace and becomes a normal human. A French (maybe Belgian, I can't remember) family is living in Japan and it's the story of the child until her third birthday. 

The narrative is in third person before the author gains self awareness at the age of two and a half, leaves her vegetative state and goes into first person. Aside from the complete disregard for the science of how the human brain develops (it is not overnight), it is done well and is pretty clever.

This book is pretty disturbing for an autobiography. I don't think I would have given it three stars if I'd known it was an autobiography before rating it. The three year old is full of both wonder and innocence but also really, really dark feelings which are weird and psychologically terrifying. This isn't really a book for the masses.

I didn't really like the writing style but it sounded pretty and the plot was paced well.

I would recommend this if:

You are interested in Japanese culture

You love French literature

You like books about mental health

I gave this three stars

Buy it here