![]() ![]() This is generally what tends to happen in Nothomb’s novels: the energy is almost all directed towards one strong main character, while she seems to forget to give the other characters any peculiarity, making them rather two-dimensional. He somehow represents the social outcast or the artist who lives independently from the world, who we all sometimes - even if secretly - would like to be. He proves to be cruel and quite grotesque yet sympathetic at the same time. The latter, though, left to its subsidiary role, tends to resemble stage directions and is therefore a bit awkward. The story, in this case, is fortified by the strength of the dialogue, which overtakes most of the action and is powerful enough to subsist almost independently without the narrative. This, accompanied by the fluidity of the prose, might just be the key ingredient that makes her a best-selling author. But if we can get past that, after reading this novel, one thing can easily be concluded: Nothomb is a wonderful plotter. The fact that a woman should succeed where many men have failed - attention being brought to her gender and the implication that it is somehow related to her success - is a cliché. She will be his nemesis and will challenge him into a duel where the word is a deadly weapon. It is only then that a woman, Nina, enters the scene. But, by the power of his mordacious speech, the mean old man tortures the journalists - all inexperienced, naïve and poorly prepared - one after the other. Hygiene And The Assassin is about an old, obese, dying Nobel Prize-winning writer, who is solicited by countless journalists when they hear that he only has two months left to live and are, therefore, expecting to get one last, big interview. In 1992, 25-year-old Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb published her first novel, which would become an instant success.
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