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20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Charming, Witty Commentary on Cross-Cultural Communication, May 3, 2002
This charming and compelling novella was a huge hit in France, winning the prestigious Grand Prix de I'Academie Francaise and selling half a million copies, and while it's certainly good, I have to wonder if it was a slow year or something. Clearly based of Nothomb's own experiences in Japan (the title character is also named Amélie in case there was any doubt), the story covers a year in a Belgian woman's life as she starts and ends a job at a huge Japanese corporation. Because the character was raised in Japan and speaks the language fluently, she's caught between two worlds, she can never be accepted as a Japanese, but she knows to much to be the classic clumsy foreigner. Which is not to say that she doesn't screw up culturally, because she does-multiple times-but often the underlying problem is not her, but in the system around her. Nothomb uses these little catastrophes as windows to criticize Japanese business and social structures with scathing attacks, most notably a long discourse on the plight of the Japanese woman. Amélie is contrasted with her immediate boss, an immaculately put together beauty who is a lowly middle-manager, but still the highest level female in the company. Amélie has an odd, vaguely erotic, attraction to her which complicates everything. When the entire office witnesses (but tries not to ) this woman's verbally rape and humiliation at the hands of the boss, Amélie finds this emblematic of Japanese society's ostrich-like tendencies. While this may all sound deep and dark, the book is actually quite lively and humorous. That said, it's not a breathtaking book. It's certainly well written and ably translated, and definitely worth reading as commentary on cross-cultural communication (especially by those intending to work in Japan), yet it's hard to understand how it could have become such a phenomenon in France. In any event, I'll certainly be tracking down Nothomb's other works in English. One footnote: why must publishers insist on branding books "A Novel" when they are so clearly not. If a book is printed in a smaller than standard format, with loads of space between the lines, and comes in at 132 pages, it's a novella, not a novel. Clearly they feel uneasy about asking us for almost [$$] for a book that'll take no more than two hours to read-but please don't insult our intelligence by trying to pass it off as a novel!
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22 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
This book is not a work of fiction!, January 30, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: Fear and Trembling: A Novel (Paperback)
As an American who worked in Japan in the 1980's, I read this book with a special sense of recognition. You may think that what the protagonist experiences in this book is highly exaggerated. Believe me, it is not! This is a very enjoyable read for those who can empathize with what it is like to be a foreign woman in Japan, and should be an amusing read for anyone else interested in modern Japan.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fiction vs. Autobiography, December 4, 2006
[Disclosure: I saw the film first, then sought out the novella because I was so intrigued by the premise of the story, how obstinate personalities can collide. I think that sequence would have been preferable for the previous reviewers who ended up hating this book.]
I am amazed at the previous reviews, even the positive ones, which make the elementary mistake of thinking "Fear and Trembling" by Amelié Nothomb is a documentary portrayal of personal events.
Please remember, it is a work of *fiction*, not an *autobiography*, however much it may or may not draw on the author's personal experiences. If you read it as a diary of the author's personal life, you will hate it as a tale of cruelty and willfulness.
If you read it as a *fictional* tale which draws from and exaggerates all-too-recognizable human thoughts and emotions, you will admire the author's and translator's considerable talents.
Those reviewers who absolutely hated the book seem to have completely forgetten about the "willing suspension of disbelief" that we always bring to theatrical or fictional works, so that we may enter the author's mind for a short time and judge how skillfully he or she put together the elements of a story to fascinate, horrify, or amuse us.
The translator, Adriana Hunter, deserves the highest praise for her elegant prose, which perfectly captures the spirit and conciseness of the best writing in French. I fell in love with the prose, which I consider some of the best writing in English I've ever encountered. I look forward to reading the book in its original language.
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