Customer Reviews

Fear and Trembling: A Novel

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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!

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.

[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.

I found the novella (in the original French) an interesting read, but I had to ask myself why a girl who was partly raised in Japan would have made such astounding faux pas. For example, even in Western society, would it not be polite and politic to accept a piece of chocolate from your boss (even if it is water melon flavored)? I kept having to attribute her maladroitness and incompetence to her young age, but if you make such allowances for the narrator, can you trust the narrator's viewpoint? Some of the tirades against Japanese culture came across as almost vengeful. Also, I would have liked to see more of a context to this story. Again, I kept wondering; what did this girl do in her free time? Toward the end, the narrator explains why there is no mention of her home life, but I felt like this was more of an excuse than a reason. I did admire much of the writing, but the classical references (so many of them) and some of the allegories seemed pretentious and out of place. In summary, I would have preferred either a straightforward satirical/comical account of her experiences, without the personal commentary, or else a more rounded and balanced work.
For those who enjoy reading fiction in French, I recommend the novella "La Classe de neige" by Emmanuel Carrere (sp?), a grippingly disturbing story expertly told through an imaginative and intuitive nine-year-old boy.

It was a quick engaging read for sure and most of the time I enjoyed it. But at times I was annoyed by her satirical views of Japanese culture that went on and on, which seemed to have grown rather too quickly and too extensive out of such a short period of her work experiences. Therefore, I couldn't help but feel that the writer had set off to work for the Japanese corporation, regardless of the impression that she gave at the beginning of the book that she always admired Japan, with a mindset to convince her pre-existing views and make fun of the company, with the pretentious ambition that someday she would write an entertaining book about her experience. And, she succeeded! Yes, there's some truth in what she described about the corporate culture where a new female worker often starts a day/work making tea for others, a boss could be very unreasonable and just order you something with no explanation, envy issues towards other's promotion which lead to some bullying, a woman who's over 26 feels pressure to be already married and so on... I am a Japanese woman, I know. But, commiting a suicide is family pride? Com'on! Nobody in Japan hears that kind of value since 40's. Except for during the Second World War when the nationalism drove people mad, if anything, a suicide is a big shame to the family, nothing to be proud of. And, there's no such a name as "Tsutomeru" ( meaning Work), described as her boss' child's name and made a big deal out of as a proof that Japanese people are work crazy. The name must be "Tsutomu" ( meaning Earnest). There were other rudimental mistakes in Japanese words which the author inserted here and there. All of which made me think that she's not as fluent in Japanese as she claimed to be and that she may have developed more misunderstanding about Japan than she would ever doubt. But, the author has a very perky style of writing which I liked, and has a hilarious way of seeing and describing things which made me laugh out loud at times, so here I am giving 4 stars. And, the peculiar "sadist-masochist" type relationship between Amelie and her boss, Fubuki, was so funny and very well written, however, it's not at all a typical relationship between a westerner female worker and a Japanese boss. Although this book has a look of non-fiction, you need to remind youreself to read it as a " novel" as is so categorized!! And lastly, I liked the movie better than this book which made things more balanced between her own clumsiness and a Japanese caricature.

This slim book (just 132 pages) is delightful and engaging. You'll want to read it in a single sitting.

The author, who was born in Japan, describes the experiences of someone like herself, having returned to Tokyo, working for a Japanese corporation, and smashing into European/Japanese cultural differences every time she turns a corner. This unpretentious tale reads like a cross between Kafka and Charlie Chaplin. Very little happens. Very little needs to happen. The heart of the story is the narrator's perspective, and how it changes -- from her first enthusiastic day on the job to the day, a year later, when she resigns. All the characters are drawn in bold exaggerated style -- as caricatures, which helps make them memorable and comic; and is a constant reminder that the story should not be taken seriously: just enjoyed.

Amélie is a 22 year old recent college graduate of Belgian descent who was born in Japan and seeks to return there to work. She signs a one year contract with a company based in Tokyo, and enters the strange and, for her, inscrutable world of a large Japanese company, with its strict hierarchical structure and rules, sexist attitudes and behaviors, and frequent humiliation by supervisors. Amélie is initially given simple tasks, and fails each one spectacularly, due to her incompetent "Western brain". At the same time she antagonizes her immediate supervisor, an strikingly beautiful woman who sacrifices everything to achieve a low level managerial position; as a punishment, she is given more menial tasks, but Amélie struggles even with these chores, until she finally is given a position that she can do without screwing up too badly.

"Fear and Trembling" is supposedly a novel, but it appears to be based on Nothomb's personal experiences. It's a quick and moderately enjoyable read, with a not very flattering view into the soul crushing world of a large Japanese corporation.

The spare writing and stark story are captivating. This writer's magically elegant, restrained prose is magnetically beautiful. I felt as though I couldn't tear my eyes away. I started reading the book at lunch time, sitting alone at a table in a restaurant, and didn't stop reading until I had finished the whole book; I had completely forgotten where I was (and was blind to the rudeness of occupying a whole booth by myself long after I'd finished eating, while hungry people waited in line). Nothomb's prose brings to mind the haunting, restrained style of Jane Smiley in "The Age of Grief," or of Jamaica Kincaid in "Lucy." Like those works, it reads like a novella or a short story: each word that is written, as well as each word that the author chose to omit, carries individual weight and commands the reader's full attention. Equally compelling is the mysteriously fateful story arc that carries the heroine to ever greater suffering and isolation. Although it's a realistic novel, it reads a little like a fairy tale; it brings to mind Paul Coelho and, to some extent, Haruki Murakami. You feel, as with those writers, that you're reading about magically meaningful, symbolically rich events whose meaning you can't quite grasp. The book is also compelling in the way a nonfiction memoir of a miserable childhood or adolescence can be compelling; you can't stop reading it in the way you can't stop reading "Name All The Animals," "Prep," "Don't Lets Go To The Dogs Tonight," "The Glass Castle," or "Are You Somebody?" You have to keep reading just to discover whether the heroine survives. This book is a perfect little jewel; to change a single word would diminish it.

This novel, whose title in French is "Stupeur et Tremblements," is available in a good English translation, although it is fun to read it in the original French if you can. It is the anusing (and sometimes appalling) account of Amélie-san, a young Belgian woman living in Tokyo who goes to work for Yumimoto, a Japanese corporation. Because she speaks excellent Japanese, she looks forward to an opportunity to use her language skills. Instead, she repeatedly misunderstands the arcane codes of conduct that govern the relationships between employees and their superiors, and her relationship with the beautiful Fubuki Mori, her boss, deteriorates to the point where Amelie finds herself in charge of her very own "office"---the company toilets. All of the novel takes place inside Yumimoto, on the 44th floor of a soulless skyscraper office building, although Amelie occasionally peers out of a window in the bathroom as if she is encapsulated in some strange underwater vehicle from which she cannot escape.

In addition to detailing the bizarre hierarchy that has assigned her to replacing toilet paper rolls, Amelie makes interesting observations on the nature of Japanese employee relationships and on the difficulties of being a female business executive in Japan. You'll have to decide for yourself how much truth lies behind the slapstick quality of her wacky encounters with her bosses. I've read that the novel is based on the author's own experience as an employee of a Japanese company. It definitely makes a nice counterpoint to those rhapsodic East-meets-West memoirs that over-romanticize Japan and the Japanese.

My first outing with Ms Nothomb turned out to be quite the ride. This book presents a semi-autobiographical look at Nothomb's experiences in Japan's business world, and it is a journey like no other. Nothomb, a Belgian national born and raised in Japan, offered services as a French and English translator for a large Japanese business in the heart of Tokyo; before long, because of a series of cultural and business faux-pax, she finds herself on a year-long contract cleaning lavatories. Her plights are unenviable, to say the least.

The reader may find it a bit difficult to empathize with Amelie, particularly when she kowtows to a culture that demands, by its own admission, foreign adherence to its whims when its own people are not expected to reciprocate in any kind. When Amelie apologizes to Fubuki, the pseudo-nemesis of the story's protagonist, for committing "grave mistakes" that should have otherwise been excused or overlooked, I actually cringed. It was not until the final page that I felt I had a good grip on the author's intent in those passages.

Nothomb is an exquisite author, but I can only say this because of the magnificent translation provided by Adriana Hunter. Hunter gives us a sympathetic reading of Nothomb's nuances and intentions, and allows the reader to fill in the verbal gaps from the original French version.

This is a highly respectable (and very short) work, and well worthy of even the most cautious reader's eye.