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The Stranger Next Door (1995)

by Amélie Nothomb

Other authors: See the other authors section.

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5891739,962 (3.4)9
A retired French couple move into an idyllic house, only to have the idyll ruined by long, daily visits from a boring doctor who is their neighbor. Eventually they throw him out and the man attempts suicide to make them feel guilty. A comedy of manners.
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English (11)  French (2)  Dutch (2)  Italian (1)  Finnish (1)  All languages (17)
Showing 1-5 of 11 (next | show all)
il mio primo libro della nothomb, letto in (un meraviglioso) francese sul treno, tutto d'un fiato. appena arrivata a casa, ho fatto la cernita e con dolore ho scoperto di non avere stupor et tremblement, ma mi sono subito consolata iniziando ni d'eve ni d'adam. e rimpiango di non aver più viaggi lunghi in treno in previsione... ( )
  Eva_Filoramo | May 3, 2018 |
Yana N.

Yana N.'s Reviews > Les Catilinaires
Les Catilinaires by Amélie Nothomb
Les Catilinaires
by Amélie Nothomb
44823137
Yana N.'s review
Dec 05, 2017 · edit

liked it
bookshelves: fiction

3.5

A dark, absurdist comedy about the nature of pleasure, Les Catilinaires explores the existential doubts and mental breakdown of Emile Hazel, a retired Greek and Latin professor. Commencing his retirement by moving into a picturesque cottage with his wonderful wife Juliette, Emile expects to inhabit a state of peaceful idyll for the rest of his life. This plan is quickly disrupted by the couple's neighbor, the obese and boorish M. Palamède Bernardin, who pays them an obligatory and punctual two-hour visit every day between 4 and 6 o'clock PM. His mute dissatisfaction, repulsive corpulence and rude intrusion begin to poison the Hazels' otherwise pleasant daily routine, causing them great anxiety and perturbation. Emile especially becomes obsessed with understanding M. Bernardin's murky psyche, unable to fathom the sheer nihilism and boredom that emanates from Bernardin's every (in)action. Later, Madame Bernadette Bernardin is introduced into the narrative - a morbidly obese, brutish and animalistic woman described as a "cyst" from Palamède's side (in contrast to a rib from Adam's). However, she subsequently appears to be a different sort of creature - crude, visceral, but capable of experiencing joy, pleasure and satisfaction, which makes her much more human than her husband. The Hazels, especially Juliette, become convinced that Bernadette is being oppressed by her husband and begin devising ways to help her...

The novel is a fascinating look into Emile's mental and moral degradation, the way Bernardin creeps into his psyche and becomes and all-consuming obsession, even though the man himself is described as pure nothingness (néant). Something about Bernardin strikes an unholy chord within Emile and reveals all his inner anxieties and existential fears. Emile seems to apprehend evil itself in this almost mythological figure who resists interpretation according to his view of life. In the end, the verdict on Bernardin's life seems to be equally a verdict on Emile's life, who goes from knowing and understanding himself and his place in the world to "ne [savoir] plus rien de [lui-même]", a thought which appears at both the end and beginning of the novel. The emptiness in M. Bernardin consumes him and causes him to abandon notions of morality, honesty and integrity. The novel ends eerily: life continues as before, Juliette is delighted with Bernadette, but Emile has no peace after it all.

Les Catilinaires is existentialism as only the French can muster. Genuinely funny, peppered with references and written in evocative and fluid prose (the French was wonderful, even though it necessitated frequent visits to the dictionary), the novel is a pleasure to read, although the ending was a tad too dark for me and took away from some the enjoyment, though I do not necessarily think it was a bad stylistic choice. Overall, very interesting and darkly funny novel, but the ending deters me from giving a full 4 stars - it somehow left a bad taste in my mouth, most probably due to my fragile sensitivities. :) ( )
  bulgarianrose | Mar 13, 2018 |
Bof bof bof, ce bouquin m'a énervée: des personnages qui n'ont aucun sens, qu'on a un peu envie de baffer, incapables de s'exprimer quand il y en a besoin. Alors, oui, certainement, c'est exactement ce que l'auteur voulait, et ça montre son talent d'écriture, mais ça n'empêche que je n'ai pas envie de lire ce type d'histoires avec ce genre de personnages. ( )
  elisala | Feb 16, 2018 |
A retired couple purchases a little house in the forest to quietly live out their days together. Both are introverts, so when their gruff neighbour invites himself to tea every afternoon without saying a word, neither of them dares to confront him -- not directly, at least. The husband's response meanders back and forth between dejected acceptance and tongue-in-cheek resistance: in an effort to turn the social awkwardness back on the intruder he delivers interminable Ciceronean speeches on anything and everything and finds a perverse pleasure in pushing the indirectness of hinting at his displeasure into increasingly inventive areas. Things rush to a conclusion once the plot takes over, but the resolution is glorious in its vicariousness.

I liked the muted humour in this one. It takes panache to construe petty responses to a violation of unspoken social norms as the main conflict in a novel, but Nothomb manages it like no-one else. Quizzically absurd, intentionally barely-unbelievable, but too enjoyable to put down. ( )
  Petroglyph | Jan 11, 2016 |
In The Stranger Next Door by Amélie Nothomb, childhood sweethearts, Emile and Juliette Hazel, married for 43 years, decide to abandon city life for an idyllic retirement in the country. They have a burning need for solitude, to become true free spirits liberated from "what men have made of life." And so, in true fairy tale fashion, they buy a cottage in the woods, a house covered in blue wisteria set near a river, and get ready to begin their golden years in peace and tranquility.

But then comes a knock at the door.

Soon their Garden-of-Eden getaway is interrupted by a visit from their neighbor, Palamedes Bernardin. At first, Emile and Juliette are delighted. Mr. Bernardin is a retired cardiologist (how convenient to have a doctor living so close!). Better yet, he isn't a nosy chatterbox, as they feared. But the man's behavior quickly takes a turn: first just odd and then boorishly weird. The Hazels are baffled though still amused after this first fairly innocuous visit. He stays exactly two hours and leaves without ceremony. Emile and Juliette laugh it off—easy cruelties: their neighbor is large and portly, and has the personality of a sack of boulders. But as Mr. Bernardin visits the next day, and the day after that, in succession, when it looks like the visits will never cease, a low-grade paranoia and anxiety begins to settle on them.

By the middle act, we meet Mr. Bernardin's wife, Bernadette. In an effort to fill the void of a conversation, Emile blurts out an absurd dinner invitation. He is morbidly curious. He wants to know who would marry such a man. When they meet Bernadette, Emile and Juliette are shocked. Nothomb's descriptions of Bernadette are grotesque: "a protuberance," a "cyst" who shakes hands with a "tentacle," has a mouth "like that of an octopus" and speaks in indecipherable grunts. She repulses the couple but also elicits their pity and sympathy. Juliette eventually makes it a personal crusade to 'save' Bernadette from what she sees as Mr. Bernardin's cruelties and oppressions.

The book darkens in tone with every turn of the page, like a stain that deepens on white carpet. The Hazels' sense of social obligation prevents them from saying what they mean. Soon their need to understand their neighbor, to understand why he acts the way he does, to ascribe some logical motive to his actions—gets turned inward. The inscrutable Mr. Bernardin becomes a psychological foil to Emile's own buried anxieties and fears. In fact, it reminded me of a psychiatrist and patient relationship, albeit inverted and corrupted. Emile is enraged by the intrusions, which evolve slowly in the book from being a nuisance to daily tortures. He can't sleep at night. He starts to babble and drone, just to fill the silences. He becomes so obsessed with the visits he is helpless to prevent them. "I hadn't realized that I was a coward," Emile muses. With wicked glee, Nothomb inserts small pinpricks into her characters. Nothing you can see or feel at first, but eventually it does serious damage.

The Stranger Next Door is a dark, absurdist comedy with existential edges that only novelists writing in French seem capable of pulling off. It is also a novel about change and transformation: in this case, Emile's mental descent (or ascent, if you're really cynical...). Nothomb captures this idea well when Emile starts musing about good and evil as different states of matter:

"Good is far less convincing than evil, but it's because their chemical structures are different. Like gold, good is never found in a pure state in nature: it therefore doesn't seem impressive. It has the unfortunate tendency not to act; it prefers, passively, to be seen. Evil on the other hand, is like a gas: it's not easy to see but it can be detected by its odor. It's most often stagnant, disbursed in a suffocating sheet; initially this aspect seems inoffensive, but then suddenly you see it at work and you realize the ground it has won, the tasks it has accomplished. And by then it's all over; gas cannot be expelled."

How are gases different from other states of matter? Well, gases expand; they are elastic and can be compressed; and they have weight. The Stranger Next Door is one part laughing gas, two parts gas chamber. It's a novel about a man's downward spiral to self-destruction. One criticism I have, though, is that you can guess the ending of the book fairly easily, but I suppose mystery isn't the point. * SPOILER AHEAD: By the end of the book, Emile's moral center is completely destroyed. In a kind of pathological reversal, Emile is driven to murder, a murder that he sees as an act of mercy.* Before that fateful visit, Emile thought his life was perfect. Then this impenetrable, impassive presence makes him reflect and think otherwise. It becomes a kind of violation from which he never recovers. These are just one of the many dark 'truths' that Nothcomb explores in this short but explosive book. ( )
  gendeg | Nov 28, 2014 |
Showing 1-5 of 11 (next | show all)
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» Add other authors (5 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Amélie Nothombprimary authorall editionscalculated
Moix, Ana MaríaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Serra Ramoneda, ConchaTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Volk, CarolTranslatorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Io ti dichiarerò guerra e mi prenderò con te

le libertà della guerra e avrò tra le mani il tuo viso

oscuro e trafitto...

YVES BONNEFOY
Dedication
A Béatrice Commengé
First words
Non sappiamo niente di noi. Ci crediamo abituati a essere noi stessi. È il contrario. Più gli anni passano e meno capiamo chi sia la persona nel nome della quale agiamo e parliamo.

Non costituisce un problema. Che c'è di male a vivere la vita di uno sconosciuto? Forse è meglio: conosci te stesso e ti prenderai in antipatia.
Quotations
Esistono case che danno ordini. Sono più imperiose del destino: al primo sguardo, si è vinti. Là si dovrà abitare.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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A retired French couple move into an idyllic house, only to have the idyll ruined by long, daily visits from a boring doctor who is their neighbor. Eventually they throw him out and the man attempts suicide to make them feel guilty. A comedy of manners.

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Voland Edizioni

2 editions of this book were published by Voland Edizioni.

Editions: 888870051X, 8886586361

 

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