The Character of Rain is a
novella written by Belgian author Amélie Nothomb (picture to the left). She
writes her novels in French, which have been translated into English.
The first two pages of this book had me wishing I could scratch my eyes out. I was sure I was going to hate it and I’d have such a hard time reading it within six days.
If it hadn’t been a novella I
had to read for University then I probably wouldn’t have ever carried on
reading past the first two pages. Actually, I never would’ve even picked up the
book, but that’s neither here nor there.
So, pressured to read this for
my Tuesday fiction class I had to power through the appalling beginning. The
novella starts with a rambling about God. This is a direct quote from the first
page: “God’s eyes were perpetually wide
open and staring, though it didn’t matter whether they were opened or closed. There
was nothing to see, and God, plump and compact as a hard-boiled egg, saw nothing.” I kid
you not, that is a direct quote. I mean, what the hell is that? Sorry Nothomb,
but if your intention was to put any and all readers off continuing to read
this, then you bloody well succeeded.
I got through the first chapter (which is only three pages
long) extremely slowly. It’s what happens when I’m undeniably bored and
disinterested by what I’m reading. Then, the most extraordinary thing happened.
I started to enjoy it. The second chapter became more bearable and by the third
chapter I was becoming interested in the plotline.
I finished the book in two days, granted it was only 132
pages long, but you honestly have no idea how amazing that is for me. I’m a
ridiculously slow reader. Usually I can only get through about 30-40 pages a
day and that’s when I’m constantly reading. But I actually really enjoyed the
novel, like really enjoyed it.
The
blurb states: “The Japanese believe that
until the age of three, children are gods, each one an okosama, or ‘Lord
Child’. On their third birthday they fall from grace and join the rest of
mankind. Narrated by a child – from the age of two and a half up until her
third birthday – this novel reveals how this fall from grace can be a very
difficult thing indeed from which to recover.”
Sounds interesting right? I
thought so.
After the excruciatingly long
and terrible beginning, I completely forgot what the novella was supposed to be
about. Therefore I kept reading, forgetting what was supposed to be happening. It
was only after finishing it, it occurred to me something was missing. The plot.
As the blurb states it’s
supposed to reveal how when a child reaches the age of three, they fall from
grace in the eyes of the Japanese and the affect this has on a child. At first,
I didn’t see this occur anywhere in the novel, I believed the realisation of
Rain not being God would come from how her family and her nanny treat her after
her third birthday. It confused me when all the
relationships stayed the same and I believed Nothomb had completely ignored her
own plot. It was only after an in depth discussion in my fiction class that I
realised most of what we get out of this novella is subtext. Hardly anything is
explicitly said, merely referenced through other things and we as a reader,
have to depict these elements within the novella.
If you
couldn’t already guess I’m going to depict some of these elements for you. If
you don’t want to hear any spoilers, then skip to the last paragraph in this
post now.
Nothomb grazes over the month of May, in which many
Japanese families buy some carp to look after for the month. It is supposed to
bring luck for having a baby boy. Rain’s parents do look after some carp for
that month and this is when Rain is discovering the Japanese seem to favour
boys over girls, almost making boys seem more divine and godlike than girls. It
is one of the many connections to her realising she is not a God.
If you don’t look in depth into the meaning behind this novel,
this next quote can be easy to miss. “At
three, you’re like an alien, equally fascinated and terrified by what you find.
Everything is opaque and new. You must invent laws based upon your own
observation”. She directly says as a child you have to invent your own laws
because everything is new to a child, everything is opaque. You don’t yet
understand the world you’re living in and therefore you have to make sense of
it in your own way. From the treatment of her nanny Nishio-san treating her
almost as if she was a God and could do no wrong, she has grown up with
Nishio-san more than anyone and now believes she is a God and other people
should treat her so. This novella is her
journey and how she came to believe she was a God, she thought she was divine
and then suddenly realising that she is indeed like everybody else and that
utter devastation she feels towards the end.
In the last chapter of the novella, she mentions how she
sees the carp’s insides and she says: “You
find that repugnant? That’s what your stomach is like, too.” This is her
sudden realisation that she’s just like everybody else and she isn’t a God. She
silences herself; she doesn’t want to hear that she’s not a god. It throws her
so much she is sick and let’s herself fall into the pool. This is ironic for
many reasons:
·
- Previously in the novella, she almost drowned.
- Her father got stuck in a drain.
- Her name in either Japanese or French means rain.
- It is suggested that in Japanese culture that drowning is seen as the most divine form of suicide.
All of these things are definitely not mere coincidences.
Nothomb is a master of disguise and subtext. She really makes you work to
depict these elements.
In general, it was interesting to find connections between
the writer’s personal life and the novella. Nothomb herself says from personal
experience she was indirectly told she was ugly by her family and she hated
herself for so long, always seeing this ugly person in the mirror. In
connection to the novella, Rain doesn’t want to hear she isn’t divine, but
there is a part of her mind that is telling her this and forcing her to believe
it, much like Nothomb believing she was ugly (when as you can see by the
picture at the top of this post, she is anything but).
Despite a disappointing beginning, the rest of the novella
is brilliantly written, and the character development of Rain borders on
genius. If you can stomach the first couple of pages, then I guarantee you will
enjoy the rest of the novella.
Yours
weekly,
Jennie
Byrne
@mustbejlb
(on Instagram and Twitter)
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