Book Review: Amélie Nothomb, Le Crime du comte Neville, 2015

I am so pleased I read a book in a foreign (to me) language! And this is the ideal book: only 150 pages, generous margins, large typeface and a clear prose style with short sentences. The blurb on the back contains the following endorsement: "Une clarté d'expression qui fait mouche" by a certain Isabelle Potel. I'm not 100% what 'mouche' means here but there is certainly a 'clarté d'expression' throughout this novella by Belgian woman author Amélie Nothomb.

The very first sentence plunged me into the delicious world of foreign-French-reading, with its nested subjunctives of the sort I used to drill into my sons for extra points on their high school French exams. ( Read more... )