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The Character of Rain

The Character of Rain

A Novel
Literary FictionMemoir
Pages
144
Published
2002
Language
English

Synopsis

The narrator of this novel begins as God — a consciousness undifferentiated from the universe itself, resting in pure being with no desire and no distinction between self and world. Then, at the age of two, God falls into the particular: a small body in Shukugawa, Japan, in 1970, a Belgian diplomat's daughter, a child who has just been given a piece of white chocolate by her Japanese grandmother and discovered, with shock, that she wants more. The discovery of desire — of the gap between self and world, between having and wanting — is the event that ends God's bliss and begins Amélie. The novel traces Nothomb's autobiographical earliest childhood: the love of Nishio-san, the family's Japanese nanny; the household in Shukugawa; the carp pool; the specific sensory weight of Japan at the beginning of consciousness. Published in 2000, the French title is 'Métaphysique des tubes' — the tubes being the state of pure passivity, the alimentary canal that the infant is before desire arrives.

Prose complexity
7/10

Vibe

NostalgicReflectivePhilosophicalThought-Provoking
Coming of Age

Genres

Literary Fiction Memoir Magical Realism

About the author

A
Amélie Nothomb

Born in Etterbeek, Brussels, in 1966, Amélie Nothomb spent her childhood moving across continents — Japan, China, the United States, Bangladesh, Burma, Laos — as the daughter of a Belgian diplomat. Japan was the country that marked her most deeply: she has called it the paradise she was expelled from when her family left. She began writing at age twelve, producing manuscripts she has described as unspeakably bad, and completed seventeen novels before publishing a single one. Her debut, Hygiène...

Characters

Amélie NothombProtagonist

The narrator, beginning as an undifferentiated divine consciousness and becoming a specific child in Shukugawa at the moment she discovers desire.

Nishio-sanSupporting

The family's Japanese nanny, whose care and presence form the warmth at the center of Nothomb's earliest memories.

All characters in The Character of Rain

Frequently asked questions

  • What does 'Métaphysique des tubes' (the French title) mean?

    'The metaphysics of tubes' refers to the infant state — a being that is essentially a tube: a passageway for food, with no inner life and no distinction between self and world. Nothomb uses it to describe the pre-conscious state of the narrator before desire arrives and makes her a person.

  • What is the role of white chocolate in the novel?

    The piece of white chocolate offered by Nothomb's Japanese grandmother is the novel's originary event: the first taste of something she wants more of. It is the moment that distinguishes self from world, desire from satisfaction — the fall from divine unconsciousness into human wanting.

  • Is this an autobiographical novel?

    Yes — it is Nothomb's account of her earliest childhood in Shukugawa, Japan, from roughly 1970 to 1972, before her family moved to other postings. It is the first of her five autobiographical Japan books.

  • When was The Character of Rain published?

    Published in 2000 by Albin Michel under the French title 'Métaphysique des tubes.' The English translation was titled 'The Character of Rain,' named for the childhood association between the sound of rain and safety.

  • Why does the narrator claim to be God at the start?

    Because the infant state — before consciousness and desire differentiate a self from its surroundings — is philosophically indistinguishable from a divine, omnipresent awareness. The 'fall' into personhood is the fall out of that state into the particular, limited, hungry self.

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