L’IRONIE NOTHOMBIENNE, UNE AUTRE FORME DE VIE ?

An American soldier, Melvin Mapple, who is in the Iraq war, and a writer named Amelie Nothomb start an epistolary discussion that is sometimes replaced by an inner narrative. Amélie Nothomb succeeds in the novel Life form to move from reality to fiction, from calm to madness and from irony to comedy. The Nothombian character is an obese who sabotages his body to cope with the atrocities of the war and is built so that the writer can take up the different forms of the sometimes controversial relationship with his readers. We are talking here about an ideal reader, Melvin, a man who reveals himself totally to a stranger. The irony is noted in the writing of this novel, the construction of the male character and Amélie’s reaction to the course of events. Once again, we are faced with a masculine - feminine duality typical of the Nothombian world, but now the masculine character is put at the center of the story. The reflections on the relation to oneself and to the body, the impossibility of accepting one’s own life make the Nothombian character an unsuited person who tries to find happiness in the lie, who is not capable of living a “normal” life and who needs to escape from reality and ironically, the writer allows him, but is she?