Product Description

When Blanche's mother, who finds her own daughter rather colourless, bookish and dull, is also dazzled by Christa, she soon invites her to stay at the family house. Suddenly Christa can do no wrong and, as Blanche's parents scour their address books for long-lost friends to invite to dinner to meet the newcomer, their friendship sours and Blanche's already negligible self-confidence goes into a steep decline. With all the characteristics of Amelie Nothomb's unique fictional landscapes, Antechrista is a funny, dark and revealing journey through female friendship and rivalry.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73692 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 107 pages

About the Author
Belgian by nationality, Amelie Nothomb was born in Kobe, Japan, and currently lives in Paris. She is the bestselling author of fourteen novels, translated into thirty languages.

Customer Reviews

I couldn't put this down...
Amelie Nothomb is a star. She can take the most seemingly inconsequential of subject matters and turn it into something wonderful. She has a very distinctive voice as a writer, so each of her novels, all barely more than 100 pages each, sound like her.

Antichrista lacks a bit of the wonder of Amelie's earlier novels in that the storyline seems a little bland on the face of it. It lacks the hyper-intelligent children and the incredible dancers of some of her other works. In long and short, it is about a friendless and plain girl named Blanche who thinks she finds a friend in the beautiful Christa. But Christa is really not as nice as all that, wheedling her way into Blacnhe's home, taking over Blanche's life and bullying her mercilessly. But, upon reading the book you sense so many levels beyond this. How hateful Christa is, how elaborate her lies, how pathetic and weak Blanche really is and how her relationship with her parents deteriorates when Christa appears on the scene.

It makes uncomfortable reading. Christa is such a evil, terrible character. She could've easily been drawn out to be a femme fatale, but she is not. Amelie has left us with nothing to like about her. And the fact that everyone loves her, blind to what she's doing to Blanche, is most frustrating. I found myself angry at the characters throughout the novel.

Yet the novel is completley absorbing. I found myself completley embroiled in their world. I couldn't have put this down if I'd tried.

Disappointing
I enjoyed The Life of Hunger so much I immediately bought a couple of other Nothomb novels, but I was very disappointed in this one. It's quite a simplistic tale with shallow characters and predictable developments. Might be suitable for teenage girls who enjoy an easy read about rivalries and jealousy, but emotional depth and fine writing are absent here.