Review: Le voyage d'hiver by Amelie Nothomb

So please bare with me.  Blogger is once again not letting me upload photos to posts that I saved from the internet.  But I've discovered it does let me upload photos from my phone.  So.  I'm sorry about the quality.

This is my third time reading Amelie Nothomb, and definitely not my last.  In this book, Zoile, a middle aged man who works for a gas company, has fallen head over heels in love with the beautiful Astrolabe.  However, Astrolabe has devoted her life to an autistic writer, Alienor, and has little time left over for Zoile.  When Zoile realizes that Astrolabe is never going to fully commit to him, he decides to hijack an airplane and crash it into the Eiffel Tower.

I really like the way this book was written.  The whole story is Zoile's journal that he's writing at the airport while waiting to board the plane.  So along with the story of how he met Astrolabe and Alienor, we also get parts where he is writing about his plans with the plane.  Zoile is definitely an interesting character.  I loved reading about him, and I finished this book in one evening because it's pretty short, but I couldn't really wrap my mind around him.  I feel like he definitely has a lot of issues of his own if he's willing to crash a plane in the name of his lover.

The ending of the story leaves the reader to decide what happens.  Obviously, since this is Zoile writing the book up until the plane leaves, we never really know if he goes through with his plans, and if he does, does he succeed, or do the people on the plane stop him?  All in all, this was an interesting read.  Everytime I read Nothomb it's a bit of an adventure because her stories are always a little bit out there, which is part of why I really like her work.

Title: Le voyage d'hiver (The Winter Journey)
Author: Amelie Nothomb
Date of Publication: 2009
Number of Pages: 119
Genre: Fiction
Source: Personal Copy