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the Complete Review
the complete review - fiction



L'impossible retour

by
Amélie Nothomb


general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

To purchase L'impossible retour


Title: L'impossible retour
Author: Amélie Nothomb
Genre: Novel
Written: 2024
Length: 154 pages
Original in: French
Availability: L'impossible retour - France
Die unmögliche Rückkehr - Deutschland
L'impossibile ritorno - Italia
  • L'impossible retour has not yet been translated into English

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Our Assessment:

B : fine if somewhat limited slice of/about Nothomb's life

See our review for fuller assessment.



Review Summaries
Source Rating Date Reviewer
Le Point . 29/8/2024 Jean-Luc Wachthausen
La Presse . 15/9/2024 Sylvain Sarrazin


  From the Reviews:
  • "D'emblée, l'écrivaine a le chic pour entretenir un lien permanent, une familiarité avec le lecteur. Dès les premières pages de son récit de voyage, on est à ses côtés dans ce retour aux sources dont elle redoute le ressenti, les effets de la nostalgie. (...) On se laisse vite emporter par la simplicité et la fluidité de son style (.....) Comme toujours chez Amélie Nothomb, il y a des éclairs de bonheur, d'émerveillement et beaucoup d'humour lorsqu'elle se met en scène. Il y a aussi des nuages de tristesse" - Jean-Luc Wachthausen, Le Point

  • "Le charme de la plume légère et sensible est bel et bien au rendez-vous au fil de ce court récit. Les évocations extirpées du passé, surtout dans les derniers milles du roman, sont livrées à fleur de peau. Mais il manque quelque chose. Un vernis, un envoûtement ? Selon nous, la dose d’incongruité et d’extravagance à laquelle l’autrice nous avait habitués, ainsi qu’une profondeur moins marquée." - Sylvain Sarrazin, La Presse

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Billed as a novel (roman), L'impossible retour is, like much of Amélie Nothomb's work, closely autobiographical -- in this case, chronicling an eleven-day visit to Japan in 2023. The short trip is the 'impossible return' of the title, Nothomb's first trip back to Japan since 2012 when she participated in the filming of Laureline Amanieux's Amélie Nothomb, une vie entre deux eaux (e.g.). Her connections to the country go back further: the daughter of a diplomat, she was born in Japan, and being wrenched from it at age five was one of the defining events of her life ("Cet arrachement me traumatisa", she notes). She moved to Tokyo and lived there from age twenty-one to twenty-three -- events chronicled, most notably, in her best-known work, Fear and Trembling -- but it is the pilgrimage she went on with her father (now recently deceased) back then, in 1989, "une équipée dédiée à la nostalgie" ('an escape dedicated to nostalgia'), on the traces of 1972 (when they left Japan), that comes to (her) mind more often here.
       Nothomb here travels in the company of photographer Pep Beni, who won a round-trip flight for two as part of winning the 'prix Nicéphore Niépce' (resembling the actual prix Niépce Gens d'images) and chose Japan as her destination and Nothomb as her traveling-partner. Nothomb's first reaction when she is invited to accompany Beni is panic, but with the Covid-lockdown the trip has to be put off for a while anyway; they finally set off in May, 2023.
       Their tour of Japan is a quick and busy one. Landing in Osaka, they immediately head to Kyoto; they also head to Nara, then to Tokyo. While enthusiastic, Beni can also be a difficult traveling companion, decamping from two hotels -- the first time, fairly unsuccessfully, in the middle of the night -- along the way. They see some of the main sights -- the temples in Kyoto, for example -- but it is not a particularly eventful trip; mentions of what and where they ate and drank take up much of the narrative.
       At the outset, Nothomb notes that, after growing up with the constant departures that were inevitable, given her father's job in the diplomatic corps, she grew allergic to that and hoped to stay put, in one place, -- imagining, when she was twenty-one, that Tokyo would be the place for her. It wasn't and, to her surprise, she wound up settling, quite readily and for the long haul, in Paris.
       Inevitably, the return to Japan churns up nostalgic feelings -- which she sometimes fights and sometimes indulges in. Among the interesting observations is how she finds her memory and familiarity with Japan to be selective (to Beni's occasional annoyance). The language and much else does come back to her, but her feelings remain ambivalent -- and in L'impossible retour Nothomb remains a visitor, more like a tourist than one who has returned home.
       Beside the geographic revisiting, Nothomb also takes with her J.-K. Huysmans' À rebours, first read at age eighteen, "au comble de l'exaltation", and which she sensed was the right reading-material to return to in this locale -- as it proves to be, an appealing if perhaps under-used counterpoint to the physical travels she chronicles. (Home, the one place it is always possible to return to, is, also for Nothomb, literature.)
       Nothomb does address some of the feelings and emotions that come up -- in part also occasioned by the relatively recent death of her father --, but most of L'impossible retour reads like a fairly basic travel-account. Nothomb's best autobiographical fiction is written at a considerable distance -- the wonderful Loving Sabotage (or, for some real distance, The Character of Rain) -- and here she seems still to close too everything; there is introspection, but the immediacy limits its range. Nothomb is at her best when she engages with the past -- including, here, that 1989 pilgrimage with her father, or even her reading À rebours at eighteen -- and while L'impossible retour does weave some of that in well in these present-day reflections, Nothomb too rarely lets herself fully go and wallow in it.
       L'impossible retour is an interesting and appealing enough piece of the larger autobiographical body of work Nothomb has now built up over decades and certainly of interest to those who have closely followed her work, but it's a relatively minor piece.

- M.A.Orthofer, 1 June 2026

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Links:

L'impossible retour: Reviews: Amélie Nothomb: Other books by Amélie Nothomb under review: Books about Amélie Nothomb under review: Other books of interest under review:
  • See Index of French literature at the complete review
  • See Index of Travel-related books

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About the Author:

       Belgian author Amélie Nothomb was born in Kobe, Japan, August 13, 1967.

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© 2026 the complete review

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