Storytime

STRIKE YOUR HEART by Amélie Nothomb, NewSouth

At 19, Marie is sure “her time has come”. If she lived in Paris the pretty girl may have gone unnoticed, but here the town’s most handsome boy, Olivier, had fallen for her. After a boring adolescence she sensed “an extraordinary destiny”. Belgian author Nothomb is huge in France and it’s easy to see why. A brisk novel of 135 pages, impossible to put down. By 20 Marie has gone from prima donna to pregnant, baby Diane born in 1972. Now this is Diane’s story: that of the unloved child of an insanely jealous mother. “This woman belonged so entirely to a foreign species that she managed to touch her [Diane] without touching her.” Yet she lavishes love on her second child, Nicholas, and is besotted with third baby, Celia. Somehow Diane eshews bitterness and becomes a doctor to help others.

THE BOY AT THE KEYHOLE by Stephen Giles, Penguin

Samuel Clay, nine, is bewildered. Why did his mother leave him at night without saying goodbye? Father Vincent died from a drunken fall at their London house and now the vulnerable boy is alone with stern housekeeper Ruth.

She rules the roost, demanding silence from abandoned Sam, who constantly asks: “When is mother coming home? She has been away 113 days.” We are suspicious of the postcards that arrive from his mother from the book’s beginning; Mrs Clay supposedly in America chasing investors. When Samuel’s friend, Joseph, tells him about a housekeeper who killed a family, the boy’s paranoia is pumping. Ruth will not let him answer the phone, he chokes on glass in a cake, she cooks his pet rabbit and through the keyhole he sees her penning letters.

YOUR SECOND LIFE BEGINS WHEN YOU REALISE YOU ONLY HAVE ONE by Raphaélle Giordano, Penguin

Camille, 38, is driving in a storm in Paris when she crashes into a field. Her saviour is salt and pepper-haired Claude Dupontel, who buzzes her into his magnificent residence and listens to her outpour of malaise. Husband Sebastien’s tenderness has replaced passion; Adrien, nine, tells mum to “chill out” as she nags. She is suffering from acute “routinitis”

– a sickness of the soul

– “routinologist” Claude explains. It manifests itself in world-weariness. It’s time to “stop settling for a nice little existence”. Claude is good - he starts her spring-cleaning her house to de-clutter her head; making a list of 10 things she no longer wants to … “do what my mother says, be four kilos overweight.” She conquers a fear of flying when he takes her in a hot air balloon.