Confidences: why Amélie Nothomb never wanted to have children

In his new novel “So much the better”, which will appear on August 20 at Albin Michel editions, Amélie Nothomb paints a tender and bright portrait of her mother, who disappeared last February. A “flamboyant” woman, to which the author of “Stopeurs and Tremmers” has a deep admiration.

Questioned by “Gala” about her choice to never have children, the Belgian novelist, installed in part in France by love, confides that the desire has “never come to her”, neither to her nor to her sister. “My brother had six children,” she said.

For her, the answer is undoubtedly found in the maternal model. “I think my mother had placed the bar too high. She was too brilliant a mother, ”she explains with emotion. A figure so inspiring that Amélie Nothomb has long felt “unable to be like her, to have her strength and her energy”.

Beyond this intimate influence, the writer also embodies an era marked by a drop in births in Europe, a phenomenon which she precedes and accompanies, while continuing to deliver, novel after novel, personal and universal reflections.