El empresario Jérôme Angust recibe por megafonía el anuncio de que su vuelo sufre un retraso sin determinar. Para matar el tiempo se sumerge en la lectura del libro que lleva en su bolsa de mano, pero un inesperado interlocutor, Textor Texel, le dará conversación a pesar de su manifiesta resistencia. Como se trata de una novela de Nothomb, no sorprende que el inoportuno Texel tenga algo que contar que es mucho más terrorífico, intrigante y sugestivo que cualquier libro: a lo largo de su relato, la violación y el asesinato se irán perfilando con nitidez cada vez mayor, y Textor se irá transformando en una abominable encarnación de todos los fantasmas de Angust, quien verá convertida su anodina espera de un vuelo retrasado en una aventura ominosa y alucinante, una pesadilla en la tibia vigilia de una terminal de aeropuerto. ( )

Novela corta en la que dos extranos dialogan en un aeropuerto y en la que descubren que tienen mas en comun de lo que parece en un principio. Las novelas de Nothomb son generalmente divertidas y autobiograficas, sin embargo esta no es divertida y no parece autobiografica. Aunque tiene un pequeno elemento de sorpresa en la trama que la redime parcialmente resulta un poco aburrida e ingenua y no es muy interesante. ( )

I think this would have been better as a play. More powerful even. It's 90% dialog as it is [1:]. I hated it, and I loved it. I won't give anything away, but my brain caught hints of what was to come without really processing them (the hints). I think I was too busy hating the Textor character to really analyze what was going on. Not hating the character as a creation, but hating his "personality". Of course, that's the point. I thought of _Lolita_ -- the solipsistic unreliable narrator (the difference is in the final twist).
In the end, it was delightfully disturbing, the way a car crash might be, as long as we're not part of it, rubber-necking past the wreckage. But watch out, the next car crash might involve you...
What was most interesting to me was not so much the doppelganger aspect of the story so much as the what-we-keep-hidden-from-ourselves aspect of the story. We do this every minute of every day in one degree or another. This book shows one of the possible consequences of this hiding-from-ourselves......

[1:] I usually don't like all-dialog novels. I kept thinking, why not just write a play? ( )

http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/nothomba/cennemi.htm, ( )