Books like Loving Sabotage

This Belgian who writes in French, was born in Japan and partly raised in China, writes fantastical novellas usually about precocious children who encounter self-imposed or external hardships in the nasty old world. I read this one for respite during The Tunnel but the choppy sentences and frustratingly twee intellectual humour made me less eager to pick it up. Nothomb claims the story (about a precocious seven-year-old member of Mao’s army who falls in love with a steely Chinese Italian girl) is completely true, which seeing the character speaks at a level of erudition most adults fail to achieve without speedball cocktails, is a somewhat outrageous boast. The novel coasts along on its impish humour and unusual approach to history but lacks the flair for tongue-in-cheek melodrama in books like The Character of Rain (narrated by a three-year-old) and The Book of Proper Names. Also, the cover gives me a headache.