The latest addition to my website is Amélie Nothomb‘s Tant mieux [So Much the Better]. Our heroine is Adrienne, aged four in 1942 when she is sent to stay with her evil grandmother who treats her badly ill The grandmother finds that her cat is very fond ofAdrienne. ofAdrienne later learns that her mother and two sisters were treated badly and that their mother preferred cats to her daughters. Back home in Brussels things are not going well with her parents and we also learn that neighbourhood cats are disappearing and we and Adrienne have a pretty good idea who is responsible. Both parents seem to be having affairs though Astrid loses her boyfriend at the end of the war as he turns out to be a collaborator. Both parents had hoped for boys when their two girls were born and when they make up it turns out that the pregnancy again results in a girl appearing and Astrid is not interested, leavingfAdrienne to look after her younger sister. While her older sister Jacqueline is struggling with life, Adrienne focuses on babysitting duties.Eventually the younger sister grows up and Adrienne meets a boy in an odd way while her older sister continues to struggle with life. In an afterword Nothomb give something of an an account of her life and particularly of her parents which shows that this book is not autobiographical but that there are autobiographical elements in it.