UK reviews:

‘[The Child Who] is driven by reflections on the love between parent and child and between husband and wife. And then there’s a first-person narrator who talks to the child directly: “I’d like to say to you that the world is immense and lovely, that there’s a path for you too.”’ — John Self, Guardian Best Recent Translated Fiction

‘Prose that approximates the condition of poetry… Benameur’s particular strength lies in her ability to give a distinctive voice to the voiceless.’ — Michael Cronin, Irish Times Translations: a round-up of the best new works from around the world

'A short, emotionally charged book. Tension is evoked in ways other than conventional plot. Most of the novella is addressed to “you” – the nameless child. On occasion the narrator interjects in the first person. This ambiguous, sometimes destabilizing point of view propels the story by posing intriguing questions. Who is speaking? How can the narrator access the child's thoughts? (...) Benameur’s decision in these sequences to opt for dream logic (...) reinforces the book’s theme that unaddressed trauma can trap its victim in a position of stasis. When it is finally revealed who is speaking, there is a sense of emotional release that the child may eventually (...) become free.' - Aaron Peck, In Brief Review, TLS, 6 Oct. 2022

‘Jeanne Benameur’s haunting, gossamer like book The Child Who […] glows in a rich prose, drawing its pictures from the dense canopy of the forest & the closeted, unnamed French village from which the woman has disappeared without a trace. It is profound on motherhood, the natural world, the cyclical nature of familial wounds, & all told through an outside eye that, as the novel unravels, you realise is spinning the clock completely out of time.’ — Clive Judd, on Instagram

‘This extraordinary modern fable explores the experience of profound grief and loss – how we survive it and, eventually, come to terms with the chasm it creates in our lives. It’s a powerful, insightful and genuinely moving read. If the novelist’s job is to pose existential questions, it feels like Benameur provides answers too. I’m sure that this brief and elegant novel will, to many, be a comfort, a way of ordering their thoughts and dealing with the suddenness and individual pain of grief.’— Paul Burke, #RivetingReviews, eurolitnetwork.com

‘The ambiguous, tense, mysterious, dreamlike narrative is driven by grief, longing, a childlike desire to understand that which cannot be explained, and the power of the imagination. The emphasis on sensual beauty, Nature and the strong connections between the visual and the visceral makes for an ethereal and potent read.’ - BOOKBLAST, 2022 in Review

US reviews:

'The Child Who belongs to a trend in contemporary literature that reimagines the fable to sometimes more feminist ends—as in the work of Angela Carter, Anne Serre, or Marie NDiaye. But while Carter and Serre are famous for upending the tropes of the fairy tale to return them to their darkly sexual origins, Benameur appears more interested in its ties to psychoanalysis, specifically in relation to loss and grief. Along with exile, these themes are constants throughout Benameur’s oeuvre. Born in Algeria to an Algerian father and an Italian mother, the family relocated to France when Benameur was five because of the war for independence. She inherited from this exile “une mémoire à trous” (or “a punctured memory”) and her novels, plays, essays, and poetry often track the movements the mind takes to make sense of such gaps. (...) 'The Child Who builds a haunting portrait of the way people navigate loss. The three characters orbit the gravitational force of the woman’s death or use it as a beginning to a new trajectory. After all, even the title of this book contains a silence asking to be filled.' — Edmée Lepercq, Chicago Review of Books

French reviews:

‘Jeanne Benameur’s work is carved out of silences. Her characters use few words, while she chooses her own with a parsimony that increases their impact tenfold. Suffused in mystery, this novel—about what makes a family, how a personality emerges, how one learns to inhabit the world—is fashioned from a poetry as startling as its title.’ — Raphaëlle Leyris, Le Monde

‘It’s a brief story, but a prodigiously compact one—the hallmark of all Jeanne Benameur’s books. It’s impossible to say enough good things about her, for the loveliest assessments will never adequately convey her talent.’ — Mohammed Aïssaoui, Le Figaro

‘A work of startling beauty.’ — Xavier Houssin, ELLE

‘A marvel.’ —Claire Conruyt, Le Figaro Littéraire