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Synopsis
From France's 'literary lioness' (Elle), The Book of Proper Names is the story of the hapless orphan girl, Plectrude. Raised by her aunt, and unaware of the dark secret behind her past, she is a troubled but dreamy child who is both blessed and cursed by her intoxicating eyes. Discovered to have enormous gifts as a dancer, she is accepted at Paris's most prestigious ballet school where she devotes herself to artistic perfection, until her body can take no more. In a brilliantly succinct story of haunted adolescence and lost mothers, Nothomb propels the narrative forward until Plectrude is forced to take command of her own fate.
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About the Author
Belgian by nationality, Amelie Nothomb was born in Kobe, Japan, and currently lives in Paris. Described by Time Magazine as 'prolific and ingenious', she is the best-selling author of numerous novels, translated into over thirty languages, including Fear and Trembling which won the Grand Prix of the Academie Francaise and the Prix Internet du Livre, and The Book of Proper Names which has sold over 250,000 copies in France.
From Booklist
This mind-blowing little fable was a best-seller in France, where Belgian writer Nothomb has a cult following. It's hard to imagine a postmodern novel in translation achieving widespread popular success here, but the book's themes--ballet, anorexia, the redemptive power of love--certainly make it more accessible than the works of, say, Haruki Murakami. Nothomb tells the vaguely surreal story of an extraordinary little girl who overcomes a tragic infancy (her mother murdered her father, gave birth, then hung herself) and an unfortunate name (Plectrude) to revel in a fairy-dust-sprinkled childhood. Her age of innocence comes to an end when she enters the Paris Opera Ballet School, a rigorous institution portrayed as a "scalpel to slice away the last flesh of childhood." Eating disorders and their proliferating meanings are major themes, but the detached, slightly elevated prose, interspersed with commentary by the third-person narrator, is sufficiently inventive to avoid the air of a manifesto. Nothomb delivers her main character to the doorstep of adulthood with a cheekily absurdist ending that will jolt fans of experimental literature. Jennifer Mattson
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- PublisherFaber and Faber
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0571223443
- ISBN 13 9780571223442
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages128
- Rating
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