The Book of Proper Names: A Novel
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 MattsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved