The Book of Proper Names is a Belgian novel by Amélie Nothomb

Amélie Nothomb

Amélie Nothomb is a Belgian writer who writes in French.- Biography :Amélie Nothomb was born in Kobe, Japan to Belgian diplomats. She lived there until she was five years old, and then subsequently lived in China, New York, Bangladesh, Burma, Coventry and Laos...

. It was first published in 2002. It is a romanticized account of the life of the singer RoBERT

Robert (singer)

Robert, or RoBERT , is a French singer, composer and lyricist.An independent artist and songwriter, Robert's musical style is described as fairy-like, halfway between the tragic and the gothic, sometimes with a pinch of nonsense...

, whom Nothomb became acquainted with as an avid admirer of her songs.

Plot

In a vaguely surreal story, an extraordinary little girl is born from strange circumstances - her mother murdered her father, gave birth in prison, and then hanged herself. Plectrude, as the girl is unfortunately named by her mother, is adopted by her aunt and lives a fairy-like existence until she enrolled into the Paris Opera Ballet School, a rigorous institution portrayed as a "scalpel to slice away the last flesh of childhood."