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Product Description
Review
'Resistance is futile. you might as well buy it before someone recommends it for your book group. It's charm will make you say yes.' - The Guardian.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Book Description
We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who, for their part, are barely aware of her existence. Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.
Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Renée's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.
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Most helpful customer reviews
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartrending yet marvellous,
By
This review is from: Elegance of the Hedgehog (Paperback)
"The Elegance of the Hedgehog" transcends excellence. It is one of those rare books with a special inner quality that makes you ponder over life in a way only very few others can. After turning the last page, I was left staring into space, feeling bereft. I wished there was more to read, yet its ending befitted the whole tale. I now understand why it received so many wonderful reviews in France recently and why it became such a literary success. It fully deserves it.Just a brief summary, as described by both main characters -Renée and Paloma - introducing themselves in the beginning of the book, which is written in a diary form by each. Paris, present day. Renée is the widowed concierge of an elegant building in an exclusive area. Its inhabitants all belong to the upper class. She is, by her own admission, dowdy, unattractive, often grumpy and wants everybody to believe that she is the stereotype of all concierges, blending into the background, almost featureless. But Renée has a well-kept secret: she is an extremely cultured autodidact. She loves art, philosophy, literature, music. Aestheticism and beauty in all of its forms fascinate her. Renée keeps concealing this aspect of her life to the outside world, hiding behind the concierge's screen -literal and metaphorical-. Paloma is a twelve-year-old who lives in the building with her rich family. She is distractedly well-loved by her parents and does not get along with her older sister. Paloma is an extremely bright, clear-headed, lucid child. She is so lucid it is uncomfortable -yet to the reader she also conveys tenderness, and her wittiness is remarkable- . She pretends to be the average adolescent, yet despises what she considers the subculture of her peers and does not see any sense in continuing living. Her view of life is very disillusioned, disenchanted, sardonic. She decides to commit suicide on her 13th birthday. Renée and Paloma could not be more different, yet their way of looking at life is often very similar. Their paths never cross, if not by sight, until the day a new tenant moves into the building and... I cannot add anything else, the tale would definitely be spoiled. In my opinion, this book is not your typical beach-read, it deserves to be savoured slowly and quietly if possible. Yet it is a page-turner and I myself have devoured it. Often heartbreaking, yet unbelievably funny in parts. Real humour pops up unexpectedly, which renders the reading even more pleasant and lightens some heart-knotting situations. The narrative flows beautifully and is linguistically refined. Ladies and Gentlemen, get your tissues ready if you must, but do read this book. It shall touch you profoundly yet you will not regret having read it.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Elegance of the Novel,
By
This review is from: Elegance of the Hedgehog (Paperback)
Every once in a while a novel comes along that propriety tells me to just let alone, recommend with a suitable rating, then leave to the reader to accept and explore for themselves. The sublime qualities of Ms Barbery's book make me reluctant to make any effort to contextualize it, or somehow do justice to what's presented by way of a review.So I'm going to limit myself to these two paragraphs and say that I was enchanted, I was challenged, I was made to feel included, I was made to laugh, to cry...to take a fresh look at humanity, at walking through this world with grace...at the sometime-need to 'reboot' and live Life from an entirely renewed perspective. I offer my thanks to the author for this opportunity. Personal rating: 9/10
15 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Elegance of Intelligence in Paris,
This review is from: Elegance of the Hedgehog (Paperback)
In my romanticized version of Europe, after I've eaten ravioli in Roma, and sipped cappuccinos at a stand-up cafe, then I will stroll along the Seine and stop at booksellers with used treasures they sell along the river. In my romanticized version of Europe, the French and the Germans and the Albanians, they all drink good wine and smoke Gauloises at will. They eat thin slices of excellent cheese and talk about interesting things and deep things and not what they watched last night on TV. They talk about politics and paintings, they discuss books and don't care what Oprah thinks. The men read fiction and care about it. The women dress well but are also smart as hell. Together the men and the women, before they go off to have tantric sex on old-fashioned beds, they have long slow dinners at long wooden tables, or perhaps they are small round tables at an outdoor cafe on a cobblestone walkway, some Van Goghian starlight to brighten the evening, to sparkle off their bread knives.This place I imagine is not real, I know. Oprah is shown around the world. Michael Bay films are global monsters and we stopped lighting the night with stars a long long time ago. But then I read Muriel Barbery's "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" and all the intelligence and philosophy and the wit and the hope and pathos of the European, of the French, becomes real again. Barbery isn't afraid to discuss Marx and issues of class that continue today, she philosophizes on death and the meaning of life, but then she also discusses her love of Ridley Scott sci-fi movies and she quotes Eminem. Yet for all its brainy seduction, the book is no lecture, the story no bore. How many times did I stop at my local Indigo bookstore to look at the beautiful blue of the cover and the sheer perfection of that title. But it takes so much more to buy book, to read book, to trust all those hours to turn all those pages to force all those neurons. So I must thank a dear friend, poet, writer, and philosopher for the suggestion that pushed me over that less than precarious edge. She told me I had to. And we all have friends like these. When they tell you you have to - you have to. So I did. And now I recommend it to you.
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