The Elegance of the Hedgehog

(4.5 stars) With sales of over half a million copies in Europe, this clever novel, newly released in the United States, may make Muriel Barbery as much of a literary phenomenon here as she is there, despite the novel's unusual focus on philosophy. Narrator Renee Michel is a fifty-four-year-old woman who has worked for twenty-seven years as concierge of a small Parisian apartment building. A "proletarian autodidact," Renee grew up poor and quit school at age twelve, but throughout her life she has studied philosophy secretly, searching for knowledge about who she is and how she fits into the grand scheme of life. Grateful for her job, she finds it prudent to keep her rich intellectual life hidden from the residents, maintaining the façade of the perfect concierge, someone who lives in a completely different world from them.

Alternating with Renee's thoughts about her life and studies, are the musings of Paloma Josse, a twelve-year-old who lives in the apartment building, the daughter of wealthy parents who have active professional lives. Like Renee, Paloma pretends to be just average, carefully constructing her own façade so that she can fit in at school, though she has the intellectual level of a senior in college. Ignored by her parents and her school, Paloma plans to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. As the lives of Renee and Paloma unfold and overlap, the rough parallels in their lives become obvious, both in their isolation and in their need to hide their talents.

When one of the apartment residents dies, Kakuro Ozu, whom Renee thinks may be related to the Japanese film maker that she most admires, moves in. Paloma, too, is impressed with Ozu, bemoaning the fact that he has moved in just as she has decided to kill herself. When Ozu suspects that Renee is not what she seems to be, he wants to know her better, and as Ozu confides in Paloma, Paloma begins to feel hope for the future.

Barbery is a skilled writer who artfully combines the philosophy of Renee's studies--from Husserl: Basic Writings in Phenomenology, to The Dilemma of Determinism and Kant's Idealism--with aesthetics and the desire of both Renee and Paloma to find beauty in art and poetry. Always, however, she remembers that this is a story, with characters who must appeal to the reader. As the characters begin to change, the reader understands them and the forces that have made them the people they are, hoping for their happiness. Motifs from Japanese film and the novels of Tolstoy combine with images celebrating the perennial beauty and death of flowers, especially the camellia, adding universality and connecting the characters to broader artistic themes. Thoughtful, ironic, and often darkly humorous, the novel creates moods which bring the characters vividly to life, even as they are contemplating death and the deepest of life's mysteries. n Mary Whipple

You are smart, but unschooled, a daughter of the poorest illiterate peasantry. Over the decades you have read your Marx and Kant, appreciated Mozart, immersed yourself in 17th century Dutch painting. You smuggle literature home in your shopping bag along with the turnips and cat food. You are Renee Michel and a concierge in a Left Bank apartment block serving the rich. You are an invisible drab, and no-one must ever suspect.

You are precociously intelligent but only twelve and a half. Your sister, studying for her Masters degree at the Sorbonne, is a `beautiful person' of barren soulless talent. Your mother is a vacuous socialist snob while your father is a senior Government official hiding behind his role. You know from Dawkins and all the rest that life is just a pointless primate struggle to reproduce your genes. Surrounded by so much empty posturing and mediocrity, what is the point? You are Paloma Josse and you are determined to commit suicide on your 13th birthday.

A particularly loathsome apartment owner dies and someone new moves in. Wealthy, cultured and thoroughly civilised, perhaps Renee and Paloma, in their daily deceptions, have finally encountered someone they can't hoodwink. Primary certainties are reworked as the story moves to its shocking conclusion.

This is a beautiful piece of work: erudite, laugh-out-loud humorous and tragic by turns. It can't have been easy for Alison Anderson to capture in English the sophistication of Muriel Barbery's writing, but she's made a fine job of it. Recommended.

"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.

There was an episode of British comedian, Tony Hancock's show, `Hancock's Half Hour' called `The Poetry Society'. In it, Hancock had become acquainted with a group of pretentious pseudo-intellectuals who thought such utterances as, "Life is purple, I am orange," indicated genius. I was reminded of this quite often when reading `The Elegance of the Hedgehog'.

I freely admit that I may not be clever enough to have fully grasped the vast tracts of philosophical insight spouted by our two heroines. Renee is a fifty-four year-old concierge who is wildly aware of her standing among her social betters who occupy apartments in the block that she serves. Paloma is a precocious twelve-year old girl who lives in the same tenement. She spends her time filling her diary with tut-tutting observations of her life and family and thoughts of suicide and arson.

Class boundaries are what this novel has at its heart. Renee is of lower-class stock, but she is naturally clever. Much cleverer, at least in her own mind, than any of the higher-ups that she meets during her day-to-day duties. Her knowledge of Nietzsche, Kant and phenomenology rattles around in her mind but must remain hidden from those about her. Unfortunately it is not kept from the reader. I was bored witless as I waded through this literary swamp while Renee worried that her so-called betters would find her out and think that she has ideas above her station. Ah, I thought, as soon as Renee meets Paloma, she'll put her on the straight and narrow in a `Sophie's World' sort of way.

And so, you wait for these two kindred spirits to cross paths. And you wait, and you wait. It happens eventually, but far too late in the novel for any character development to take shape. Amid the monotone monotony of inverse snobbery and cultural references that, I'm afraid for the most part, were over my head, nothing much happens.

So far, so dull. Perhaps it was the author's intention to render in the reader a state of deadened emotion. If so, she did a great job in the final third as she strikes with sledgehammer-blow to the senses. I suddenly began to care about these characters and I read the last hundred pages in one sitting; I'd previously been struggling through a few pages at a time. The book's ending is incredibly moving. I would have probably given this novel two stars had it continued in its stagnant vein, but the final section yanked it up to three. It's a pity that the middle section could not have been paced a little more urgently. In my opinion, it became too bogged down as each of the main protagonists were caught in their own worlds and the reader's anticipation is whetted only to be denied for no real reason.

The author, a former teacher of philosophy, examines the assumptions and absurdities of class-based French society through the voices of two intellectual residents of an upper-middle class apartment building in Paris consisting of eight families, though both of them have managed to conceal their erudition. Renee, fifty-four years old, has been the concierge of the building for twenty-seven years, and during that time has transformed herself into the equivalent of a scholar in art, philosophy, and literature while maintaining the outward appearances and habits of a peasant woman. Paloma Josse is a precocious twelve-year-old who sees through the follies, obsessions, and illusions of her family members and other building residents, though, like Renee, she keeps her observations well guarded.

Through short, alternating chapters that consist of the musings and observations of first Renee and then Paloma, the reader learns of the nature of Parisian society and the inconsequentiality of those of humble origins to those of considerable wealth. Indeed, Renee learned at an early age that coming to the attention of elites usually results unnecessary suffering. Both Paloma and, especially, Renee infuse their observations of life with references to art and literature. Despite any obscurity, their insights are quite astute and often acerbic.

The story gains impetus when a wealthy Japanese man, Kakuro Ozu, moves into the apartment building after a resident's death. Since both Renee and Paloma appreciate Japanese culture, not to mention Renee's knowledge of literature, Kakuro senses that they are kindred souls. Subsequent socialization with Kakuro is both thrilling and enervating to Renee, as she knows that she has overstepped her social station, despite reassurances from Kakuro.

This is definitely a thinking person's novel. Life's ironies, absurdities, and cruelties are explored. It is very interesting to watch these characters work through them. A modicum of happiness is achieved through their understandings. It would be hard to argue that these characters are not highly improbable, despite their abilities to capture us. Yet, perhaps we could hope that they could exist. The philosophical nature of the book may be tiresome to some, but the author keeps the almost non-stop reflecting moving well by shifting the voices frequently. It all does reach a thought-provoking conclusion.