The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.65 You Save: $10.35 (69%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Book Review: I wanted to like it
Summary: 1 Stars
...that's why I bought it, but I had to quit after 167 pages. The temptation was there after 60 pages, but I steeled myself and fought on - alas, in vain. I must admit defeat.
The story is about 2 people, one a doorkeeper in a fancy Parisian building where only hoity-toity elite live; the other, a twelve year old girl who plans to kill herself because life is absurd, because no matter how much you struggle you end up in the same golden fishbowl as an adult (that is, you end up disappointing your younger self, and conforming to vain dictates). Now, basically nothing happens until page 167, except that one old dude dies, and an old Japanese dude moves into the building. So this is a novel of IDEAS, thoughts that must carry all the water, since there is no action. Very well, let's then look at some ideas:
First of all, there is the idea that a young girl wants to kill herself because life has no meaning. How very French, you say. It's not that she's poor, or depressed, or terribly ugly and shunned by others. Oh, no, she has decided that life is useless, and she plans to kill herself and set the building on fire (when nobody's there, of course). Eff this, I say, as a father myself - a little supersmarty deciding that life has no meaning before she has even had a chance to live, just based on OBSERVATIONS. And then she writes in her journal, all sorts of profound thoughts, like how a little misstep ruins things in life and sport (she knows both from TV and books): "all those things that pass before us, which we miss by a hair and which are botched by eternity"; and then she has another idea, about how literature is a television, showing us all the things we have missed. Yes, for sure: there never is another chance to make up for your mistakes, and literature shows a mirror to the world. That's why I never try anything if I fail once and why I read Dostoevsky (to see the nineteenth century Russia I could never visit). I'm being ironic, in case you can't tell.
I mean if this is a novel of ideas, let's take it on at the level of ideas, no? (aside from the fact that I think that a novel should have both ideas and action of some sort). What is with the doorkeeper being all snobbish about how superior she is to the rich people because she reads Tolstoy and has a cat named Leo whereas they are big dumb phonies? I mean she revels in it: "And I sit meditating, savoring the unexpected and incongruous nature of our conversation. Who has ever heard of a maid and a concierge making use of their afternoon break to ponder the cultural significance of interior decoration? You would be surprised by what ordinary little people come out with." Well, no, see. I lived in North America, and I know plenty of people who read and don't have academic jobs, of PhD's doing menial labor, of drunks in bars having read more than the average college professor. This kind of reverse cultural snobbishness is just as bad as the illness it attacks: yes, the people in that building are snobbish, rich, insufferable pricks -but so are you, Madame Michel, with you worship of Japan (have you ever been there?), with your displays of culture, with your so-called profound thoughts.
Sorry for the rant, but I think this book deserves it.
Book Review: "Art is life playing to other rhythms."
Summary: 5 Stars
(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
Book Review: Deep, moving, funny...
Summary: 5 Stars
There are two narrators in the story. Renee, a middle aged widow who grew up in poverty to become the concierge at high-end apartment building in Paris. She is described as short, ugly and plump and hides her passion and highly evolved understanding of the arts, philosophy, Japanese culture and music from the building residents. The second narrator is Paloma who is a highly intelligent 12-year old who lives with her well-off family in the same building. She too hides her intelligence behind a mask of mediocrity and has determined to end her life on her 13th birthday for reasons that will be outlined for the reader. The story describes the day-to-day lives of Renee and Paloma until a new wealthy tenant moves into the building (Kakuro Ozu). Ozu is able to see through their disguises and appreciate both of them like no one else has at which time they begin personal transformations.
* I best describe this story as a philosophical fable conveying messages on the meaning of life, death, happiness, time & beauty - in the context of those with and without the benefits of beauty, wealth & social status
* The story has a simple (very) plot. While the writing is genius, the plot line is less so (e.g., unbelievable situations for the main characters; cliff-like ending).
* The use of satire is intelligent, witty and sad.
* There are many (MANY) "8+ letter" dictionary-look-up words.
* The story evolves with short vignettes that rotate between the two narrators.
* The Author is a master of turning a word or phrase in capturing life's small pleasures and perfect moments - I found it to be a charming story.
* Three of my favorite passages include:
"All our family acquaintances have followed the same path: their youth spent trying to to make the most of their intelligence, squeezing their studies like a lemon to make sure they'd secured a spot among the elite, then the rest of their lives wondering with a flabbergasted look on their faces why all that hopefulness has led to such a vain existence. People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl."
"Personally I think there is only one thing to do: find the task that we have been placed on this earth to do, and accomplish it as best we can, with all our strength, without making things complicated or thinking there's anything divine about our animal nature. This is the only way we will ever feel that we have been doing something constructive when death comes to get us."
"...Just by observing the adults around me I understood that very early on that life goes by in no time at all, yet they're always in such a hurry, so stressed out by deadlines, so eager for now that they needn't think about tomorrow...But if you dread tomorrow, it's because you don't know how to build the present, and when you don't know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it's a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up becoming today, don't you see?"
Book Review: Read This
Summary: 3 Stars
"With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life."
This declaration is made by Paloma, one of the protagonists of Muriel Barbery's novel, translated from the original French by Alison Anderson. Paloma is not alone in her thought; Renee Michel shares her feelings as well. Paloma and Renee make an odd couple. Whereas Paloma is the precocious twelve-year old daughter of the well-pedigreed, excruciatingly educated, and affluent Josse family, Renee is the fifty-four year old concierge of the apartment complex they live in.
Barely acquainted with each other, they are almost mirror images in other ways. Renee hides her voracious intelligence behind a surly, semi-literate façade, and Paloma remains brooding, mostly alone, over the shortcomings of her family and the Parisian haut monde that is their social circle. In fact, Paloma has had enough of snobs and hypocrites - that's why she has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. Having made peace with that choice, her interim goal is to have as many profound thoughts as possible expressed in the form of haiku.
That is one of the other things Paloma and Renee have in common: a love of Japanese culture. They're not merely intellectuals; they're aesthetes. Their interior monologues are disquisitions on the essence of Art, Literature, Music, Nature, and Philosophy.
Underneath their prickly armor, Renee and Paloma conceal both an unexpected caring and integrity. Ms. Barbery has created an especially exquisite character in Paloma, an ennui-ridden child who calls it as she sees it, and she sees a lot. Paloma skirts the dangers of being a poseur by virtue of her unflinching, lacerating honesty. Once she resolves to appreciate the positive, we see her awakening ever more profoundly to the beauty all around her.
The one distracting thing, and yes, it is a major distraction, is the tendency to indulge in endless specious arguments that leaves the reader glassy-eyed and befogged. Here is one such gem:
When we say "a table", when we utter the word "table", when we make the concept of the table, are we still designating this table or are we truly referring to a universal table entity that establishes the reality of all the particular tables that exist? Is the idea of the table real, or does it merely belong to the mind?
Really? Does furniture merit so much strenuous thought? All this sophistry sounds damningly like the very thing that both Renee and Paloma purport to despise - the pretentious vanity and empty ratiocination that characterizes intellectuals.
A fact that often escapes the clever, but is never forgotten by the wise is that whereas intelligence is a tool to be used and enjoyed, Life is a gift to be loved and cherished. In its most lucid moments, Barbery's book reveals this awareness that under the pettiness, sham and absurdity, Life throbs in ineffable loveliness, and Art in all its forms merely captures these intimations of beauty.
Book Review: Deja vu all over again, Holden
Summary: 2 Stars
Sure, an enjoyable read to while away a dull afternoon, with here and there some charming mots (lots of mots), the pleasure of well-crafted sentences, the frisson of intellectual banners in procession, and a musical toilet.
If you liked, "The Catcher in the Rye," you may like reading Holden's disdain for the perceived hypocrisy of the adult world as experienced by a 12 year old in Paris. While some kids are world-weary soldiers, some other kids are prostitutes, some are drug-dealers doing whatever to survive, these over-privileged kids suffering by not suffering. Literally. One of the two heroines doesn't come alive until she experiences that ultimate orgasm: real suffering.
There are two adolescents in transition here: Madame Michel, the concierge, and the 12-going-on-13 Paloma. Both while self-critical, have limited insight into themselves while enjoying it seems skewering others. Both consider themselves so brilliant, they select an outer seeming of prickliness and minds as featureless as a desert. Their mini-essays on philosophers accessible enough to make readers feel they are part of the inner elite (Marx! Phenomonology! Tolstoy!) are about what you'd expect from people whose ideas have never been held up to the challenges of discussion, debate, and perhaps enlightenment.
A deus ex machina, Mr. Ozu, about as one-dimensional as a deus can be, appears about two-thirds of the way through, and with what seems intended as Japanese delicacy, awakens both adolescents to the pleasant society of minds worthy of their own. Me, I don't see playing one of the saddest parts of Mozart's Requiem fortissimo when a toilet flushes as the height of Japanese delicacy: maybe a little Handel, as in Watermusic, would be a light touch. But it gives a chance for Madame to wow Mr. Ozu still further with this concierge's brilliance when she can identify composer and composition. Wow!
Inbetween, there are kinds of word and idea-play Joyce so gloriously provides in
"Finnegan's Wake." For example, the Josse's name their older daughter Colombe (dove in French) and the younger is Paloma (dove in Spanish.) Cute, oui? A resolving theme is "You are not your sister," obviously applied to Madame and we have to figure it out for ourselves (OK, not a biggie) for Colombe and Paloma.
One feels much thought has gone into writing this work, and working out the tensions between outer and inner appearances, between the social stereotypes of working and upper class, between living and dying, between beauty and well, bourgeoise quotidian ugliness, between refinement and crassness (dear Lord, the panty scene), et cetera et cetera et cetera.
Hard to argue with popular success, and the aforementioned virtues make for a worthwhile read particularly when you want some mental marshmallows. But bons-bons can be delightful at times, and, Holden, you and Paloma oughtta get along fine!