The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
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Book Reviews of The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Book Review: Philosophy aside...
Summary: 4 Stars
Philosophy aside, I was fascinated by the contrast between Renee, the concierge of the upper-class building in Paris and, Paloma, the 12-year-old resident of the same building. Class distinctions are an entirely different beast in Europe, compared to the United States, and I think that to appreciate this book you have to keep that in mind.
I say "philosophy aside" because some of these passages were lost on me but I think that's more a question of my ignorance of philosophy rather than it being a criticism of the book. The prose was well-written and compelled me to read those passages although at times I felt like I was taking my medicine in doing so.
The author, Muriel Barbery, did a fantastic job of bringing Renee, in particular, to life and in transforming her from a homely, uneducated but incredibly well-read and cultured concierge into a woman who is ready to expose her previously hidden knowledge and herself to the upper class world in which she lives. The scenes where she prepares to visit Mr. Ozu, the building's newest resident who provides the impetus for Renee to come out of her shell, were heart-warming and engaging: getting her matted hair done by a hairdresser rather than chopping it off herself, putting on a nice dress procured by her friend from the cleaners where it had been abandoned a woman who died before being able to pick it up, applying lipstick that she had had for 20 years. The transformation brought to mind Cinderella while maintaining credibility. Kudos to Ms. Barbery!
I had a more difficult time connecting to Paloma but enjoyed immensely looking at her world through her eyes as someone who was born into the upper-class. Some of the "movements of the world" and "profound thought" diary entries were fall-off-your-seat funny. One of my favorites was the description of her mother's movements as she fought to get her hands both pieces of a set of bra and panties during a lingerie sale. The contrast between the rich rummaging around sale bins while Renee hid the fine food she bought for herself under more concierge-like fare that was really destined for her cat's consumption gave me quite a chuckle!
I almost didn't recognize Paloma when she stepped into Renee's lodge. I felt like a piece of the puzzle was missing but maybe it was just the intersection between Renee's perspective of Paloma and Paloma's vision of herself.
My one criticism of the book is the ending: it felt tacked on and inconsistent with the rest of the novel and just wasn't satisfying. I reflected on my dissatisfaction with the ending for quite a while and concluded that the class constraints at the heart of the story likely didn't allow for a happily ever after ending so this was the most plausible conclusion available to the author. In any event, I would have preferred that the ending be more congruous with the rest of the book.
Book Review: Heartrending yet marvellous
Summary: 5 Stars
"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.
Book Review: Holden Caulfield + Obi-Wan Kenobe = Caveat Emptor!
Summary: 1 Stars
I really wanted to like this novel, which was recommended to me by a friend. What it is, however, is two hundred pages plus of pretentious, adolescent ramblings delivered by two narrators, a middle-aged concierge "autodidact," and an self-described "hyper-intelligent" adolescent, each of whom announces at the outset that she is morally and intellectually superior to the other human beings -- adults, adolescents and children -- in her respective world within the apartment house in which all the characters in the novel reside. All of these family members, neighbors and friends -- except, of course, for a working-class maid -- are rich, spoiled, phony, stupid, superficial . . . . well, you get the picture. The dogs and cats come off well, probably because they can't go shopping. Ah, the tedium of the bourgeoisie! The torture of having to hide your exceptional talents and exquisite sensibility from mediocre people who would never appreciate such rare gifts; nay, who would punish you for being special. Such ordinary mortals could not share those special moments with Leo, Levin and Kitty (that's Tolstoy and the main characters in "Anna Karenina," folks -- just in case you aren't among the "elect"), or read Japanese comic books in the original.
As Holden Caulfield would have said, -- "What a load of crap." When the Japanese sage walked in -- with his decorator, no less, who stripped the haute bourgeoisie apartment of a dead food critic of all its rich person frou-frou, creating instead a high-end ashram -- I was ready to, as Holden might have said, "Puke." Of course, Obi-Wan Kenobe sees through everyone's pose right away, feeding the concierge pickled veggies and sushi; unlocking the hearts of our over-enlightened, undernourished heroines, who are able, for the first time, to form close relationships with others -- one another, of course (not counting the dog, cats and Obi-Wan) -- and thereby to discover the meaning of "life."
Guess what happens next? Reader, I won't tell you. But if you are not enmeshed in the same web of self-indulgent, narcissistic adolescent fantasy as are the so-called characters of this alleged novel (which is really a collection of assertions -- god forbid I should call them meditations -- about "art," "life," and how crummy your parents are) -- you will have guessed the trendy post-modernist denouement by page 5. ("Is there a 'subject'?" asked Foucault; "What is an author?" I pondered these weighty -- with pretention, because they are ultimately trite -- questions as I placed "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" in my "Donate to the library a.s.a.p." pile.)
I rarely write reviews for books that I strongly dislike; I figure, "live and let live" -- but this time, I am making an exception. "Caveat Emptor" -- Buyer beware.
Book Review: Philosophy With Charm and Wit
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a novel truly unlike any other I've read in recent memory. Clever, charming, witty and poignant, it was a delight from start to finish. Not as plot-driven as many novels are, it is nonetheless a book of ideas which are communicated by two fascinating and endearing narrators: Renee Michel, a middle-aged concierge in an elegant Parisian apartment building, and Paloma Josse, a precocious 12-year old resident of that building.
Both narrators are secret intellectuals, hiding their considerable talents for reasons of their own. Renee is an autodidact, a child of peasant parents with no formal schooling who nonetheless is an avid student of philosophy, art, and the cinema (although her favorite films are American adventures). She pretends to be what society expects her to be, even cooking cabbage and keeping her television droning so that she will seem to her tenants to be sitting in front of it, watching all day, instead of hiding in a back room of her apartment, studying literature and art to understand her place in the reality of the world.
Paloma,like Renee, pretends at being merely average, quietly fitting in at school and in her family, whose members she tolerates, secretly despising them on many levels. She plans to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday, after setting her family's apartment on fire. She has determined that life is meaningless, and thus is not worth living. But before she goes, she is setting down her thoughts in a series of journal entries entitled "Profound Thoughts," often punctuated with haiku.
When one of the apartment residents dies, Kakuro Ozu, a wealthy Japanese businessman, moves in. Both Renee and Paloma are instantly intrigued by, and impressed with, Ozu and he quickly recognizes the intelligence in both of them, and reaches out to them so charmingly that they both become friends with him. This 3-way friendship enriches all of their lives, causing Renee and Paloma to see life and its meaning differently.
The plot moves along, peppered cleverly with philosophical musings that reveal the desire of both Renee and Paloma to find meaning, through the beauty of art, in life. There are also multiple references to music, painting and literature, specifically Tolstoy (when Anna Karenina came up, I was sold, because it is one of my favorite novels of all time), but knowledge of all this is not necessary to enjoy the story.
The characters are appealing and sympathetic and their voices are well rendered. The imagery and symbols serve primarily to support the characters and the themes of the story, which are, really, primal and simple.
A lovely story, beautifully rendered, yet thought provoking. It will stay with me for a long time. Highly recommended.
Book Review: Not Spiky Enough
Summary: 3 Stars
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.