The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
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Description
The lives of fifty-four-year-old concierge Rene Michel and extremely bright, suicidal twelve-year-old Paloma Josse are transformed by the arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu.Tags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
labfs39 Both have incredibly well-drawn, quirky characters that are lovable in their unique humaness. show more Both have highly intelligent characters that are vulnerable because of their very gift. In both books I learned things in fields not particularly close to me: math in Housekeeper and philosophy in Elegance. show less
Also recommended by chrisharpe
161
lauranav Both show relationships and point of view of a young girl.
64
morsecode The English-language editions (published by Europa Editions) of both novels are translated by show more Alison Andersen. There isn't a lot of similarity between the two novels (beyond the fact that both are quite literary), but I do think that someone who enjoys one will enjoy the other. show less
31
tinyteaspoon Strong young female protagonist
Also recommended by krist_ellis
21
albavirtual Una historia oscura e intrigante y, al mismo tiempo, llena de profundas reflexiones sobre la show more risa, el arte y la libertad del hombre. show less
18
Member Reviews
Hedgehogs are loners, solitary nocturnal animals going about the business of eating thousands of insects which makes them cherished by gardeners. They are also very small, with vulnerable tender undersides which they protect by raising their spines and rolling into a ball, pulling in legs and head. When they encounter a new scent, they lick and eat it, then use the scent infused spit to cover their quills (it is conjectured that this makes a poison for further protection).
So there is the image in the title: a solitary animal which protects itself with spines when threatened. What then constitutes its “elegance”?
Renée, the concierge at #7 rue de Grenelle, hides her insatiable intelligence and autodidactic scholarship from the other show more inhabitants of the building by blaring her t.v. with soap operas and speaking in monosyllabic almost-grunts. She cooks foul smelling things which she doesn’t eat but feeds to her cat. By presenting the facade of what she thinks the building’s occupants expect of a concierge, she has raised her quills, eaten the strange scents and put spit on them for protection. But as we meet her at 54 years of age, we find that her carefully maintained facade is slipping and she is almost revealing her real self.
We also meet Paloma, a 12 year old junior hedgehog, who lives with her family in one of the apartments and is busy recording her thoughts in two journals: one for the “glory of the mind”, the other for the body and things such as “the masterpieces of matter”. Much of Paloma’s time is spent hiding, whether the true extent of her intellect in social situations such as school, where she is largely silent, or from her family, where she is enormously irritated by her sister. She is going to kill herself on June 16th and fantasizes about immolating the building as well. It is from Paloma that we get the book’s title, as she dubs Renée an “elegant hedgehog”.
Barbery spends some time carefully revealing the thoughts and life circumstances of each, creating parallels of philosophy and observation between the two. When Renée says “....you desperately need Art. You seek to reconnect with your spiritual illusions, and you wish fervently that something might rescue you from your biological destiny, so that all poetry and grandeur will not be cast out from the world”, you hear its echo in Paloma’s watching the television as an art form, with the sound turned off.
The first part of the novel is slow and careful, with each isolated. But then the catalyst of Monsieur Ozu brings the two together and galvanised by their meeting, the energy of their interaction, the book speeds up to its end.
So what is the elegance? I think it can be whatever you feel it to be, in this book. For me it was their thoughts, their perception of the world, which Barbery reveals in careful quiet moments from each. Hidden under the prickles of their snobbery and spiky defensiveness, in the vulnerability of Renée and Paloma, moments of this elegance were revealed. Take Paloma’s thoughts on the essence of Beauty:
"And that is why I thought of Ronsard’s poem, though I didn’t really understand it at first: because he talks about time, and roses. Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death. Oh my gosh, I thought, does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance? Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying."
That was the kernel of the story, for me. Highly recommended. show less
So there is the image in the title: a solitary animal which protects itself with spines when threatened. What then constitutes its “elegance”?
Renée, the concierge at #7 rue de Grenelle, hides her insatiable intelligence and autodidactic scholarship from the other show more inhabitants of the building by blaring her t.v. with soap operas and speaking in monosyllabic almost-grunts. She cooks foul smelling things which she doesn’t eat but feeds to her cat. By presenting the facade of what she thinks the building’s occupants expect of a concierge, she has raised her quills, eaten the strange scents and put spit on them for protection. But as we meet her at 54 years of age, we find that her carefully maintained facade is slipping and she is almost revealing her real self.
We also meet Paloma, a 12 year old junior hedgehog, who lives with her family in one of the apartments and is busy recording her thoughts in two journals: one for the “glory of the mind”, the other for the body and things such as “the masterpieces of matter”. Much of Paloma’s time is spent hiding, whether the true extent of her intellect in social situations such as school, where she is largely silent, or from her family, where she is enormously irritated by her sister. She is going to kill herself on June 16th and fantasizes about immolating the building as well. It is from Paloma that we get the book’s title, as she dubs Renée an “elegant hedgehog”.
Barbery spends some time carefully revealing the thoughts and life circumstances of each, creating parallels of philosophy and observation between the two. When Renée says “....you desperately need Art. You seek to reconnect with your spiritual illusions, and you wish fervently that something might rescue you from your biological destiny, so that all poetry and grandeur will not be cast out from the world”, you hear its echo in Paloma’s watching the television as an art form, with the sound turned off.
The first part of the novel is slow and careful, with each isolated. But then the catalyst of Monsieur Ozu brings the two together and galvanised by their meeting, the energy of their interaction, the book speeds up to its end.
So what is the elegance? I think it can be whatever you feel it to be, in this book. For me it was their thoughts, their perception of the world, which Barbery reveals in careful quiet moments from each. Hidden under the prickles of their snobbery and spiky defensiveness, in the vulnerability of Renée and Paloma, moments of this elegance were revealed. Take Paloma’s thoughts on the essence of Beauty:
"And that is why I thought of Ronsard’s poem, though I didn’t really understand it at first: because he talks about time, and roses. Because beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death. Oh my gosh, I thought, does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance? Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying."
That was the kernel of the story, for me. Highly recommended. show less
2) The Elegance of the hedgehog by Muriel Barbury
At our meeting of the book club today the merits of The Elegance of the Hedgehog split the opinions of all of us who were there. Most people liked it, some liked it a lot and thought it was the best novel they had read in ages. Comments like "It really spoke to me" and "it is a novel I will treasure and go back to again and again" were bandied about. Me, I just felt sorry for Colombe, but let me explain.
The novel is convincingly set in in present day Paris and features the denizens of an up market apartment block. The novel is presented in a first person narrative style by two of these inhabitants. Renee is the concierge who works hard at hiding her intelligence behind the gruff exterior show more and no-nonsense approach typical of a 50 year old women in her profession and Paloma is a 12 year old super intelligent daughter of one of the rich residents who takes cover behind an intensely introverted persona. Renee and Paloma are both disillusioned by, as they see it the crass valueless life styles of the people around them.
Barbery uses the thoughts of these two females to satirise the lives of the nouveau rich in Paris and she tilts at some familiar targets; consumerism, hypocrisy, class-ism, academia, psychoanalysis and false values. Her aim is true and she hits the mark eloquently enough, but at the expense of her novel. She interjects mainly through Paloma, but sometimes directly with short philosophical essays exploring such ideas as; the meaning of life, the beauty in art and the movement of the world. She gets back to her novel with the introduction of M. Kakuro; a Japanese gentlemen who moves into one of the apartments and has the role of recognising the humanity in both Renee and Paloma and bringing them out of their shells. A love story develops.
Muriel Barbery's prose is beautiful, her little stories are funny and her philosophical insights can be thought provoking................Hold on a minute. I am not supposed to be liking this book and in the end I don't. Having two female characters present to the world such a miserable face does not endear them to anyone. Paloma is one of a seemingly endless line of precocious children who is made out to be some sort of guru for the world's ills. She is in fact insufferable. She has not a good word to say about any of her family particularly her older sister Colombe, who comes in for a real pasting and her only crime is that she is an intelligent young lady who goes to a good school and is negotiating her teenage years to the best of her ability. I think Colombe is a saint for putting up with one of the most annoying 12 year olds in literature. Renee is hardly any better as she chooses to be rude and dismissive to most of the residents for whom she works and then wonders why people don't give her the time of day. Then along comes M Kakuro the knight in shinning armour who sees beyond the exteriors of both Paloma and Renee and charms them into submission .............Oh Pe lease
Well that's the annoying bit out of the way, but what made me think this was not a great book was the way it was structured. Muriel Barbery is a teacher of philosophy and in this her second book she seems to vacillate between telling a story and presenting some philosophical insights on modern day living. To my mind she fails to combine the two in any meaningful way and her book becomes little more than a series of vignettes.
The book has its moments, but they are only moments and in the end it does not have the courage of its own convictions. Perhaps there is a great novel in Muriel Barbery, but in my opinion she has not written it here. A three star read. show less
At our meeting of the book club today the merits of The Elegance of the Hedgehog split the opinions of all of us who were there. Most people liked it, some liked it a lot and thought it was the best novel they had read in ages. Comments like "It really spoke to me" and "it is a novel I will treasure and go back to again and again" were bandied about. Me, I just felt sorry for Colombe, but let me explain.
The novel is convincingly set in in present day Paris and features the denizens of an up market apartment block. The novel is presented in a first person narrative style by two of these inhabitants. Renee is the concierge who works hard at hiding her intelligence behind the gruff exterior show more and no-nonsense approach typical of a 50 year old women in her profession and Paloma is a 12 year old super intelligent daughter of one of the rich residents who takes cover behind an intensely introverted persona. Renee and Paloma are both disillusioned by, as they see it the crass valueless life styles of the people around them.
Barbery uses the thoughts of these two females to satirise the lives of the nouveau rich in Paris and she tilts at some familiar targets; consumerism, hypocrisy, class-ism, academia, psychoanalysis and false values. Her aim is true and she hits the mark eloquently enough, but at the expense of her novel. She interjects mainly through Paloma, but sometimes directly with short philosophical essays exploring such ideas as; the meaning of life, the beauty in art and the movement of the world. She gets back to her novel with the introduction of M. Kakuro; a Japanese gentlemen who moves into one of the apartments and has the role of recognising the humanity in both Renee and Paloma and bringing them out of their shells. A love story develops.
Muriel Barbery's prose is beautiful, her little stories are funny and her philosophical insights can be thought provoking................Hold on a minute. I am not supposed to be liking this book and in the end I don't. Having two female characters present to the world such a miserable face does not endear them to anyone. Paloma is one of a seemingly endless line of precocious children who is made out to be some sort of guru for the world's ills. She is in fact insufferable. She has not a good word to say about any of her family particularly her older sister Colombe, who comes in for a real pasting and her only crime is that she is an intelligent young lady who goes to a good school and is negotiating her teenage years to the best of her ability. I think Colombe is a saint for putting up with one of the most annoying 12 year olds in literature. Renee is hardly any better as she chooses to be rude and dismissive to most of the residents for whom she works and then wonders why people don't give her the time of day. Then along comes M Kakuro the knight in shinning armour who sees beyond the exteriors of both Paloma and Renee and charms them into submission .............Oh Pe lease
Well that's the annoying bit out of the way, but what made me think this was not a great book was the way it was structured. Muriel Barbery is a teacher of philosophy and in this her second book she seems to vacillate between telling a story and presenting some philosophical insights on modern day living. To my mind she fails to combine the two in any meaningful way and her book becomes little more than a series of vignettes.
The book has its moments, but they are only moments and in the end it does not have the courage of its own convictions. Perhaps there is a great novel in Muriel Barbery, but in my opinion she has not written it here. A three star read. show less
Elegance of the Hedgehog
This book is about the power of beauty to make life worthwhile and the power of art to illuminate beauty. The story is told in two voices: Renee, the 54 year old concierge of an elegant hotel in Paris; and Paloma a 12 year old girl living with her family in their 5th floor apartment of that building. Renee and Paloma share and treasure an intelligence that sets them apart from others. Renee is a plain looking woman who was born into a poor family. They were poor in both financial and emotional terms, they always had enough to eat but no prospects of a good life, and they never talked to each other. Renee's intelligence allowed her to get a good basic education, she married young, at 17, and she and her husband show more worked hard all their lives. Before the story begins Renee's husband has died of cancer and she lives alone with her fat cat Leo. No one would know the cat was named for Tolstoy, in fact no one has any idea of Renee's intelligence, her love of books, museums, movies and art in all forms. She chooses to show the world only a slow witted, competent concierge because she worries people may both expect too much of her and fear her if they know of her intelligence.
Paloma, on the other hand, is born into a very wealthy family who greatly values intelligence, to a degree but she thinks would fear her exceptional abilities. They converse, but only on an acquisitive level. She feels none of them has an ability to see the "real" nature of life - that it is absurd, and we all just end up with no more purpose than swimming in a goldfish bowl. So having great disdain for them all she plans to kill herself and set fire to her apartment on her 13th birthday. In the meantime she keeps two journals, one of profound thoughts and one of the movement of the world "finding whatever is beautiful enough to give life meaning."
I think this is where the love it or hate it nature of readers' reactions to the book comes in. Some readers can't see beyond the disdain these two characters have for the people around them. Well, first of all, Paloma is 12, an intelligent 12. Disdain is in her nature. Renee, on the other hand is a woman who thinks herself not beautiful and whose job it is to wait on the wealthy who seem to value appearance more than anything. When she is talking about the death of her husband, she says, "Since we were concierges, it was a given that death, for us, must be a matter of course, whereas for our privileged neighbors it carried all the weight of injustice and drama. The death of a concierge leaves a slight indentation of every day life, belongs to a biological certainty that has nothing tragic about it...a non-entity who was merely returning to a nothingness from which he had never fully emerged." There's nothing like associating with rich people to make a person feel less than equal. So, I don't mind the disdain.
The reason I love this book is that it so clearly points out beauty and the meaning of beauty in the world. A first glimpse of beauty is in Renee's description of a tea ritual,..."when tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things...with each swallow time is sublimed." The book is called the Elegance of the Hedgehog because it mentions the elegance of the creature living inside the prickly exterior of the hedgehog that everyone sees. Rather it should have been named Camellias because the beginning of the romance of this book comes when Renee describes a Japanese movie she has seen. First she says that "...you desperately need Art, You seek to reconnect with your spiritual illusions, and you wish fervently that something might rescue you from your biological destiny". In the film The Munekata Sisters, the father, who is about to die, and daughter talk about a moss temple they have seen and the beauty of a camellia on the moss, then the violet mountains of Kyoto which look like azuki bean paste. "True novelty is that which does not grow old, despite the passage of time...The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains...this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion: is this not something we all aspire to? And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to attain?" For me, the book could have ended with this observation. Both Renee and Paloma are able to see the camellia on the moss and to make me see it too. Surprisingly the story doesn't end there.. Connections are made, friendships grow. The story of Renee and Paloma continues to build and build to the most perfect ending I could envision. I will be recommending this book to everyone. show less
This book is about the power of beauty to make life worthwhile and the power of art to illuminate beauty. The story is told in two voices: Renee, the 54 year old concierge of an elegant hotel in Paris; and Paloma a 12 year old girl living with her family in their 5th floor apartment of that building. Renee and Paloma share and treasure an intelligence that sets them apart from others. Renee is a plain looking woman who was born into a poor family. They were poor in both financial and emotional terms, they always had enough to eat but no prospects of a good life, and they never talked to each other. Renee's intelligence allowed her to get a good basic education, she married young, at 17, and she and her husband show more worked hard all their lives. Before the story begins Renee's husband has died of cancer and she lives alone with her fat cat Leo. No one would know the cat was named for Tolstoy, in fact no one has any idea of Renee's intelligence, her love of books, museums, movies and art in all forms. She chooses to show the world only a slow witted, competent concierge because she worries people may both expect too much of her and fear her if they know of her intelligence.
Paloma, on the other hand, is born into a very wealthy family who greatly values intelligence, to a degree but she thinks would fear her exceptional abilities. They converse, but only on an acquisitive level. She feels none of them has an ability to see the "real" nature of life - that it is absurd, and we all just end up with no more purpose than swimming in a goldfish bowl. So having great disdain for them all she plans to kill herself and set fire to her apartment on her 13th birthday. In the meantime she keeps two journals, one of profound thoughts and one of the movement of the world "finding whatever is beautiful enough to give life meaning."
I think this is where the love it or hate it nature of readers' reactions to the book comes in. Some readers can't see beyond the disdain these two characters have for the people around them. Well, first of all, Paloma is 12, an intelligent 12. Disdain is in her nature. Renee, on the other hand is a woman who thinks herself not beautiful and whose job it is to wait on the wealthy who seem to value appearance more than anything. When she is talking about the death of her husband, she says, "Since we were concierges, it was a given that death, for us, must be a matter of course, whereas for our privileged neighbors it carried all the weight of injustice and drama. The death of a concierge leaves a slight indentation of every day life, belongs to a biological certainty that has nothing tragic about it...a non-entity who was merely returning to a nothingness from which he had never fully emerged." There's nothing like associating with rich people to make a person feel less than equal. So, I don't mind the disdain.
The reason I love this book is that it so clearly points out beauty and the meaning of beauty in the world. A first glimpse of beauty is in Renee's description of a tea ritual,..."when tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things...with each swallow time is sublimed." The book is called the Elegance of the Hedgehog because it mentions the elegance of the creature living inside the prickly exterior of the hedgehog that everyone sees. Rather it should have been named Camellias because the beginning of the romance of this book comes when Renee describes a Japanese movie she has seen. First she says that "...you desperately need Art, You seek to reconnect with your spiritual illusions, and you wish fervently that something might rescue you from your biological destiny". In the film The Munekata Sisters, the father, who is about to die, and daughter talk about a moss temple they have seen and the beauty of a camellia on the moss, then the violet mountains of Kyoto which look like azuki bean paste. "True novelty is that which does not grow old, despite the passage of time...The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains...this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion: is this not something we all aspire to? And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to attain?" For me, the book could have ended with this observation. Both Renee and Paloma are able to see the camellia on the moss and to make me see it too. Surprisingly the story doesn't end there.. Connections are made, friendships grow. The story of Renee and Paloma continues to build and build to the most perfect ending I could envision. I will be recommending this book to everyone. show less
"They didn't recognize me," I repeat.
He stops, in turn, my hand still on his arm.
"It is because they have never seen you," he says. (p. 303)
Renée is a concierge in a posh Paris apartment building. She is a recluse, quietly tending to the needs of her wealthy tenants. They consider her inferior, and she plays up to the stereotype. But behind closed doors, Renée is an intellectual who reads Tolstoy, watches Japanese films, and has in-depth knowledge of art. And unbeknownst to Renée, a kindred spirit resides in her building: Paloma, a 12-year-old girl of extremely high intelligence.
For most of this novel, Renée and Paloma lead separate lives. Then one day, a new tenant moves in and unwittingly brings them together. And this marks a show more turning point in the novel. Beginning as an interesting and very well-written character study, The Elegance of the Hedgehog becomes an incredibly emotional work. In very simple and subtle ways Renée, Paloma, and the new tenant Kazuro each exert profound influence on their new friends, taking each other to unprecedented levels emotionally and spiritually. The last two chapters are some of the most moving literature I've ever read.
This is a beautiful book. I loved it. show less
He stops, in turn, my hand still on his arm.
"It is because they have never seen you," he says. (p. 303)
Renée is a concierge in a posh Paris apartment building. She is a recluse, quietly tending to the needs of her wealthy tenants. They consider her inferior, and she plays up to the stereotype. But behind closed doors, Renée is an intellectual who reads Tolstoy, watches Japanese films, and has in-depth knowledge of art. And unbeknownst to Renée, a kindred spirit resides in her building: Paloma, a 12-year-old girl of extremely high intelligence.
For most of this novel, Renée and Paloma lead separate lives. Then one day, a new tenant moves in and unwittingly brings them together. And this marks a show more turning point in the novel. Beginning as an interesting and very well-written character study, The Elegance of the Hedgehog becomes an incredibly emotional work. In very simple and subtle ways Renée, Paloma, and the new tenant Kazuro each exert profound influence on their new friends, taking each other to unprecedented levels emotionally and spiritually. The last two chapters are some of the most moving literature I've ever read.
This is a beautiful book. I loved it. show less
This is the story of two closet intellectuals: a fifty-four-year old concierge at some sort of luxury apartment complex in Paris, and the 12-year-old daughter of one of the wealthy tenants. Both are intelligent and given to philosophical musings; much of the book consists of their somewhat rambling thoughts about such topics as art, the class system, and the meaning of life (or the lack thereof), as well as their decidedly cynical observations of the people around them. Both, however, attempt to hide their inner lives from others as much as possible, until a new tenant moves in, brings them together, and begins to help bring them out of themselves.
This seems to be kind of a love-it-or-hate it book, and I was very curious to see which show more side I would end up on, but I think the answer is neither. Or maybe both. I don't know. It's hard to know what I think about this book. I started out feeling that the philosophical stuff was mildly interesting, even (or perhaps especially) when I wanted to argue with it, and that the writing had a certain odd charm, but absolutely hating the characters. They struck me as cowardly, wallowing in their own intellectual superiority while lacking the courage to do anything but rigidly conform to what they believe others expect of them. Worse, they both have that particular kind of arrogant intellectual attitude that assumes that everyone but them is a blind, shallow sheep of a human being walking uselessly through life with closed eyes and a brain full of nothing but meaningless banalities. Which, I am ashamed to admit, reminds me a bit of myself when I was, oh, about the age of the kid in this story. Eventually, though, I came to understand how ugly that attitude was, how lacking in any kind of perspective or empathy.... And, of course, the character flaws we've overcome in ourselves are often the ones we find least tolerable in other people. So, yeah, I hated these characters. At first. Near the end, though, I found myself warming to them quite a bit, as they began to change slowly under the influence of the new tenant, Monsieur Ozu, a man quite capable of being intelligent without being arrogant and sophisticated without being pretentious, a man who genuinely does not care what French society might think of him or his choice of friends. And I started to feel reassured by the idea that the author didn't exactly disagree with me about the two main characters and their flaws, that she was doing something much more interesting than using them as mouthpieces for her own ideas, and I began to think, you know, maybe this is a pretty good book after all. Maybe I'm starting to really feel something for these people. Maybe I like where this is going.... And then the incredibly cheap-feeling ending came along and annoyed the crap out of me.
So, yeah. I can say that I found this an interesting enough reading experience that I don't regret spending the time on it, but as to whether I liked it or not... Meh. show less
This seems to be kind of a love-it-or-hate it book, and I was very curious to see which show more side I would end up on, but I think the answer is neither. Or maybe both. I don't know. It's hard to know what I think about this book. I started out feeling that the philosophical stuff was mildly interesting, even (or perhaps especially) when I wanted to argue with it, and that the writing had a certain odd charm, but absolutely hating the characters. They struck me as cowardly, wallowing in their own intellectual superiority while lacking the courage to do anything but rigidly conform to what they believe others expect of them. Worse, they both have that particular kind of arrogant intellectual attitude that assumes that everyone but them is a blind, shallow sheep of a human being walking uselessly through life with closed eyes and a brain full of nothing but meaningless banalities. Which, I am ashamed to admit, reminds me a bit of myself when I was, oh, about the age of the kid in this story. Eventually, though, I came to understand how ugly that attitude was, how lacking in any kind of perspective or empathy.... And, of course, the character flaws we've overcome in ourselves are often the ones we find least tolerable in other people. So, yeah, I hated these characters. At first. Near the end, though, I found myself warming to them quite a bit, as they began to change slowly under the influence of the new tenant, Monsieur Ozu, a man quite capable of being intelligent without being arrogant and sophisticated without being pretentious, a man who genuinely does not care what French society might think of him or his choice of friends. And I started to feel reassured by the idea that the author didn't exactly disagree with me about the two main characters and their flaws, that she was doing something much more interesting than using them as mouthpieces for her own ideas, and I began to think, you know, maybe this is a pretty good book after all. Maybe I'm starting to really feel something for these people. Maybe I like where this is going.... And then the incredibly cheap-feeling ending came along and annoyed the crap out of me.
So, yeah. I can say that I found this an interesting enough reading experience that I don't regret spending the time on it, but as to whether I liked it or not... Meh. show less
Renee is a concierge who has a secret - she's an astute autodidact who would rather read a book and enjoy art in all its forms than watch the TV all day. Keeping the secret from all at the apartment complex but her good friend, Manuela, her life is upended when someone new buys an apartment. Meanwhile, a hyper-intelligent 12-year-old girl has decided that life isn't worth living and she's killing herself on June 16, but she nonetheless keeps records of profound thoughts and more in her journals in case she discovers something that will make her rethink her philosophy.
I am usually a fan of character-driven books told in multiple perspectives, and I think if I had encountered this book when I had not been dealing with a pandemic for 13 show more months, I would have loved it more. As it was, it was very hard for me to get into because all of the lengthy sentences and philosophical meanderings of the two protagonists took a lot of mental capacity I didn't always have at the end of the day. Even so, I found myself won over by them both and cried at the end. show less
I am usually a fan of character-driven books told in multiple perspectives, and I think if I had encountered this book when I had not been dealing with a pandemic for 13 show more months, I would have loved it more. As it was, it was very hard for me to get into because all of the lengthy sentences and philosophical meanderings of the two protagonists took a lot of mental capacity I didn't always have at the end of the day. Even so, I found myself won over by them both and cried at the end. show less
This is a very interesting book, not really so much a novel as a fable that provides the author with a vehicle to expound upon favourite gripes and themes in considering and exploring the vacuity of modern materialism, the role of Art and the meaning of life. Renee Michel is the concierge in an elegant apartment building with a small number of very wealthy owners; she works hard at projecting the expected role of a grumpy, ill-educated, limited, unattractive person, but she is, in fact, a serious autodidact, very well versed in literature (with a special fondness for Russian authors), music, philosophy, movies, and art, especially as exhibited in Japanese society; Paloma is a twelve-year old girl of vastly superior (and frankly show more unbelievable, except in a fable) intelligence and sensitivity who lives in the building with her completely bourgeois and irksome parents and sister and who, like Renee, hides her intelligence and precociousness from everyone and who also shares a fondness for things Japanese; Kakuro Ozu is a very wealthy Japanese businessman who buys, and completely renovates, one of the large flats in the building and who almost instantly perceives that there is much more to Renee than she lets on, simply because he sees her as a person, rather than regarding her through the prism of the limiting and expected role and status of a concierge.
The story is told in the first person by Renee and Paloma, the latter having decided to commit suicide at thirteen because she sees no point to life, but in the time intervening, she commits her thoughts to paper in a series of Profound Thoughts, and Journal of the Movement of the World. As she describes the latter, “…I’m referring to the beauty that is there in the world, things that, being part of the movement of life, elevate us. The Journal…will be devoted therefore to the movement of people, bodies, or even—if there’s really nothing to say—things, and to finding whatever is beautiful enough to give life meaning. Grace, beauty, harmony, intensity. If I find something, then I may rethink my options: if I find a body with beautiful movement or, failing that, a beautiful idea for the mind, well then maybe I’ll think that life is worth living after all.”
Barbery, through both Renee and Paloma, savages the shallow materialism, the shallow intellectualism, and the social blindness and snobbishness of the elites, as well as phenomenology, bad grammar, the pretentiousness of French cuisine, and psychoanalysis.
On the plus side, Barbery asks, “What is the purpose of Art? To give us the brief, dazzling illusion of the camellia, carving from time an emotional aperture that cannot be reduced to animal logic. How is Art born? It is begotten in the mind’s ability to sculpt the sensorial domain. What does Art do for us? It gives shape to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them, a seal representing all those works that, by means of a particular form, have incarnated the universal nature of human emotions”. For Barbery, the true meaning of Art is in its depiction of the eternal in the particular (“The contemplation of eternity within the very movement of life”) and in ephemerality of life: “…have our civilizations become so destitute that we can only live in our fear of want? Can we only enjoy our possessions or our senses when we are certain that we shall always be able to enjoy them? Perhaps the Japanese have learned that you can only savor a pleasure when you know it is ephemeral and unique; armed with this knowledge, they are yet able to weave their lives“. She also considers what is particular in how art represents life: “When movement has been banished from a nature that seeks its continuity, when it becomes renegade and remarkable by virtue of its very discontinuity, it attains the level of esthetic creation. Because art is life, playing to other rhythms”. Paloma picks up this theme in her writings: “…beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death….does this mean how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance? Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying”.
For all her learning and perceptions of life and art and beauty, Renee is limited because she hides her true nature and for all her criticisms of false social barriers, she is susceptible to them too in her own insecurity. She has a wonderful woman friend whom she loves, but she is not a soul-mate, nor was her husband, for all that he was a good and loving man. It is only in Ozu that Renee finds her soul-mate, someone who immediately sees her for the person she is in her own skin, who shares her thoughts and views on life and art, and who helps to overcome her almost ingrained belief that there is too large a gap between their stations in life by telling her that “we can be anything we want” because, to him, there are no stations, only people relating to, and understanding, and loving each other.
The title is intriguing: why a hedgehog? Paloma cogitates upon this in the only reference in the book: “Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she’s covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary—and terribly elegant”.
Of course, the most famous literary reference to hedgehogs comes from Isaiah Berlin’s essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox, which found its inspiration in the quote from the Greek poet Archilochus which says: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'.
Berlin wrote: “Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes.”
At the risk of stretching things, I would say that Renee was a hedgehog in the sense that Art (as understood in its various forms)is the central vision around which she organizes her thoughts on life and what is truly important in it.
This is a book that deserves reflection and re-reading. show less
The story is told in the first person by Renee and Paloma, the latter having decided to commit suicide at thirteen because she sees no point to life, but in the time intervening, she commits her thoughts to paper in a series of Profound Thoughts, and Journal of the Movement of the World. As she describes the latter, “…I’m referring to the beauty that is there in the world, things that, being part of the movement of life, elevate us. The Journal…will be devoted therefore to the movement of people, bodies, or even—if there’s really nothing to say—things, and to finding whatever is beautiful enough to give life meaning. Grace, beauty, harmony, intensity. If I find something, then I may rethink my options: if I find a body with beautiful movement or, failing that, a beautiful idea for the mind, well then maybe I’ll think that life is worth living after all.”
Barbery, through both Renee and Paloma, savages the shallow materialism, the shallow intellectualism, and the social blindness and snobbishness of the elites, as well as phenomenology, bad grammar, the pretentiousness of French cuisine, and psychoanalysis.
On the plus side, Barbery asks, “What is the purpose of Art? To give us the brief, dazzling illusion of the camellia, carving from time an emotional aperture that cannot be reduced to animal logic. How is Art born? It is begotten in the mind’s ability to sculpt the sensorial domain. What does Art do for us? It gives shape to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them, a seal representing all those works that, by means of a particular form, have incarnated the universal nature of human emotions”. For Barbery, the true meaning of Art is in its depiction of the eternal in the particular (“The contemplation of eternity within the very movement of life”) and in ephemerality of life: “…have our civilizations become so destitute that we can only live in our fear of want? Can we only enjoy our possessions or our senses when we are certain that we shall always be able to enjoy them? Perhaps the Japanese have learned that you can only savor a pleasure when you know it is ephemeral and unique; armed with this knowledge, they are yet able to weave their lives“. She also considers what is particular in how art represents life: “When movement has been banished from a nature that seeks its continuity, when it becomes renegade and remarkable by virtue of its very discontinuity, it attains the level of esthetic creation. Because art is life, playing to other rhythms”. Paloma picks up this theme in her writings: “…beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you can see both their beauty and their death….does this mean how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance? Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying”.
For all her learning and perceptions of life and art and beauty, Renee is limited because she hides her true nature and for all her criticisms of false social barriers, she is susceptible to them too in her own insecurity. She has a wonderful woman friend whom she loves, but she is not a soul-mate, nor was her husband, for all that he was a good and loving man. It is only in Ozu that Renee finds her soul-mate, someone who immediately sees her for the person she is in her own skin, who shares her thoughts and views on life and art, and who helps to overcome her almost ingrained belief that there is too large a gap between their stations in life by telling her that “we can be anything we want” because, to him, there are no stations, only people relating to, and understanding, and loving each other.
The title is intriguing: why a hedgehog? Paloma cogitates upon this in the only reference in the book: “Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she’s covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary—and terribly elegant”.
Of course, the most famous literary reference to hedgehogs comes from Isaiah Berlin’s essay, The Hedgehog and the Fox, which found its inspiration in the quote from the Greek poet Archilochus which says: 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing'.
Berlin wrote: “Scholars have differed about the correct interpretation of these dark words, which may mean no more than that the fox, for all his cunning, is defeated by the hedgehog's one defense. But, taken figuratively, the words can be made to yield a sense in which they mark one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general. For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance-and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last lead lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes.”
At the risk of stretching things, I would say that Renee was a hedgehog in the sense that Art (as understood in its various forms)is the central vision around which she organizes her thoughts on life and what is truly important in it.
This is a book that deserves reflection and re-reading. show less
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ThingScore 67
Barbery’s sly wit, which bestows lightness on the most ponderous cogitations, keeps her tale aloft.
added by Nickelini
Le Figaro has described this book as 'the publishing phenomenon of the decade'. Elsewhere, there were comparisons to Proust. It sold more than a million copies in France last year and has won numerous awards. Does it match up to the hype? Almost. It is a profound but accessible book (not quite Proust, then), which elegantly treads the line between literary and commercial fiction.
added by Nickelini
Even when the novel is most essayistic, the narrators’ kinetic minds and engaging voices... propel us ahead.
added by Shortride
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Author Information
13 Works 14,344 Members
Writer and philosophy professor Muriel Barbery was born in Casablanca, Morocco on May 28, 1969 and raised in France. She attended the École Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud from 1990 to 1993 and then taught philosophy at the Université de Bourgogne, in a lycée, and at the Saint-Lô IUFM. Barbery has published the bestselling novels show more L'Élégance du hérisson (The Elegance of the Hedgehog) and Une Gourmandise (Gourmet Rhapsody). She will be at the Adelaide Writer's Week for the 2016 festival. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards and Honors
Awards
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Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Work Relationships
Has the adaptation
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog
- Original title
- L'élégance du hérisson
- Original publication date
- 2008-09-02
- People/Characters
- Renée Michel; Paloma Josse; Kakuro Ozu; Manuela Lopes
- Important places
- Paris, France
- Related movies
- Le hérisson (2009 | IMDb)
- Dedication
- For Stephane, with whom I wrote this book
- First words
- "Marx has completely changed the way I view the world," declared the Pallieres boy this morning, although ordinarily he says nary a word to me.
- Quotations
- Thus, the television in the front room, guardian of my clandestine activities, could bleat away and I was no longer forced to listen to inane nonsense fit for the brain of a clam - I was in the back room, perfectly euphoric, ... (show all)my eyes filling with tears, in the miraculous presence of Art.
(p.17)
In the heat of the cinema, on the verge of tears, happier than I had ever been, I was holding the faint warmth of his hand for the first time in months. I knew that an unexpected surge of energy had roused him from his bed, g... (show all)iven him the strength to get dressed and the urge to go out, the desire for us to share a conjugal pleasure one more time - and I knew, too, that this was the sign that there was not much time left, a state of grace before the end. But that did not matter to me, I just wanted to make the most of it, of these moments stolen from the burden of illness, moments with his warm hand in mine and a shudder of pleasure going through both of us...'
(p.71)
I flinched when she said bring and at that very moment Monsieur Something also flinched, and our eyes met. And since that infinitesimal nanosecond when - of this I am sure - we were joined in linguistic solidarity by the shar... (show all)ed pain that made our bodies shudder, Monsieur Something has been observing me with a very different gaze.
A watchful gaze.
And now he is speaking to me.
(p.130)
What is the purpose of Art? To give us the brief, dazzling illusion of the camellia; to carve from time an emotional aperture that cannot be reduced to animal logic. How is Art born? It is begotten in the mind's ability to sc... (show all)ulpt the sensorial domain. What does Art do for us? It gives shape to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them, a seal representing all those works that, by means of a particular form, have incarnated the universal nature of human emotions.
(p.199) - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Because from now on, for you, I'll be searching for those moments of always within never. Beauty, in this world.
- Blurbers
- Dirda, Michael
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- French
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