Wednesday, June 27, 2012

I realized that in his presence I had forgotten even the very notion of trying to hide who I was.

Alright so clearly I'm just going to link to Alice in all of my reviews. But last time her review convinced me to read Ready Player One and this time she GAVE me (or I won it, whatever) The Elegance of the Hedgehog so how could I not mention her again? Had to be done.

I kept hearing about Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Headgehog but I didn't really know much about it. I knew it was French. The cover lead me to assume there was a precocious child involved. And that's really all I knew. But that didn't stop me from wanting to know more.

So here's the actual plot. Renee Michele is the concierge* at this super upscale apartment building in Paris. She's very smart but chooses to hide her interests and intellect so she'll be left alone but the pretentious and bourgeois tenants. She narrates the majority of the story which is nice, but there's a second narrator, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse. Paloma also hides her extreme intelligence also to avoid standing out so you can tell these two are going to find each other. BUT they need something to bring them together and that comes in the form of a new resident Kakuro Ozu, a refined Japanese businessman who sees Renee's and Paloma's true selves.

It took me some time to get into it and connect with the characters, but once the Ozu showed up I was hooked. So I guess I needed Ozu to bring me together with Renee and Paloma. He's that fantastic, is what I'm saying. He's a gentleman, kind to all of the tenants, but he really connects with Madame Michele. He breaks through her shell and shows her that she can actually relate to another person.

There's a lot of talk about philosophy and art and literature and also some Blade Runner. There are a lot of lines I could see ending up in a book of quotes. To the point where it sometimes seemed Barbery was more concerned with coming up with memorable lines than staying with the story. I can't decide if that's a bad thing or not. The story is still there, it's just sometimes hidden behind the eminently quotable moments.

I should correct when I say it took me some time to connect with the characters. Because I never really connected to Paloma. She's a little annoying, a little pretentious, and a lot tween angsty. A lot. This may seem like a spoiler, but it comes up very early so don't worry, nothing is ruined but she wants to kill herself on her thirteenth birthday. Because life is meaningless and she can't take the "vacuousness of bourgeois existence." And I'm pretty sure you're allowed to smack people for saying things like that. Not the killing herself part but the Cure-lyric-ness of her speech. PLUS she doesn't just want to kill herself but she wants to do it by burning down her apartment (while her family is away). Because why just kill yourself when you could take down an entire building or even entire block because who knows how close these buildings are. I mean, how can they really stand the "vacuousness of bourgeois existence"? I was happy the majority of the book is from Madame Michele's point of view. 

I feel like I'm ending this on a negative note, but that's just because I didn't like Paloma. That doesn't mean I disliked the book. Or even that I wish Paloma was less...Paloma-y. She worked in the story, even if I couldn't stand her. And I liked Renee. And loved Ozu. It was too bad he didn't show up until about 1/2 way through the story. But that's OK because I just appreciated him all the more.

Overall the book is good and philosphy-y and French. So thanks Alice!

*I didn't realize concierges are things at places other than hotels. So the more you know.

Title quote from page 148

Barbery, Muriel. The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Europe Editions, 2006.

Comments (21)

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*mutters something bitter about people giving each other books and poor Laura getting nothing*

ANYWAY! I really like the sound of this actually, and OF COURSE the Japanese character was the best one because, come on, Japan's awesome. Kind of want to slap Paloma, but there you go (she doesn't sound suicidal, she sounds like a moron. Just so we all know!)
4 replies · active 663 weeks ago
MAYBE IF YOU ENTERED YOU WOULD WIN, BUT ONLY RED EVER ENTERS
It's because I subtly threaten other people who try to enter so I can win ALL THE BOOKS
I will enter and win and deny you the all books. Every one of the books.
Explain to the mail services that packages do not need to be shipped via Pegasus so they can cut those costs down.

Don't you just want to smack Paloma already? She's as whiny as any other teen, she's just pretentious about it.

But yes, it's true, the Japanese character is awesome and a good deal of that awesomeness is because he's Japanese. And both characters sorta love Japan. But yeah, you should read cos you like philosophy and whatnot.
Hurrayyyy! I really need to finish Blade Runner.

Ok, you'd think with my of course extensive background in French (read: it is not so extensive but it should be), I would know whether the French are as annoyed by the 'bourgeois' thing as we are. Because it's not snooty to them because it's THEIR LANGUAGE.
1 reply · active 663 weeks ago
I did wonder if bourgeois has the same connotation over there as it does over here but then again she says it so many times that I still wanted to hit her. That and the whole suicide but probably for the whole building too thing cos everyone knows twelve-year-olds are AWESOME at controlling fires.
I literally laughed out loud at:

Because life is meaningless and she can't take the "vacuousness of bourgeois existence."

I think I've been teaching high school for a liiiiitle too long.
1 reply · active 663 weeks ago
She seriously says that!! More than once. She also writes a lot of serious haikus. You've probably had a few Palomas in your classes.
I didn't know it was French! This definitely brings it up a couple of places on my TBR pile- I've had it since last year but never really read the first page...
Paloma sounds like a dramatic tween, though.
1 reply · active 662 weeks ago
She is very much a drama tween. And I'm not sure if we're supposed to identify with how alone she is and how vacuous everyone around her is or realize she needs to shut up. I (clearly) went the shut up route.
And Ken Watanabe is immediately cast as Ozu in my head. Because I love him. This sounds good! I'll have to read it. Thank you for the warning about Paloma. She sounds like a gem.
1 reply · active 662 weeks ago
Yup, and now that's who I have in my head.
I've been wanting to read this, though that may only be because of the title, which is excellent, and hopefully justified by the story. Also, don't nice apartment buildings have each unit fireproofed so that the dramatic twelve-years olds don't take out the whole block? Or maybe that's just a weird fantasy of mine.
1 reply · active 662 weeks ago
If they don't already fireproof each unit individually, they need to. Because there are 12 year olds who apparently cannot stand this life and need to go out in a fire.
Yet another book I've had on my shelf for ages and haven't gotten to yet. Way to shame me! Luckily your review makes me kind of re-interested in it, if that makes sense, although if I heard some kid say things that that I'd slap the crap out of them too. Some kids just need to be slapped.
1 reply · active 662 weeks ago
She just needs someone to be like "You're 12. I don't care how smart you are, you have no idea what you're talking about."
I recommended this to my book group and our discussion is tonight. I loved it; one person disliked it so much she didn't get to the half way point (where it gets so much better). I hope the others liked it and that we have a great discussion.
1 reply · active 662 weeks ago
I was close to giving up on the book but I'm glad I stuck with it. I'm not glad it took so long to get to that point. Ah well. Hope your discussion is lively!
It took me forever to finish this book -- couple of false starts and some repeated borrowings. And I didn't really love it until the end. (Although there were some lovely passages in it.) Not because, as you've said about Paloma, that I wished that anything was less or more than it was, but because I think I had expectations for some other book entirely in place, and it wasn't until I read to the end that I realized they were really skewed. So I think if I were to start over, I would find it a very different read.
1 reply · active 662 weeks ago
I feel like this had a lot of excellent lines and passages but, at least early on in the book, they didn't feel like they quite fit in the story. It was more like Barbary had these eloquent bits she wanted to put somewhere and she sort of shoe-horned them in here. Which makes it sounds like I disliked this book far more than I did, but I do at least thing it added to the trouble getting into the story earlier.

That said, they are some wonderful passages.

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