| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
Resistance is futile...you might as well buy it before someone recommends it for your book group. It s charm will make you say yes --The Guardian Clever, informative and moving... this is an admirable novel which deserves as wide a readership here as it had in France --The Observer This breathtakingly singular novel...is totally French yet completely universal --Good Housekeeping --Good Housekeeping
Clever, informative and moving... this is an admirable novel which deserves as wide a readership here as it had in France --The Observer
This breathtakingly singular novel...is totally French yet completely universal --Good Housekeeping
Clever, informative and moving... this is an admirable novel which deserves as wide a readership here as it had in France --The Observer
This breathtakingly singular novel...is totally French yet completely universal --Good Housekeeping
Product Description
Renee is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. Over the years she has maintained her carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with society s expectations of what a concierge should be. But beneath this façade lies the real Renée: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives. Down in her lodge, apart from weekly visits by her one friend Manuela, Renée lives resigned to her lonely lot with only her cat for company. Meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid the pampered and vacuous future laid out for her, and decides to end her life on her thirteenth birthday. But unknown to them both, the sudden death of one of their privileged neighbours will dramatically alter their lives forever. The Gourmet, Muriel Barbery's first novel is published on 1st September 2009.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a difficult book to categorise and that, in itself, makes it interesting. Is it a deeply philosophical story about the beauty of art, the loneliness of the artistic soul and the French class system? Or is it a pretentious and unconvincing story about unlikely characters?
Reneé is a 54-year-old concierge in an apartment block catering to wealthy Parisians. She is patronised and belittled by the residents, but is complicit in the way she is treated, since she makes a concerted effort to disguise her true nature and her love of art and literature. Paloma is the troubled 12-year-old daughter of one of the families who live in the apartment block. She, too, hides her intellect from her family and, convinced of the futility of life, has resolved to kill herself on her 13th birthday. Their stories are told in alternate chapters (helpfully, each voice is characterised by a different typeface) and the first part of the book deals with their philosophical musings and their disdain for virtually everyone around them.
We, the readers, can see how much they have in common, but they are each so self-obsessed and introverted that a meeting of minds seems unlikely. Then one of the residents dies and the apartment is sold to a Japanese gentleman who, in a matter of moments, perceives and understands their separate loneliness and prickly defensiveness. He is the catalyst who breaks through their shells and encourages them to reveal their true natures.
The second half of the novel, which deals with this awakening, is more satisfying. Instead of chapters of interminable solipsistic philosophy, we get a story. Eureka! Although this meant, for me, that the book became a pleasure to read rather than a chore, I was still left with the feeling that it was all rather too pat and therefore unbelievable. Both Renée and Paloma emerge from their shells remarkably quickly. Would Renée, who has submerged her true identity so thoroughly and successfully, have succumbed so easily to revealing herself to others? Would she and Paloma have established such a close friendship in such a short time?
On balance, while there are flaws, I'm glad I read this book. I took from it the message that we should seek the moments of beauty in life and treasure them. Accordingly, I found myself turning to the poetry of Keats when I'd finished the book, which cannot be a bad thing.
Reneé is a 54-year-old concierge in an apartment block catering to wealthy Parisians. She is patronised and belittled by the residents, but is complicit in the way she is treated, since she makes a concerted effort to disguise her true nature and her love of art and literature. Paloma is the troubled 12-year-old daughter of one of the families who live in the apartment block. She, too, hides her intellect from her family and, convinced of the futility of life, has resolved to kill herself on her 13th birthday. Their stories are told in alternate chapters (helpfully, each voice is characterised by a different typeface) and the first part of the book deals with their philosophical musings and their disdain for virtually everyone around them.
We, the readers, can see how much they have in common, but they are each so self-obsessed and introverted that a meeting of minds seems unlikely. Then one of the residents dies and the apartment is sold to a Japanese gentleman who, in a matter of moments, perceives and understands their separate loneliness and prickly defensiveness. He is the catalyst who breaks through their shells and encourages them to reveal their true natures.
The second half of the novel, which deals with this awakening, is more satisfying. Instead of chapters of interminable solipsistic philosophy, we get a story. Eureka! Although this meant, for me, that the book became a pleasure to read rather than a chore, I was still left with the feeling that it was all rather too pat and therefore unbelievable. Both Renée and Paloma emerge from their shells remarkably quickly. Would Renée, who has submerged her true identity so thoroughly and successfully, have succumbed so easily to revealing herself to others? Would she and Paloma have established such a close friendship in such a short time?
On balance, while there are flaws, I'm glad I read this book. I took from it the message that we should seek the moments of beauty in life and treasure them. Accordingly, I found myself turning to the poetry of Keats when I'd finished the book, which cannot be a bad thing.
78 of 81 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If there was ever a book that deserved sticking with, this is it. I have to admit that at first I really hated it, for all the reasons that the other reviewers who hated it gave - pretentious language, arrogant characters, boring philosophical pontification, BUT I persevered, mostly because it's my book group read, and I found myself warming to the book more and more as I got further in to it. Generally the main characters in a book go on a journey, and that's true of this book, but I think that I, as the reader, also went on a journey, perhaps even more so, as my attitude towards the characters changed until I truly loved both Renee and Paloma. As another reviewer said, the plot comes alive after the arrival of the Japanese gentleman, and I became competely gripped from this point on. Toward the end I was actually pleading out loud to the book to make things turn out the way I wanted, and having just finished reading, I'm still wiping away tears. I once read a book called 'splashes of joy in the cesspool of life' and I think that title somewhat sums up the theme of this beautiful book - beauty in the midst of tragedy. I could so easily have given up on this book, but I'm very glad I stuck with it.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Like some other reviewers on here, I am not entirely sure how or why this book has become a bestseller (though I do find myself thinking this more and more often!!) It isn't bad as such, but I agree that you are left wondering what the point of it all is. I found both central characters quite unlikeable - their intellectual ramblings got on my nerves and slowed the pace of the novel to a halt.
The novel follows a concierge of an apartment block for the rich who hides her intelligence behind what she conceives to be the archetypal stereotype of her social role, and a thirteen year old brainbox of a rich kid who is planning to kill herself and torch the family home on her thirteenth birthday. It is rather quaint and quirky, and some of the prose is rich (and I must say, very nicely translated.) But the novel generally left me feeling like it was trying too hard to make profound philisophical statements about not much at all. Perhaps on a second reading it would improve in my estimation, but on the whole, I just didn't get it.
The novel follows a concierge of an apartment block for the rich who hides her intelligence behind what she conceives to be the archetypal stereotype of her social role, and a thirteen year old brainbox of a rich kid who is planning to kill herself and torch the family home on her thirteenth birthday. It is rather quaint and quirky, and some of the prose is rich (and I must say, very nicely translated.) But the novel generally left me feeling like it was trying too hard to make profound philisophical statements about not much at all. Perhaps on a second reading it would improve in my estimation, but on the whole, I just didn't get it.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Most Recent Customer Reviews
light and enjoyable philosphical novel
This was a popular bookclub choice. We admired the mixture of philosophy political comment and comedy. Read more
Published 9 days ago by Sian
Unappealing characters, but maybe try it for yourselves
I so rarely leave books unfinished but this one made me want to slap the two main protagonists. Their self-obsessed intellectual noodling eventually convinced me to shelve this... Read more
Published 26 days ago by E. Darby
Long-winded whimsy
I enjoyed reading this: it is lively and seems interesting, however implausible. But before the end I was losing patience. So wordy! Read more
Published 1 month ago by Jeff Hancock
Converted Eventually
I had heard a lot about this book. It seems to be a "Book Group" favourite . Had my Group not decided to read it I doubt if I would have bothered. Read more
Published 1 month ago by K
The elegance of the Prose
Let's be clear from the start, this is not an easy read. That said, it is one of the most amazing books I have ever read and is also that rarest of all things in fiction: unique. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Mr. T. Chan
Moments of Always Within Never
Muriel Barbery was born in Casablanca in 1969. A former philosophy teacher, her first novel ("Une Gourmandise") was published in 2000 - appearing in English as "Gourmet Rhapsody"... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Craobh Rua
La concierge aux camelias
The best short description of this book is "very French". It's certainly not the sort of book a US or UK author would be able to get away with and doubtful whether, say, a German... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Secret Spi
Pointless but beautiful
The beauty and the joy of this novel is its fantastically detailed and beautifully described glimpses into a brace of lives; the middle-aged Renée and twelve year old... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Book Critic
Excellent read
This unusual book is a brilliant evocation of life for a concierge in Paris. The title asks us to look beyond the exterior and the superficial, and as soon as you enter the world... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Tess
Great Story - if you can find it amongst all the philosophy
Are Hedgehogs elegant? I'm not convinced. Cute for sure, riddled with fleas, undoubtedly and pretty handy for getting rid of slugs in your garden but would they be the first animal... Read more
Published 3 months ago by boingboing
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/02/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192198663_.gif){kind=small}
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
