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The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Hardcover)

by Muriel Barbery (Author), (Translated by Alison Anderson) (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (113 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover: 322 pages
  • Publisher: Gallic Books; UK First Edition; 1st printing. edition (1 Sep 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1906040168
  • ISBN-13: 978-1906040161
  • Product Dimensions: 21.8 x 13.6 x 2.2 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (113 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 108,598 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Nobody ever imagined that his tender, funny book with a philosophical vein would have enjoyed such incredible success. For some, it is part Sophie s World by Jostein Gaarder, part Monsieur Malaussene by Daniel Pennac. While for others it resembles a written version of the film Amélie. Either way, readers are responding in vast numbers. --Le Monde

The reader will be amused, surprised and moved by this philosophical tale: a user's guide to life which is a delight on every level. --Elle

Enthusiastically recommended for anyone who loves books that grow quietly and then blossom suddenly. --Marie Claire

Clever, informative and moving.....this is an admirable novel which deserves as wide a readership here as it had in France. --The Observer

The novel wins over its fans with a life-affirming message, a generous portion of heart and Barbery's frequently wicked sense of humour. --Time Magazine

Clever, informative and moving.....this is an admirable novel which deserves as wide a readership here as it had in France. --The Observer

The novel wins over its fans with a life-affirming message, a generous portion of heart and Barbery's frequently wicked sense of humour. --Time Magazine


Product Description

Renée is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building on the Left Bank. To the residents she is honest, reliable and uncultivated an ideal concierge. But Renée has a secret. Beneath this conventional façade she is 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, Renée is resigned to living a lie, with only visits from her one friend Manuela to break the monotony. Meanwhile, several floors up, twelve-year-old Paloma Josse is determined to avoid the predictably bourgeois future laid out for her, and plans to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday. But before this happens, the death of one of their privileged neighbours will bring dramatic change to number 7, Rue de Grenelle, altering the course of both their lives forever. With sales of over a million copies in French, this funny, moving and wise novel is now an international publishing sensation.
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Customer Reviews

113 Reviews
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2 star:
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (113 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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30 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A must read but not for the light reader!, 8 Oct 2008
By mcah "mcah" (Wimbledon) - See all my reviews
This is a really excellent novel. I read it in french and thoroughly enjoyed it.

It is written in two voices. The main voice is that of a physically challenged 54 year old concierge in a high class appartment block in Paris. Renee is a self taught intellectual of great intellignece who choses to conceal her knowledge and tastes from her upper class employer in the interest of 'keeping her place and hence leading a quiet life'. Her comments and observations on the residents are sharp and often hilarious and her search and analisys for the 'meaning and value of life' develops throughout the novel. In parallel, we have the deep thoughts of the 12 year old highly intelligent daughter of one of the resident families. She totally disillusioned by the meaninglessness of life, the triteness of her family and the world in general; so much so that she is planning her own suicide at the age of 13. Her musings and thoughts are equally sharp and amusing despite her continuous and bewildered search for meaning.

Their paths unite as a result of the death of a resident which precipitates a new arrival in the person of a wealthy japanese man with a very different perspective on life from the typical bourgeois inhabitants of the appartments. He quickly identifies the two (concierge and girl)for their intelligence and originality of thought and an unlikely friendship is formed. This friendship is the catalyst to the thoughts and musing of the concierge and the girl and brings each one to an equilibrium.

The novel has many highly amusing observations and the characters are highly appealing but it is not a novel in which the storyline forms the main purpose of the book. The main purpose is the philosophical search for meaning of the characters. As such it is not a book I would recommend for light reading. It requires a more than average level of both cultural and philosophical understanding. The language used is extremely rich and complex in places. I did find myself reaching for the dictionary on many occasions. It might be that in the english translation this is not such a problem but certainly in french (and I am a native speaker) it was very challenging parts.

It is because of this last point that I didnt award a full five stars. Having researched the words and then rebuilt the philosophical points in simpler language, I found on several occasion that the complex language dressed-up some interesting but not terribly deep philosophy which could have been said more simply. This is very french of course!

I thoroughly recommend this to anyone who is not phased by my comments in the last paragraph. It is a very good book but not one for those who dont want to use a dictionary or re-read a page now and then to sort out exactly what is being said. If you can cope,it is fun and very satisfying.
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18 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Not Spiky Enough, 7 Sep 2008
By Foggy Tewsday - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)      
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
Do you remember an episode of `Hancock's Half Hour' called `The Poetry Society'? In it, Tony 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.
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16 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The elegance of prose, 1 April 2009
By Boof (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)      
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Programme (What's this?)
I loved this book - perhaps even more so because I didn't expect to. I found it refreshing, funny, thought-provoking and very quirky.

There are two narrators, each taking a turn with a chapter or two. The first is 54 year old widowed Renee who is caretaker of a large Parisien appartment block with very well-to-do residents who largely ignore her unless barking orders. Renee has a secret though - she loves Tolstoy, classical music and Japanese films; but why upset the neighbours by confusing them by having an intelligent concierge? The second narrator is Paloma, aged 12, daugher of a government minister living in the entire 5th floor of the building, highly intelligent, cynical, bored and planning to commit suicide on her 13th birthday. Both go about their daily business as normal until a death in the building and subsequently a new resident arriving turns both their worlds upside down.

I found this book such a lovely read - it made me think, it made me question and it had plenty of laugh-out-loud moments (Paloma imparticular). I'm so glad I picked this book up and so glad it far surpassed my expectations.
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