The Elegance of the Hedgehog
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3.8 • 21 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The international publishing sensation, with sales of over 10 million copies worldwide, and shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.
‘Resistance is futile … you might as well buy it before someone recommends it for your book group. Its 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
Rene is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building. She maintains a carefully constructed persona as someone uncultivated but reliable, in keeping with what she feels a concierge should be. But beneath this facade lies the real Rene: 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, Rene lives 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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This dark but redemptive novel, an international bestseller, marks the debut in English of Normandy philosophy professor Barbery. Ren e Michel, 54 and widowed, is the stolid concierge in an elegant Paris h tel particulier. Though "short, ugly, and plump," Ren e has, as she says, "always been poor," but she has a secret: she's a ferocious autodidact who's better versed in literature and the arts than any of the building's snobby residents. Meanwhile, "supersmart" 12-year-old Paloma Josse, who switches off narration with Ren e, lives in the building with her wealthy, liberal family. Having grasped life's futility early on, Paloma plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday. The arrival of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu, who befriends both the young pessimist and the concierge alike, sets up their possible transformations. By turns very funny (particularly in Paloma's sections) and heartbreaking, Barbery never allows either of her dour narrators to get too cerebral or too sentimental. Her simple plot and sudden denouement add up to a great deal more than the sum of their parts.
Customer Reviews
Gorgeous Tale
Courteous, devastating, difficult, romantic, precise, broad.
Delving into the contradictory nature of the world at large and how we’ve chosen to live amongst it all in such beautiful prose.
Written in short chapters, each comprised of the thoughts of two very differently aged characters of different classes but who share the gift of the intellectually minded.
It’s a slow plot but this is to serve its point. Life moves slowly when you’re focusing on it.