'"I've had my own suspicions on the matter for a while now too. From a distance, she's a real concierge. Close up....well, close up.......there's something weird going on..........she radiates intelligence. And yet she really make an effort, like, you can tell she is doing everything she possibly can to act like a concierge and come across as stupid. But I've been watching her.......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"
"The Elegance of the Hedgehog" is the second novel by French author Muriel Barbery. Heading the bestseller list for months in France and several other countries in Europe back in 2007, it was released in the United States in 2008.
The story is told through two first person narrators, the concierge and the young girl. Reneé Michel is the concierge of a very posh apartment building located in a very posh street in a very posh area of Paris. Madame Michel is in her 50's and a widow. She is conscious of class, so much so, that she takes excessive measures to insure no one living in the building, finds out she is
not dull and stupid. She fools only those, who can't see, which is pretty much the entire building.
The other narrator is a 12 year-old girl. The girl who does see Madame Michel and is responsible for the title of this awesome tale. She is the younger daughter of one of the wealthy families living in the apartment house. Paloma Josse is wise. And she is searching for something, like the meaning of life and is sick to death of her over-medicated mother and older sister, Colombe. She finds them annoying and sad, having succumbed to the superficial rather than the sublime. They are the type of people whose minds are hollow because they figure having money is enough. Paloma is intensely frustrated by the world, and is, in fact, so blasé that she figures she might as well commit suicide, but not before setting the building on fire.
The paths of these two solitary thinkers initially travel parallel, until the death of one of the tenants brings change. Enter the mysterious Monsieur Ozu. His shadow brings light to Renee and Paloma.
What author Muriel Barbery says: "To be honest, I was just creating characters who love the things I do, and who allowed me to celebrate that through them." Ms. Barbery is a professor of philosophy, which explains her frequent allusions to great philosophers and various other deep thinkers of past centuries.
"I expected it [philosophy] to help me understand better that which surrounds me: but it didn't work out that way. Literature has taught me more. I was interested in exploring the bearing philosophy could really have on one's life, and how. I wanted to illuminate this process. That's where the desire to anchor philosophy to a story, a work of fiction, was born: to give it more meaning, make it more physically real, and render it, perhaps, even entertaining."
Essentially, "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" is a love story......about people, whether young, old, rich or poor and how the joy of witnessing creation and cultivation of beauty at all times makes for quite a magical world. That may sound quite abstract and vague. In the first half of the book, it is a bit. The arrival of Monsieur Ozu ties it all together.
A wonderful story that will take you anywhere you want to go.