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The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Audiobook9 hours

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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About this audiobook

An enchanting New York Times and international bestseller and award-winner about life, art, literature, philosophy, culture, class, privilege, and power, seen through the eyes of a 54-year old French concierge and a precocious but troubled 12-year-old girl.Renee Michel is the 54-year-old concierge of a luxury Paris apartment building. Her exterior (“short, ugly, and plump”) and demeanor (“poor, discreet, and insignificant”) belie her keen, questing mind and profound erudition. Paloma Josse is a 12-year-old genius who behaves as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter. She plans to kill herself on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday.Both Renee and Paloma hide their true talents and finest qualities from the bourgeois families around them, until a wealthy Japanese gentleman named Ozu moves into building. Only he sees through them, perceiving the secret that haunts Renee, winning Paloma's trust, and helping the two discover their kindred souls. Moving, funny, tender, and triumphant, Barbery's novel exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 17, 2009
ISBN9781598879261
Author

Muriel Barbery

Muriel Barbery’s novels include the New York Times bestseller, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa, 2008), Gourmet Rhapsody (Europa, 2009), and A Single Rose (Europa, 2021). She is also the author of The Writer’s Cats, illustrated by Maria Guitart. Barbery has lived in Kyoto, Amsterdam, and Paris, and now lives in the French countryside. 

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Reviews for The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Rating: 4.022044088176353 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It’s simply WONDERFUL a book that fills your mind and heart at the same time
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I adore this book, which is unique. Reading it the first time was such a pleasure, but listening to it on audiobook was even better. The two actresses are perfect. Thank you!!!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A few chapters into this book, I had to sit up and take notice because the style of writing was so sophisticated. I needed to be aware of the meaning of every sentence. At first, I was not sure if I would like this but eventually I understood the reason that Barbery chose to write in this manner. It was all about the two main characters. Here we have two women who are so similar in nature but different in circumstance. The best part of the book for me was when they finally met and began to understand each other, realizing they were kindred spirits. I loved the growth of the concierge and, despite the tragic ending, was satisfied that she found something more in her life she had never had before. As for the young girl, I was so worried that she would fulfill her self-imposed destiny and was relieved that her relationship with Madame Michel enlightened her in her perception of humanity. This is a lovely book that may require a little more effort to read but is well worth it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is the story of a concierge in an apartment building, pretending to be what people expect her to be, although she is actually very educated. A young girl in the same building, wise for her years, is plotting suicide to escape the fatuous people she lives with. The two meet after a new tenant moves into the building and helps them both learn that they can be what they actually are.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I can’t believe I sat through this whole story just to get to the end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I just finished this book and I was very sad for it come to a close. The overly philosophical musings of the two main characters took a little bit of adjusting to, especially as it was unexpected when I decided to read this, and at times I thought it was a bit pretentious and overdone. However, the characters were written with such warmth that I couldn't help but feel for them and therefore be very taken aback by the ending. I am very glad that Barbery's other book, Gourmet, is about another minor character, as it feels that there is another extension of this novel to be read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Philosophical, beautiful, enchanting, and ultimately heartbreaking.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Beautiful writing. That alone makes this book one to keep. I'll probably end up buying a paper copy, so as to have it on the bookshelf. It's a rich story, and the characters in it are people, with internal lives, and depth.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Beautiful writing. There were times where I struggled to follow the inner thoughts of both Renee and Paloma but I found myself attached to both of them very quickly. I wish their interactions had initiated sooner in the story but I was happy nonetheless that they did finally become friends. This book is very intellectual and at times a bit heavy handed but I really enjoyed the story line and the appreciation that the characters reflected for both art and literature. I'd also like to mention that I absolutely loved Manuela and Kakuro and thought they added a lot to the growth of Madame Michel.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I am still not sure how I feel about this book. As much as I enjoyed it, I have a love/hate relationship with it. Depending on the time of day, and which part of it I’m thinking about. I guess that means it is sticking with me, so that is a good thing. It is a very philosophical book, and some of the parts I felt were put in there so the author could get all her philosophical views in. in fact, I hated the first half. Because it was heavy philosophy, and little on story. It wasn't until the character Ozu showed up, that I found some story, and started to enjoy myself. By the time the end came around, I was ready for a big pay off. I felt I had invested so much of myself. And I didn't get the pay off. Or at least I didn't get the payoff I was hoping for. And the ending? Abrupt and unfinished. But I did like that language, and I did like the characters, and we did end up having some interesting discussions about it, so there were some wins. But, I don't think I will be reading any more by this author.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Renée is a middle-aged concierge in a luxury building in Paris. Paloma is a brilliant 12-yr-old who lives in the building. The two narrate the story with surprisingly similar voices. They philosophize on class systems, the meaning of life, etc. The book didn't pick up for me until a new tenant, Ozu, moved into the building. His character sets everything in motion. Until he appears it's mainly just Paloma and Renée's self-centered thoughts, which were becoming a bit tiring. Once Ozu is introduced there is more of a plot and I really enjoyed his interaction with both Paloma and Renée. Once I got into the rhythm of the book I really liked it, though I preferred Renée's sections. It is a very French book, debating social status as opposed to true knowledge and love of art. Its greatest strength is the quiet interaction between the characters: Paloma and Renée, Ozu and Renée, Renée and her best friend Manuela. It's those relationships and conversations that give the books its spark. "But we all know perfectly well that in essence dreams and waking hours do not have the same texture." Here's a bit from the book which explains the title... "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."
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    If not for a couple of fine, poetic paragraphs, this book would get not merely no stars, but -- if LT's software ever gets closer to the realities of reading and writing -- a deep negative score. Perhaps we need to incorporate Black Holes along with our more conventional astral bodies. Pretentious, emotionally phony stuff: I probably wouldn't have finished it had I not been on a long train-ride, and even then the Nebraska Plains looked good after a while by comparison.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Philosophical, deep, and heartbreaking.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Characters draw you in.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Wonderful, heartwarming, charming, clever and full of ...warmth. Loved it.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    How can a book be written so beautifully and intelligently and miss it at the end. I am an easy mark for a great, happy ending, and I don't even mind a trite happy ending. But the ending of this book was a trite bad ending. An unusual bad ending would have somehow been better. The ending seemed so out of place in this otherwise learned, surprisingly original and fresh novel. And let me say that I know I'm in the minority with my opinion, but I'm just keeping it real.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Renée, a concierge, at an apartment building, hides her intelligence. She is a 50 something widow that takes care of the place. Paloma is the daughter of a rich man, has decided to commit suicide on her 13th birthday because she does not want to live with the rich. They eventually meet and make friends. One of the apartments become vacant and a Japanese man moves in and recognizes the intelligence of both and become friends with them. Sad ending though, but worth the read!!!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I found this book very odd to listen to. I mostly mean that in a good way, although there are times that I wasn't sure.The first half of the book kept rambling off on tangents, usually (but not always) interesting ones. I drifted along, bemused, as Renée pontificated on philosophy or stories about people she knew; or as 12 year old Paloma talked about how pointless her life was. I admit, I let it flow by at times, listening but not always absorbing what was said.In the second part of the book, the story came together. Parts that I let slip by me became relevant. I got to know the characters much better, and finally connected with them.The characters, particularly the main characters of Renée and Paloma are the heart of this book. Although they both interest me, I didn't like either of them as much as I expected to, or as I think I should. Both were very smart female characters, which is often enough to make me bond with them. In both cases, I was too far into the book before I really understood why they needed to hide their intelligence from everyone around them.I also continue to think on Ozu and Manuela, two key secondary characters. I wish both had been fleshed out more. Ozu never felt like more than a plot device to me, although a very pleasant one. Manuela was a foil for Renée. Yet, I still perked up whenever they entered.This was a very intricate book, not in its plot, but in the characters and in the telling. There were many small pieces that interlocked in unexpected ways. I'd really like to reread this book. I suspect on rereading, I would love it, rather than simply liking it a lot like I do now.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love when a book has such love and hate towards it! I must admit, this was definitely not a typical read for me. Despite how "odd" the book was, I continued on. The last 100 pages or so was better than the beginning. However, one of my favorite "profound thoughts" was early on about two dogs and their owners ;-)
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A Paris concierge and a 12 year old year old girl from the same building give provide their thoughts on life and the classes. Both narrators are secretively intelligent, go out of their way to blend in with the furniture and not be seen. They discover each other in the end, discover the secrets of life and are changed.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    When I finished reading this book, I felt like I had lost the friends I made in it. That's how I know I loved it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This novel is a departure into the world of non-crime fiction.Perhaps listening to the audio version was probably not my best move because it tends to turn the book into a series of short vignettes. Nevertheless I enjoyed the venture into philosophy in the form of the thoughts of both Renee the concierge and Paloma the teenage school girl.The novel consists of items from Paloma's journal as she contemplates the meaning of life and Renee's narration about her life as the concierge of a large residential building. The two gradually interweave with each other and pictures are created of other residents in the building and there is a progression of events. In addition there is quite a bit of background about Renee's life over the years.In the long run I enjoyed it more than I expected to, as I too thought about the philosophical issues they raised.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent translation! I wanted a different ending. A good fun ending.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Elegance of the HedgehogThis book is about the power of beauty to make life worthwhile and the power of art to illuminate beauty. The story is told in two voices: Renee, the 54 year old concierge of an elegant hotel in Paris; and Paloma a 12 year old girl living with her family in their 5th floor apartment of that building. Renee and Paloma share and treasure an intelligence that sets them apart from others. Renee is a plain looking woman who was born into a poor family. They were poor in both financial and emotional terms, they always had enough to eat but no prospects of a good life, and they never talked to each other. Renee's intelligence allowed her to get a good basic education, she married young, at 17, and she and her husband worked hard all their lives. Before the story begins Renee's husband has died of cancer and she lives alone with her fat cat Leo. No one would know the cat was named for Tolstoy, in fact no one has any idea of Renee's intelligence, her love of books, museums, movies and art in all forms. She chooses to show the world only a slow witted, competent concierge because she worries people may both expect too much of her and fear her if they know of her intelligence.Paloma, on the other hand, is born into a very wealthy family who greatly values intelligence, to a degree but she thinks would fear her exceptional abilities. They converse, but only on an acquisitive level. She feels none of them has an ability to see the "real" nature of life - that it is absurd, and we all just end up with no more purpose than swimming in a goldfish bowl. So having great disdain for them all she plans to kill herself and set fire to her apartment on her 13th birthday. In the meantime she keeps two journals, one of profound thoughts and one of the movement of the world "finding whatever is beautiful enough to give life meaning."I think this is where the love it or hate it nature of readers' reactions to the book comes in. Some readers can't see beyond the disdain these two characters have for the people around them. Well, first of all, Paloma is 12, an intelligent 12. Disdain is in her nature. Renee, on the other hand is a woman who thinks herself not beautiful and whose job it is to wait on the wealthy who seem to value appearance more than anything. When she is talking about the death of her husband, she says, "Since we were concierges, it was a given that death, for us, must be a matter of course, whereas for our privileged neighbors it carried all the weight of injustice and drama. The death of a concierge leaves a slight indentation of every day life, belongs to a biological certainty that has nothing tragic about it...a non-entity who was merely returning to a nothingness from which he had never fully emerged." There's nothing like associating with rich people to make a person feel less than equal. So, I don't mind the disdain. The reason I love this book is that it so clearly points out beauty and the meaning of beauty in the world. A first glimpse of beauty is in Renee's description of a tea ritual,..."when tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things...with each swallow time is sublimed." The book is called the Elegance of the Hedgehog because it mentions the elegance of the creature living inside the prickly exterior of the hedgehog that everyone sees. Rather it should have been named Camellias because the beginning of the romance of this book comes when Renee describes a Japanese movie she has seen. First she says that "...you desperately need Art, You seek to reconnect with your spiritual illusions, and you wish fervently that something might rescue you from your biological destiny". In the film The Munekata Sisters, the father, who is about to die, and daughter talk about a moss temple they have seen and the beauty of a camellia on the moss, then the violet mountains of Kyoto which look like azuki bean paste. "True novelty is that which does not grow old, despite the passage of time...The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains...this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion: is this not something we all aspire to? And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to attain?" For me, the book could have ended with this observation. Both Renee and Paloma are able to see the camellia on the moss and to make me see it too. Surprisingly the story doesn't end there.. Connections are made, friendships grow. The story of Renee and Paloma continues to build and build to the most perfect ending I could envision. I will be recommending this book to everyone.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Interesting & unusual.
    All kinds of reviews you can read for loving or hating this book.
    For me it was one that stood out from the norm and I may read it again to absorb more than just "the story" (since I'm a cave person reader - zipping thru just for "the story")
    I was hooked at "Leo".
    Read the book, then find the (obscure) movie (French with subtitles).
    Read in 2011.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery is set in an elegant hotel in the center of Paris, the story mainly follows the musings of two characters: Renee, the building's concierge, and Paloma, a 12 year old living in the building. The book starts off telling you that Paloma is planning to kill herself on her 13th birthday because she has yet to meet an intellectual of her own equivalent. The story unfolds with alternating chapters from each woman's perspective.During book club, the leader found quotes from the author that she rarely considered the readers' when writing the book and she didn't plan out the book beforehand. Sadly, both were evidenced in the pages. The pacing of this book sadly mimics my running style. I often run 9 minute mile downhills, have some 10 minute flats and unfortunately some 13 min recoveries in between. Same can be said for this novel. At times, I was grooving on the points of view and philosophical analyzations. But, too often, the book lacked momentum and speed and lost me to floating eyes and my soft bed.As I've said countless times before, I want to care about the main character or characters. Here, Barbery succeeded. I was deeply saddened by the ending... and, no, it's not what you expect it to be, although death is surely involved. Also, I must admit (and I blame this partly on the book being translated from French) the writing at times left you cold and was hard to follow. The author seemed determine to mock the unintelligent (or those not willing to run every few pages to a dictionary)... ironically, this was the main goal of the two protagonists as well.I can't say I'd recommend the book, except with the rare exception of the true literary snob. Even then, I'd make sure he/she knew to have a dictionary close at hand!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Set in an eight-unit luxury apartment building in Paris, this is a story of two loners with secrets -- 54-year-old Renee, the building’s lowly concierge who hides her intellect; and 12-year-old Paloma, a resident of the building whose sense of different-ness has her planning suicide. The first two thirds of the book flesh out the situation, slowly albeit with some interesting philosophy, and then the last third captures interest and flies; the proportions should have been flipped so as not only to engage the reader but go beyond foreshadowing to actually earn the ending.This is my second novel by Barbery, after Gourmet Rhapsody, set in the same apartment building and sharing characters, and which was okay at best. If I hadn’t tossed it, I’d likely re-read parts now to see if some of the characters shine differently in new light. But I probably won’t read more by Barbery -- her characters are pompous and prickly, her plots plodding and then rushed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A brilliant girl of twelve lives in a luxurious apartment complex in Paris where she and the concierge, a woman of about sixty, disdain the rest of apartment's inhabitants and share intellectual proclivities. While mildly aware of each other's presence, they nonetheless hold themselves back from the rest of the world. The girl, Paloma, hides her brilliance and plans to commit suicide on her 13th birthday if she cannot find anything beautiful worth living for in the world. Renee, the concierge, voraciously reads political commentary yet feigns her intelligence amongst her employers. However, both are about to be revealed when a new owner of one of the flats moves into their apartment complex.Concrete, poignant, and abstract are the three main attributes to which I ascribe this novel. Ms. Barbery give us real examples to ground the sometimes abstract concepts that her characters sometimes think about and she does it in such a fabulously written manner as to leave me quite breathless at times. A must read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Elegance of the Hedgehog contains two narratives--one from the concierge at a high class apartment building who loves to read, listen to classical music, and watch films and who feels she must hide her interests from the rich, shallow tenants of her building and the other from a very bright twelve-year-old girl who is a resident of the building and finds adults and the adult world hopelessly shallow and uninteresting. Partly through each characters' interaction with a new tenant, an elegant, kind Japanese gentleman, and partly through their brief interactions with each other, the concierge and the girl each learn to let go of their more extreme judgements on the world. The novel has little to no action or plot, and it is more philosophy than fiction. I disagreed with many of the conclusions that these characters come to, but I enjoyed the observations they made. And I think I would like having either of them round for supper. Overall a book which bemused me, but which I was happy to read.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I may have missed something here...I could NOT GET THROUGH THIS BOOK. For the life of me. It was kind of torturous. Perhaps my dislike of all literary endeavors a la Francais contributed to my anguish, or perhaps it was my own dim-wittedness that prevented me from finishing this book. Whatever the reason, I read others' glowing reviews wistfully, wishing I had been smart enough, patient enough, or French enough to get through the entire tome. I watched a Hills Marathon that weekend instead...