This
book is different from the others I’ve reviewed so far because it was not
written by an American author. The
original language is French, and the book does not deal with American culture
at all. Well, unless you count some
French concerns about the “Americanization” of their culture (which I
don’t). The book deals with the discrepancies
between tiers of French society, and then throws in an elegant influence of
Japanese culture on top of that.
Besides
the interplay of class and culture to make the story interesting, the writing
and characters are engaging and charming (with all their rough edges) which
makes this week’s book, The Elegance of
the Hedgehog, really good and definitely deserving of a read.
You all know the drill by now, so
I’ll just jump in!
Author Summary:
Muriel Barbery wasn’t born in mainland France; she was
actually born in Morocco (Casablanca, how romantic!) in 1969. Her original ambition was not to be a
novelist; she actually studied philosophy throughout her academic career and
she holds a doctorate—or the French equivalent—that she earned in 1993. Since then, she has been a professor of
philosophy at several different universities, high schools, and teacher
training colleges.
Though she published one novel before The Elegance of the Hedgehog, it was that book that catapulted her
to awareness as a tremendous novelist. Elegance stayed at the top of the French
bestseller list for 30 consecutive weeks, and spent over a year on the New York
Times bestseller list (at various levels).
The book has been translated and become a bestseller in many other
countries as well, and was made into a movie released in 2009.
Muriel Barbery’s two books take place in the same hotel;
characters from each story overlap and interplay. However, to date she has not released another
novel.
The Plot:
Straight from the back cover:
We are in an elegant hotel
particulier in the center of Paris. Renee, the building’s concierge, is short,
ugly, and plump. She has bunions on her
feet. She is cantankerous and addicted
to television soaps. Her only genuine
attachment is to her cat, Leo. In short,
she is everything society expects from a concierge at a bourgeois building in a
posh Parisian neighborhood. But Renee
has a secret; she is a ferocious autodidact who furtively devours art,
philosophy, music, and Japanese culture.
With biting humor she scrutinizes the lives of the building’s
tenants—her inferiors in every way except that of material wealth.
Then there’s Paloma, a
super-smart twelve-year-old and the youngest daughter of the Josses, who live
on the fifth floor. Talented,
precocious, and startlingly lucid, she has come to terms with life’s seeming
futility and has decided to end her own on the day of her thirteenth
birthday. Until then she will continue
hiding her extraordinary intelligence behind a mask of mediocrity, acting the
part of an average pre-teen high on pop subculture, a good but not an outstanding
student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.
Paloma and Renee hide
both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect
cannot or will not appreciate them. They
discover their kindred souls when a new tenant arrives, a wealthy Japanese man
named Ozu. He befriends Paloma and is
able to see through Renee’s timeworn disguise to the mysterious event that has
haunted her since childhood. This is a
moving, witty, and redemptive novel that exalts the quiet victories of the
inconspicuous among us.
Characters: Slight
spoilers
Renee:
Personal disclaimer: I absolutely love Renee. Yes, she’s kind of a pain and she closes
herself off from many other people—although the people in the building are not
the kind of people one would want to associate with, by and large—but she’s
very much like myself. Believing herself
to be ugly and knowing herself to be more intelligent than many other people in
the world, she hides her true self from those who wouldn’t understand her
capabilities and shares herself only with similar people. Which, at the start of the book, only
includes a single kindred spirit; a cleaning woman from another hotel. Together, the two of them eat good food and
discuss books and art in the privacy of Renee’s apartment.
To everyone else, however, she is the toad barely capable of
speech who is responsible for overseeing their every frivolous need. She takes messages, stores packages, and
coordinates deliveries so that the “more important” residents of the hotel are
free to worry about their lives’ minutiae, their therapy, and their spoiled
children.
Certainly, Renee could do more to change other’s perceptions
of her, she could attempt to change her circumstances in order not to be so
bitter…but I understand her. It’s quite
possible that she thinks that even if she were to show her true self to others
that they just wouldn’t understand, or would look at her as though she were a
particularly talented dog; just repeating tricks with no comprehension about
their meaning. Especially in a world so
focused on appearance like upper-class France, Renee’s face might disqualify
her from any consideration from these “superiors”.
Paloma and the Josses:
Paloma I have less sympathy with. I rarely have sympathy with those characters
born with every advantage who just can’t seem to get over their own
apathy. Paloma is smart; every chapter
she narrates begins with what she calls a “profound thought”, a haiku-like
thought that can be specific or vague as she sums up the silliness of the world
around her. Her world is mostly
concerned with her parents and sister—symbols of self-absorbed,
highly-educated, cultured French upper-class.
Paloma feels very little in common with them.
As the summary states, Paloma has decided to kill herself, which
is partially why we hear her narrating her side of the story; she is journaling
her perceptions before her suicide, so her parents have some way of
understanding why she does what she does.
Actually, when she isn’t speaking of people and is speaking of life
itself, Paloma has some very interesting perceptions. She speaks on subjects such as culture,
intelligence, and character with important insight; it’s just sad that she
can’t take this perceptivity and apply it to her own life!
Ozu:
Ozu Kakuro unfortunately does not get the chance to narrate
his own story, so we do not get the same view into his mind as we do the other
two main characters. However, his
arrival makes for enough of an event in the hotel that all the characters take
note of him, especially since he throws his unit into chaos by completely
remodeling it to be more traditionally Japanese, with shoji screens and tatami
flooring.
Upon arriving at the hotel, Ozu immediately senses the
difference in Renee and Paloma. The
entire building does its best to get on his good side—there is actually an
impressive amount of cultural admiration between France and Japan—but he ends
up drawing closer to those two rather than anyone else. Ozu seems to be a bit of a Japanese
stereotype (after all, remaking the unit with shoji and tatami?) on the part of
the author, but he is well acquainted with Western traditions and literature;
one of the things that draws the trio together.
It also helps that both Paloma and Renee (Renee especially)
are already students of Japanese culture.
This, again, feels like another stereotype; that both of them are drawn
to the order, tradition, and culture of Japan that they both feel so superior
to their own. But that’s just me…as a
student of Japanese, you see so much worship of Japan as a “superior” culture
in the West…and it’s hard to maintain that idea of superiority when you’ve
lived their and experienced Japanese flaws up close. Not that Japan is overly flawed! It’s just flawed, like anywhere else.
International Conflicts
and Agreements (the ending gets totally spoiled!):
One of the points that The
Elegance of the Hedgehog makes so well is that people—no matter what
culture they may come from—with similar characters and sensibilities will
notice each other, despite even outward differences. Renee is middle-aged and physically
unattractive, Ozu is an elderly Japanese man, and Paloma is a cute
twelve-year-old upper class girl. These
three people would not normally become friends, but they do, and it’s all due
to the fact that they understand each other.
That their differences of country and class mean very little when
contrasted to their similarities of mind.
It’s a great point, and a true one.
Mourning Renee:
I hate, hate, hate
how the book ends. It’s pointless and
discouraging and even though it helps Paloma figure out that she wants to live,
it does it by killing Renee, whom, as I previously wrote, I love. And it’s in such a silly way, too! Renee is hit by a car while crossing the
street. After all the progress she makes
in connecting to other people, in realizing the possibility of love with
Ozu…she’s sacrificed in a pointless jolt to Paloma’s consciousness.
I despise that, because more than likely Paloma would have
come to realize that with people like Renee and Ozu in the world, life is worth
living. Kindred spirits are out there,
though they might be hard to find.
Anyway…I thought that this portion of the book was fantastic
in the cultural interplay because while all the rest of the building either
ignores or barely notices Renee’s death, Ozu and Paloma come together and
really understand what it means, that such a person has passed out of life.
At around five I went
down to Madame Michel’s loge (I mean Renee’s loge) with Kakuro because he
wanted to get some of her clothes to take them to the hospital morgue. He rang at our door and asked Maman if he
could speak to me. But I had guessed it
would be him, I was already there…In any event, Kakuo and I went down to the
loge. But while we were crossing the
courtyard we stopped short, both of us at the same time: someone had begun to
play the piano and we could hear very clearly what they were playing. It was Satie, I think, well, I’m not sure
(but anyway it was classical).
…how can you have a
profound thought when your kindred soul is lying in a hospital
refrigerator? But I know we stopped
short, both of us, and took a deep breath and let the sun warm our faces while
we listed to the music drifting down from above. “I think Renee would have liked this moment,”
said Kakuro. And we stayed there a few
more minutes, listening to the music. I
agreed with him. (Barbery, p. 324-325)
Sources:
Barbery, Muriel.
(2008). The Elegance of the Hedgehog. (Alison Anderson, Trans.). New
York, NY: Europa Editions. (Original work published 2006).
Muriel Barbery.
(n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muriel_Barbery
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