About this title: In this enthralling international bestseller, two girls live inconspicuous lives in the center of an elegant Paris apartment building. It is only when a stranger moves into their building--and sees through the girls' disguises--that Paloma and Rene discover their kindred spirits.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Europa Editions
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9781933372600ISBN:1933372605
Description: New. No dust jacket as issued. New book at 20% off retail price from a reliable seller. Prompt shipping. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 325 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: GALLIC BOOKS Country = UNITED KINGDOM
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9781906040185ISBN:1906040184
Description: BRAND NEW PAPERBACK. 320 pages. Renee is the concierge of a grand parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. over the years she has maintained her carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with society's expectations of what a concierge should be. but beneath this facade lies the real renee: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly ... read more
Binding: Pre-Loaded Audio Player
Publisher: Findaway World Llc
Date Published: 2009-09-01
ISBN-13:9781615747955ISBN:1615747958
Description: NEW. Pre-Loaded Audio Player. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9781615747955. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Gallic Books
Date Published: 14/05/2009
ISBN-13:9781906040185ISBN:1906040184
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Gallic Books
Date Published: 14/05/2009
ISBN-13:9781906040185ISBN:1906040184
Description: Used-Good. Book in good or better condition. Dispatched same day from warehouse. Please email with any questions for quick response. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Gallic Books
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9781906040185ISBN:1906040184
Description: New. Renee is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. Over the years she has maintained her carefully constructed persona as someone reliable but totally uncultivated, in keeping, she feels, with soc... read more
"A bit superficial but interesting study of the pretensions of the French. Barbery seems to be attempting to break down the stereotypes but ends up reinforcing those. The first 100 or so pages are a bit tedious but the book picks up after that until the somewhat contrived ending."
"That so many people love this book makes me fear for the future of literature. It is one of the most pretentious, banal "novels" I've ever read. In fact, "novel" is too good a word for its bloggishly self-indulgent, smugly insipid meanderings. Actually most blogs are much more interesting than this book.
The two main characters (the concierge Renee and the young girl, Paloma) are hypocritical snobs who accuse others of snobbery. This intolerance is forgiveable in a child perhaps, but not in a 53 year old concierge. Renee whines about her lot constantly (and not in an amusing way -- she's incredibly tendentious and judgemental). She vaunts her superior intelligence, is very self-involved, and yet fancies herself compassionate.
The world view of the book is conservative. Renee worships the accepted canons of Western art, music, and thinking. She herself epitomizes the upper-middle class women she regards with such scorn. She is one of the most obnoxious characters I've come across in a book. The author expects the reader to sympathize with Renee, but she is boring and self-pitying, among other faults.
Both Renee and Paloma (the girl) think themselves unconventional, yet they are extremely ordinary in their views. They are humorless (this is NOT a funny book) and mean; they mock everyone they know and regard themselves as superior beings. All of their thinking is cliched, and their stale opinions are expressed with narcissistic melodrama and hyperbole, in elevated tones and stilted diction. Actually, the concierge and the 12 year old girl sound pretty much alike. The characterization is that thin. The book is full of stereotypes. Asia and Asians are characterized as "mysterious" and "inscrutable!" It makes France (or French culture) look bad .
The book has no tension but it does have some contrived action as well as a ludicrous red herring. The prose is riddled with sentimentality and cuteness, and the awkward "plot" serves as a skeleton for a host of trite, sophomoric ideas. A few basic philosophical problems are rehashed in reductive ways, and the narrators imagine that they invented these ancient conundrums.
Oh, and the writing is terrible: affected and clumsy. Forget le mot juste! Words are misused throughout. In the last twenty pages, the concierge weeps quite often and I guess the reader is supposed to sob along, but it's bathetic, anything but moving. The only emotions I felt were disgust and anger.
With so many wonderful books to read, why are so many people reading (and liking) this drivel?"
"My name is Renee, and I'm the first protagonist of this book - the hedgehog, as it were. I'm a 54-year-old concierge who works in a building populated by rich and powerful people who barely notice my existence. I'm also a closet intellectual and I frequently try to prove that to you by digressing into asides about philosophy, culture, and other topics. I alternate between sniping at the apartment owners for their snobbish indifference to my lowly concierge self (an image I strive to maintain at every opportunity while blaming the rich apartment owners for buying into it), and terror that they may find out that I read loftier books than they do (I'm as much of a snob as they are, if not worse, but I guess we won't go there - let's keep things simple, even though this book is ostensibly higher literature). Given the owners' apathy toward me, it's not clear what I fear might actually happen if they learned that I was an intellectual. Probably nothing. But hey, this conflict keeps the book going and maybe makes some kind of a statement about French class differences. I guess you'd have to be French to understand. But you don't have to be French to feel smug and superior about reading this pretentious novel. In fact, it probably helps if you're not French because then you're reading something foreign.
My name is Paloma, and I'm the other protagonist of this book. I'm a brilliant, precocious, underestimated and misunderstood 12-year-old who plans to burn down my apartment and commit suicide on my 13th birthday. I'm not sure exactly why I'm so unhappy. I mean, I can make all kinds of bitter and cynical observations about my parents and sister, but really, I'm not lacking for anything. I can tell you in lofty language about how life truly has no meaning, but for someone so bright, my thinking tends to be pretty two-dimensional as does my personality and my life in general. Although disliking your family is pretty normal in adolescence, it's not clear why, in all 12 years of existence, I've never discovered a friend, teacher, neighbor, or relative who might complicate my unilaterally dark feelings about humanity by actually having some positive qualities. But maybe this is part of what helps me sound like a 50-year-old philosopher even though I'm supposed to be a 12-year-old girl, so I guess that's something. In fact, I spend so much time sounding intellectual that, except for my melodramatic suicidality, there's little hint of the fact that, emotionally, I'm really just an early adolescent. A bit more attention to my emotional side might have made my character more interesting, but c'est la vie. I get a little more three-dimensional at the end, but you have to hang in there and I'm not sure it's worth it.
My name is ___, and I'm a reviewer for a snooty periodical. I just finished Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and my editor is expecting a review from me this week. To be honest, all the pedantic asides left me cold. They took me out of the story and weren't all that interesting. I kind of skimmed over them, but that's not something I could ever reveal to my readers. I have to act like I read them, understood them, and appreciated them as only a brilliant reader could. I have to act like they enhanced the novel, rather than detracting from it. Similarly, if I poke holes in the characterization or plot, it might sound as if I didn't understand or failed to appreciate the depth of this book. When a book comes out that tries to sound like it's above my head, my job is to rave about it. This way, the snooty readers of my snooty periodical can feel even snootier as they read, even as they also feel alienated by this pretentious book.
*** I (Khaya, not one of the characters) wrote the above when I was about halfway through and feeling very negative. Now that I've finished the book, my opinion mostly stands. I will say, though, that the book had some better moments and was quite readable. It's really a 2-going-on-3-star book, as opposed to a solid 2 or a 2-rounded-up-from-1 book. Definitely didn't live up to its hype, though."
"One French word explains this book: "une deception". "Deception" means disappointment, but in this case, the word also applies to its "faux amis" (false friends) translation: deception.
After all the fuss I've read about this book, I expected something nearly transcendent. But instead "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" is predictable, overly politically correct and quite pretentious. Ironically, the main characters all disdain the snobbism of the rich, yet at the same practice snobbism themselves. Somehow knowledge of philosophy, arty Japanese movies and obscure outdated phrenology texts is better than the dinner parties, shopping sprees and shrink sessions that the Parisian elite enjoy.
The Elegance of the Hedgehog follows the missives of two women from two very different backgrounds: A frumpy high school drop out Parisian concierge who also happens to be more well read than the entire Academie Francaise (and can quote the rapper Eminen to boot!). She's the Hedgehog of the book with one goal in mind: to keep her intelligence hidden from her one friend (a Portuguese housekeeper with a heart of gold, wouldn't you know) and from the rich tenants in the Parisian building where she lives and works. Paloma is the other main character and enjoys the life of privilege. She lives with her family in a rather large apartment in the building, one of the many benefits of being the daughter of a former high-up French governmental official. Paloma is twelve and has angst - she plans on committing suicide and setting the building on fire. The Hedgehog (Renee)and Paloma go about their business, with loftly thoughts and deep insights. Mainly, they just think they are better than anyone in the building.
What really comes across is a pretentious spewing of everything that the author knows about: tea ceremony, philosophy, Freudian analysis, baking, Japanese movies and culture, classical music (with a twinge of rap for good measure), Japanese toilets, Art (with a big capital "A"), pastries, cats and on and on. Ugh. If I wanted all of this, I would have become a reclusive concierge in Paris myself.
Renee's and Paloma's worlds are turned upside down by the arrival of an older, rich (and perfect and egalitarian) Japanese gentleman who sees them for whom they really are and brings them out of their shells. The rest is as predictable as a Harlequin Romance, complete with the acceptance of traumatic childhood remembrances that free the soul to love again. But remember, this being a French book, the ending cannot be all that "joyeause". Yet, even the tragic last few chapters are cloyingly sentimental. Enough! Let me eat my expensive madeleines in peace. They are worth it. This book isn't."
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