Initial review: 12/11/2008 -

I may revisit the 5-star rating in a week or two, but after reading this book through all last night in a single sitting, it seems ungenerous to give it anything less.

Muriel Barbery walks the high-wire throughout - there were any number of places where things could have degenerated into mere sentimentality. Not to mention the assorted philosophical digressions. But the alternating narrators - Renee the dumpy concierge and Paloma the precocious 12-year old - are so ch More...

This is another moment when I wonder what is wrong with me... Everyone in France recommends this book! The premise is original enough that I was hoping the book would be a real find: within the same super high end Parisian apartment building live 2 misfits: the 54 year old concierge who reads Kant and Tolstoi in secret and a 12 year old girl with abnormally high IQ and suicidal tendencies. The first half of the book is an excuse for the author's long academic digressions on Kant, phenomenology, More...

I must admit this wasn't a 5-star read until the last 50 pages, which may actually make this a 6-star read. This book is beautiful for its underlying truth: we are all worthy of love, love that will surely be given, if we will but believe we are worthy.

My friend Rose, repeated the quote that referenced Renee Michel as being prickly like a hedgehog, but so elegant on the inside. For me, the section that spoke volumes was the Profound Thought by Paloma in defense of grammar:

Personally I think that More...

[Italian translation of course!]
I give this one 3 1/2 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed the book -- the philosophical observations, the interweaving of the thoughts of the concierge with those of the precocious young Paloma, the idea that Art is important -- but, but... in the end, it just felt too, I don't know, constructed, thought out. Like I can see the author taking all the things she does in her own life ( drinking tea, watching Ozu, getting all spiritual and zen over art) and transferring it to More...

I recently had a brief relationship with a young lady who had studied philosophy at a university in southern California. The relationship was destined to be a brief one, as she left for the Philippines to join the Peace Corps just a week or so ago. On one of our last evenings together, she thanked me for something that I found curious.

She said, "Isaiah, have you ever met someone at a party or something who finds out you studied philosophy -- and then they just try to talk to you the whole rest More...

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 More...

after giving this book a chance, i have decided that the only chance it deserves is to be methodically shredded page by page and subsequently dissolved, in its entirety, in a pool of ammonia.

the rampant fetishism of japanese culture aside (which is seriously so disturbing and surprising to come across in a bestseller that was written within the past 5 years), the plot is entirely centered on the interior monologues of two characters, two characters who are so unctuously trite and platitudinizing More...

AFTER READING THE BOOK:
I just finished the book and I suppose it is better to let it sink in before I do a review, but since I do not think the following statements will be altered by further thought, I will state them now. First of all I rhink many who read this book will say OMG, it's a fairy tale! That couldn't happen. Well I don't agree. I am not going to give anything away, so don't worry. What happens, could happen, although I agree perhaps not that often. One has to believe and one has to More...

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 More...

Itunes had this one on sale, so I'm listening.

Update: I've been listening to it on and off for an hour or so. I think I hate it. Will keep trying...

Update #2: I'm still trying, but so far I loathe this audiobook. I forgot that I hate Barbara Rosenblatt's narration in general, but she is particularly bad here. I think I'll be giving this one up. I hate that I spent money for this though (even though it wasn't much).

Update #3: Got the physical book out of the library. Going to try that.

Update #4: More...

if you are an artist, a thinker, someone who longs for more, an aestheticist, a dreamer, a seeker.... then read this book. it made me laugh and cry in a way that only a well crafted, well loved, well written book can.

So here's a first: I didn't like the ending but I still liked the book! I don't know that that has ever happened before. Perhaps because it was so abrupt; I'm not sure. I SMSd my sister-in-law after I finished it and said, "shocking ending to Hedgehog Elegance!" Her reply: "Yes, very French." Which -- duh -- explained it all.

This was such an interesting book for me! In the beginning, I really liked it. Then during the middle third, I was sort of "meh" on it. I also realized it's one of those boo More...

a very good friend of mine recommended this book to me over the holidays. she'd read it in french, and was thrilled when she found there was a good translation to english so the rest of us could enjoy it. i was so pleased to write her to say how very much i liked this book.

the characters seem very real to me, and i felt that the more i read, the more i wanted to, as the two narrators renee, the concierge, and paloma the little rich girl that lives in the building renee services spun out a story More...

The Elegance of the Hedgehog is an absolutely breathtaking book. Just stunning. Light and airy, yet penetrating, with bits of soft brilliance on every page. My goodness, what an astonishing book.

There are two narrators. The first is Renée Michel, a middle-aged concierge at an extremely opulent luxury apartment building in Paris. She has spent her twenty-five years there cultivating a careful persona of low-class idiocy – leaving the TV on at all times, maintaining an unkempt appearance, speaking More...

Paris, France at present time. Three main characters: Renee Michel, a 54-year old concierge at number 7, rue de Grenelle, a luxury apartment for rich people; Paloma Josse, a 12-year old super smart girl who is smart enough that, because she does not want to join the rat race when she grows up, she will commit suicide on her 13th birthday right after burning their apartment; and Ozu Kakuro a rich Japanese widower who the two met later in the story. He changed their lives that led to Paloma droppi More...

"this is the fear, this is the dread
these are the contents of my head..."

I've always loved that line from Annie Lennox's Why. This book is about the contents of two characters' heads: Paloma, the 12-yr old suicidal prodigy, and Renée, the 50-something cat-lady concierge. Be careful with these characters, and by that I mean: take care of them, for they are fragile, sad souls in need of understanding and in need, moreover, of someone--anyone--to see through their facades and see them for who they More...

Even if I were to overlook the self-obsessed, banal philosophical discourses that dominate this novel, I would still hate 'Elegance of the Hedgehog,' mainly because its characters are contrived and unbelievable. The main character, a concierge for a luxurious Parisian apartment complex, is a self-taught expert in philosophy, art, and film, yet she pretends to be stupid. Her behavior is apparently explained by her conviction that people from different social classes should not interact or become More...

This is a wonderful book. It took awhile for it to grow on me but once I got into it I couldn't put it down. It's a book about questioning the stereotypes we assign to others and about questioning the roles we put ourselves in. I would highly recommend this book.

A sweet book about clear-seeing, i.e. seeing what is really in front of you whether beautiful or ugly, rather than what you want to see. It's also about a bunch of other things: class relations, art, philosophy, snobbery, meaning vs. meaninglessness, what true intelligence is, (and what is it good for?), and how people sometimes prevent themselves from finding true happiness.

All this sounds like a warm-fuzzy wrapped in a personal affirmation scented with camellias and delivered with sprinkly cup More...

Successo internazionale e trasposizione cinematografica dovrebbero fare di questo libro un 5 stelle, o almeno 4. Per me, è un buon libro. E i buoni libri vanno ad appiccicarsi intorno alle 3 stelline. L'ho letto con l'ansia di chi stava partecipando a una psicosi collettiva, nell'attesa di una rivelazione autoriale che avrei ricordato per sempre.
Non è accaduto. E' scritto delicatezza e i personaggi sono ben curati, vogliamo subito bene a Paloma e Renée e ci troviamo d'accordo con la loro visione More...

It's rare that as soon as I finish a book, I want to flip right back to the beginning. I recommend reading the first 140 pages in a quiet space. Like our two protagonists 53 y/o Renee and 12 y/o Paloma -- they may be something of an "acquired taste." It's slow-going at first because that's exactly how it is getting to know someone who is rough around the edges, hiding their true nature, and you hang in there because you get a glimpse of something beautiful. I read this book with a highlighter so More...

This is a New York Times best-seller? Granted, you can go down an entire shelf of the fiction books at Barnes n Nobles and have every single one be a New York Times best-seller. Just looking at the best-seller list now, we have Hardcover Fiction, Hardcover Non-fiction, Paperback Trade Fiction, Paperback Mass-market Fiction, Paperback Nonfiction, Hardcover Advice, etc., etc. and this list is updated weekly as far as I know.

Still, I have rather digressed, not to mention that NY Times Best-seller p More...

I haven't read such a wonderful novel since The History of Love a few years ago. This novel is stellar in nearly every way.

Renee Michel is the fifty four year old concierge of an upscale hotel. An autodidact, extremely intelligent, she has lived her life conforming, outwardly, to the stereotype of her profession and station. In her disdain for the rich and privileged, she is trapped by her fear of being noticed as someone other than she appears to be.

In Madame Michel's hotel, there lives a fi More...

(Je suis plein de la merde--aucune manière je parle français ! Mais there' ; s aucune image pour la version anglaise ainsi que j'ai pensé à me hé, diable.)

(The above, thanks to Babel Fish, says something like: I can't speak French! But there is no image for the English edition of this book.) (But now there IS an image for the English edition, but anyway whatever, JEEZ.)

O my my my! What a gratifying little book! The author's giant brilliant French philosophy professor brain is splattered beautifu More...

Some asides before the review: Ugh. One of my pet peeves is when books don’t start on page 1 and I think that this book starts farther ahead of page 1 than any book I’ve ever read. Enough said about that. Also, in this edition there are some mistakes: fourth and sixth floor residents get mixed up two times, the age difference/direction of the sisters was given incorrectly in one instance, I think. I tried, mostly successfully, not to be too OCD like Colombe, Paloma’s sister, as I am normally bot More...

What a wonderful book. While reading, when I wasn't bobbing my head in agreement with the philosophical insights, I found myself consulting a dictionary to learn a new word or idea, or pausing to absorb and consider what I'd just read. I'll go through it again soon because I'm sure there's so much I've missed. The pages I'd like to reconsider are already marked and my next reading will probably be carried out with a highlighter. This is on my list of "best books read". Thought-provoking is an un More...

I was very disappointed, to say the least, in this well-reviewed and very popular novel from France. Yes, it's about Beauty, and Art, and the Meaning of Life (all worthy subjects, certainly: the best sort) but I can do without the upper case, in-your-face insistence on these "big" topics. I prefer stories with more subtlety and less self-consciousness. The details of the every day lives of the concierge and her rich employers are mildly amusing, but mostly I found the book boring, which is the w More...

It is one of those rare books with a special inner quality that makes you ponder over life in a way only very few others can. After turning the last page, I was left staring into space, feeling bereft. I wished there was more to read, yet its ending befitted the whole tale. I now understand why it received so many wonderful reviews and why it became such a literary success. It fully deserves it.

Renée and Paloma could not be more different, yet their way of looking at life is often very similar. More...

2.5 stars Hmmm...what to say about a book written by someone who writes for herself, not others--she states "It's personal" yet she chooses to publish the book anyway? A book by a somewhat conflicted author surely can give some conflicting impressions. Within the first 150 pages I was feeling this book had striking similarities to "Catcher in the Rye" which did NOT endear it to me by any means. I found both of the main characters difficult to like and so critical of others that it just grated More...

This is a beautiful, powerful book. Its beauty and power grow from a mere potential in the beginning to something that at the end impacts the heart and soul with breathtaking force.

It is a book for those who like to think deeply about every minute of life, especially for such who may have forgotten that there are others like them. It sings out the triumphant joy of friendship entering lives that have prided themselves on their solitary resilience. It stands hopeful in the face of reality's ugli More...