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    <name><![CDATA[Katherine]]></name>
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  <id type="integer">5969276</id>
  <isbn>9781933372</isbn>
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  <text_reviews_count type="integer">28</text_reviews_count>
  <title>
    <![CDATA[The Elegance of the Hedgehog]]>
  </title>
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  <average_rating>3.73</average_rating>
  <ratings_count>103</ratings_count>
  <description>
    <![CDATA[The second novel (but first to be published in the United States) from France-based author Barbery teaches philosophical lessons by shrewdly exposing rich secret lives hidden beneath conventional exteriors.Renee Michel has been the concierge at an apartment building in Paris for 27 years. Uneducated, widowed, ugly, short and plump, she looks like any other French apartment-house janitor, but Mme Michel is by no means what she seems. A &quot;proletarian autodidact,&quot; she has broad cultural appetites - for the writings of Marx and Kant, the novels of Tolstoy, the films of Ozu and Wenders. She ponders philosophical questions and holds scathing opinions about some of the wealthy tenants of the apartments she maintains, but she is careful to keep her intelligence concealed, having learned from her sister's experience the dangers of using her mind in defiance of her class. Similarly, 12-year-old Paloma Josse, daughter of one of the well-connected tenant families, shields her erudition, philosophical inclinations, criticism - and also her dreams of suicide. But when a new Japanese tenant, Kakuro Ozu, moves in, everything changes for both females. He detects their intelligence and invites them into his cultured life. Curious and deeply fulfilling friendships blossom among the three, offering Paloma and Renee freedom from the mental prisons confining them.With its refined taste and political perspective, this is an elegant, light-spirited and very European adult fable. (Kirkus Reviews)]]>
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    <author>
    <id>643126</id>
        <name><![CDATA[Muriel Barbery]]></name>
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    <average_rating>3.75</average_rating>
    <ratings_count>6572</ratings_count>
    <text_reviews_count>2337</text_reviews_count>
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  </authors>  <published>2006</published>
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    <rating>2</rating>
  <votes>0</votes>
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  <read_at>Tue Feb 17 00:00:00 -0800 2009</read_at>
  <date_added>Sat Dec 13 08:50:33 -0800 2008</date_added>
  <date_updated>Tue Feb 17 12:50:16 -0800 2009</date_updated>
  <read_count></read_count>
    <body><![CDATA[Expectations were set high, but in the end, my favorite aspect of the book was its title. It's a fable, the language is beautiful, blah blah blah... but somehow it ended up being a lot of blah blah blah. It may be French, but I feel like I've encountered the same basic plot in plenty of American sch...<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/40011816">more...</a>]]></body>
    
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