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About The Elegance Of The Hedgehog
Product Description The phenomenal New York Times bestseller that “explores the upstairs-downstairs goings-on of a posh Parisian apartment building” (Publishers Weekly).In an elegant hôtel particulier in Paris, Renée, the concierge, is all but invisible―short, plump, middle-aged, with bunions on her feet and an addiction to television soaps. Her only genuine attachment is to her cat, Leo. In short, she’s everything society expects from a concierge at a bourgeois building in an upscale neighborhood. But Renée has a secret: she furtively, ferociously devours art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With biting humor, she scrutinizes the lives of the tenants―her inferiors in every way except that of material wealth.Paloma is a twelve-year-old who lives on the fifth floor. Talented and precocious, she’s come to terms with life’s seeming futility and decided to end her own on 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 culture, a good but not outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.Paloma and Renée hide their true talents and finest qualities from a world they believe cannot or will not appreciate them. But after a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building, they will begin to recognize each other as kindred souls, in a novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us, and “teaches philosophical lessons by shrewdly exposing rich secret lives hidden beneath conventional exteriors” (Kirkus Reviews).“The narrators’ kinetic minds and engaging voices (in Alison Anderson’s fluent translation) propel us ahead.”―The New York Times Book Review“Barbery’s sly wit . . . bestows lightness on the most ponderous cogitations.”―The New Yorker From Booklist In a bourgeois apartment building in Paris, we encounter Renée, an intelligent, philosophical, and cultured concierge who masks herself as the stereotypical uneducated “super” to avoid suspicion from the building’s pretentious inhabitants. Also living in the building is Paloma, the adolescent daughter of a parliamentarian, who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot bear to live among the rich. Although they are passing strangers, it is through Renée’s observations and Paloma’s journal entries that The Elegance of the Hedgehog reveals the absurd lives of the wealthy. That is until a Japanese businessman moves into the building and brings the two characters together. A critical success in France, the novel may strike a different chord with some readers in the U.S. The plot thins at moments and is supplanted with philosophical discourse on culture, the ruling class, and the injustices done to the poor, leaving the reader enlightened on Kant but disappointed with the story at hand. --Heather Paulson Review NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER INDIEBOUND TOP TEN BESTSELLER A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A BARNES AND NOBLE BET BOOK OF THE YEAR A CHICAGO SUN-TIMES FAVORITE BOOK OF THE YEAR Praise for The Elegance of the Hedgehog "Gently satirical, exceptionally winning and inevitably bitersweet." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post " The Elegance of the Hedgehog is about love. But not the sappy, head-over-heels variety. Rather, it's about the love of one's friends. It's about the love you can experience when you connect with strangers. And it's about the possibility—but just that—of romantic love." — The Huffington Post"Both [of the book's protagonists] create eloquent little essays on time, beauty and the meaning of life, Renée with the erudition and Paloma with adolescent brio." —The New York Times "Astute social satire and abstruse German philosophy are rarely found together, but here they are in this ingenious work of fiction." —The Boston Globe"In this supple novel of ideas, a best-seller in France...two autodidacts share
