REview by Leonie Jones on show 13th May
The Elegance of the Hedgehog is the English translation of the French novel L’elegance du Herrisan by Muriel Barbery. It is both love story and introduction to philosophy, social criticism and celebration of the Arts.
The story is told by two central characters – Madame Michel and Paloma Josse. Madame Michel is the concierge of an exclusive Parisian apartment block and Paloma Josse is the daughter of one of the wealthy couples who live in the building. Madame Michel is an autodidact in philosophy and literature and loves Japanese films. Her cat is named Leo after her favourite writer, Tolstoy. She hides her intelligence and interests from the residents of the luxury apartments and tries her best to give the impression of one who is uneducated and uncultured.
Paloma Josse is a child-genius who has decided to commit suicide on her 13th birthday to escape a life that she sees as being meaningless. Like Madame Michel, she hides her intelligence in order not to draw attention to herself, she also struggles with a class-conciousness, seeing her bourgeous family as hypocritical snobs.
Through the story, both characters make a journey of self-awareness and are brought together by a new inhabitant of the apartment block. Through their interaction with each other they begin to question the rules by which they led their lives.
The author focuses a lot on character development and the attention to detail and the amount of time building a picture of each character makes this aspect of the book comparable to some of the better known classic French films. Having said this, the book becomes increasingly fast-paced so readers whose primary interest is the plot will not be disappointed.
review by Leonie
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment