The Elegance of the Hedgehog

By: Muriel Barbery

Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat, Cassandra Morris

Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

An enchanting New York Times and international best seller and award-winner about life, art, literature, philosophy, culture, class, privilege, and power, seen through the eyes of a 54-year-old French concierge and a precocious but troubled 12-year-old girl.

Renee Michel is the 54-year-old concierge of a luxury Paris apartment building. Her exterior (short, ugly,and plump) and demeanor (poor, discreet, and insignificant) belie her keen, questing mind and profound erudition. Paloma Josse is a 12-year-old genius who behaves as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter. She plans to kill herself on the 16th of June, her 13th birthday.

Both Renee and Paloma hide their true talents and finest qualities from the bourgeois families around them, until a wealthy Japanese gentleman named Ozu moves into building. Only he sees through them, perceiving the secret that haunts Renee, winning Paloma's trust, and helping the two discover their kindred souls. Moving, funny, tender, and triumphant, Barbery's novel exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

©2006 Editions Gallimard, Paris (P)2009 Highbridge Company

Critic reviews

"Gently satirical, exceptionally winning and inevitably bittersweet." ( The Washington Post )
"An exquisite book in the form of a philosophical fable that has enchanted hundreds of thousands of readers." (Italian Elle)
"Kinetic minds and engaging voices." ( New York Times Book Review)
"By turns very funny and heartbreaking". ( Publishers Weekly)
"Life-affirming." ( Time)

Lovely Story

I enjoyed the story, but felt it dragged in places. It was worth the time!!

mixed

I loved the narration of this audio book, but I think I was expecting something different from the story itself. take it or leave it

Introverts Unite!

I felt I would get along with the kindred spirit characters in this story, except that the young girl was too much of a little nihilistic sociopath/ know it all to seem realistic or likable. The story is mostly like journal entries of two unrelated characters, and the big payoff is they end up interacting in a predictably symbiotic fashion. I didn’t have much time to get emotionally attached to the characters, because the author spent a lot more energy trying to show how smart and worldly they were by having them dive deep into philosophy. I noticed my mind would drift during those parts. The narrations were quite good.

Enjoyable and Poignant

I know this book never would have never held my attention had I read it myself. The two narrators really brought it to life for me. Elegance of a Hedgehog is an engaging and often-times humorous story about misfits finding one another and trying to make not only sense of, but peace with the world that they live in. There are a few flaws (some of the characters' philosophical musings are bone dry), but overall the story really held my interest.

Rewards Patience

This is an unusual read, but one that pays off if you stick to it. Nice philosophical insights on life's inequities.

A delightful read, brilliantly narrated

This is my second time with the Elegant Hedgehog. This time, I have Anna Karanenina under my belt and I listened to a brilliant audiobook version. I believe these two facts and my vastly more available personal resources (my kids are much older now) have combined to create a most enjoyable read of this beautifully written masterpiece. The erudition, class parody and philosophical analysis are all delightful. Highly recommend.

Loved it!

I am surprised by some of the reviews. This was a fun, light book, a great read for long car trips. I did read one review somewhere that said not to read the book, but to listen to it, which I did. The narration was terrific. Give it a chance.

Thought provocation for the patient

What made the experience of listening to The Elegance of the Hedgehog the most enjoyable?

The way it wrapped up. It was well, it succeeded in being beautiful.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

I think the beginning could have been condensed a bit to make it less insufferable. And less abject, unfiltered worship of the Japanese.

Which character – as performed by Barbara Rosenblat and Cassandra Morris – was your favorite?

The concierge.

If you could take any character from The Elegance of the Hedgehog out to dinner, who would it be and why?

The food critic obviously, because he probably knows the best places to eat.

Any additional comments?

Okay this is less a narrative and more of a bunch of philosophy and poetry with a few drops of exposition woven together to form a sequence of events with character development. In the beginning, everyone is insufferable and hypocritical and its filled with long pseudo-intellectual philosophical rants and what not. And it has all the entertainment value of listening to a bunch of pseudo intellectuals huff themselves up by mumbling fancy poetry and half baked philosophy while putting down other intellectuals. This is just the writer setting up the characters, unfortunately due to the style of this book, this takes hours. And requirs patience to get through.

There are also a few scares that the book is going in a really annoying direction, such as when the child lead makes her first 'movement of the world' post. Thankfully those scares turned out to be false alarms.

After the first few hours, a long and amusing rant about commas made me think that perhaps this was a satire. Its really not. Eventually as life unfolds and the characters meet, and learn and grow, their philosophical rants, grow more intelligent, more aware and more positive. And the intelligence, skill, art and as the writer probably most want to hear, the beauty of the book bears fruit.

And eventually it climaxes with everyone learning, well this is worth noting. It climaxes with a refreshingly positive moral and conclusion regarding the nature of life backed by intelligent philosophy and some beautiful language.

Though I'll say not in its favor near the end the poetry and metaphor was often very weak. Lacking a firm allegorical resonance. Which is a nice was of saying it often strayed into the realm of nonsense.

Other than that the only other black mark on it in my opinion is the way the whole book would suddenly and quite perceptively shift whenever the Japanese or anything from Japan got mentioned. The worship of the Japanese was pretty much fanatical. Which I think was detrimental to the core moral. But I'll allow the possibility that this was meant to reflect the tendency of pseudo-intellectuals to worship the Japanese, and that conceding on this view it would give it a way to reach the pseudo-intellectual should they read this book.

Learn more from this than a nonfiction book

In general, I much prefer nonfiction books because they make you understand each of the pieces that go into the whole system in order to understand the big picture. This book is better than nonfiction because it makes you understand holistically in order understand the pieces.

Ostensibly, this book is about a concierge in a fancy condominium in Paris hiding her intellectual true nature in order to blend in as invisibly as possible. The real theme of the book is along the lines of "is there meaning to life or are we just an accident of the universe". The author brilliantly interjects philosophical lines of thought into the story by clever interactions with the characters and some digressions. The ending surprised me, and not to give a spoiler of any kind, after having listened to it, I realized that was the only ending possible.

I need to broaden my horizon and stop listening to mostly just science, technology, history and philosophy books, and find more books as good as this one because they challenge the listener even more while simultaneously elucidating the listener.

Wonderful narration

I found this book hard to get into, but it was definitely worth sticking with. It's a charming book with humor, philosophy, strong characters, and plenty to discuss in a group. I loved the audio version.