The Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery


My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was hoping this book wouldn't redeem itself. While I began to enjoy it (despite myself) halfway through, I had only reached that far in the hope of being able to write a scathing review of the book once finished. The anticipation of any lesser carrot would not have done the trick. But keep reading I did...

And I find I cannot be completely scathing. I would love to hate this book, but I cannot. I would not argue that the ending completely redeems the rest of the book's inadequacies, but it comes close. And I did find something to enjoy, after all.

The premise of the story is that Renee, our heroine, appears to be a dumpy, middle-aged, uneducated concierge of an apartment building, while underneath she is actually an intellectual GIANT and a QUEEN worthy of our rapturous adoration. Paloma, co-heroine, is a 12-year-old GENIUS who pretends to be average while building an immense secret plan to unravel the universe.

This book, meanwhile, knows how to press all my buttons. I will lay it out plainly:
1. Unstintingly pretentious philosophizing as only the French are capable of.
2. Devotional worship of all things Japanese.
3. Complete lack of irony regarding the first 2 items.
4. Immense intellectual elitism.

Now, on to the marvelously bad examples.

1. My favorite sentence in the whole book (NOT):

"At times like this, all the romantic, political, intellectual, metaphysical and moral beliefs that years of instruction and education have tried to inculcate in us seem to be foundering on the altar of our true nature, and society, a territorial field mined with the powerful charges of hierarchy, is sinking into the nothingness of Meaning." (98)

As I said, only the French.

2. Tea, not coffee. Coffee is obviously drunk only by uncivilized barbarians. Tea, on the other hand, is enlightened (but it must be green). Sushi. Haiku. Go, not chess. Japanese films.

Taking teeny weeny rapid steps like Japanese women in the films: "this defiant movement of little feet, this excellence born of constraint, is a paradigm of Art." (154) (Seriously.)

Bonsai. Paper walls. Spare interiors. Sliding doors.

Yes, sliding doors. Apparently, WESTERN doors "offend space"; a Western door is a "disruptive and poorly proportioned obstacle... there is nothing uglier than an open door." But in JAPAN, they have sliding doors that "enhance space" and transform the room without offending or disrupting -- space "regains its integrity" and "sharing and reunion can occur without intrusion. Life becomes a quiet stroll" (152). Wow, if only the whole world were like Japan.

Camellias are the most enlightened flowers, because they grow in Japan.

"I lean my head slowly to one side, reflect on the camellia on the moss of the temple, reflect on a cup of tea, while outside the wind is rustling the foliage... human destiny is rescued from the pale succession of days." (106)

Enter... distinguished Japanese gentleman! So sophisticated, so intelligent. Instantly sees through one to the heart of one's being. Has a mystical charisma and gentle friendliness. He is the epitome of culture and wisdom. And how could he fail to be, being Japanese?

3. Our 12-year-old co-heroine thinks to herself, "pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language." (160).

It is indeed sad -- sad that those who think they are better than others also think they know what others think or feel, and that those thoughts and feelings are necessarily lesser than their own.

Sad that this book wholeheartedly celebrates the notion of feeling superior to others, though in unconventional ways. That is not the only path to feeling good about oneself.

4. While our heroine is not materially of the upper classes, she regularly (though secretly) seeks to position herself as superior to others because of her intellectual capabilities.

So, she is a queen, a clandestine monarch (33). She discovers in herself a "contemporary characteristic of the dominant intellectual class" (76).

She rants for over 3 pages when she receives a note with a misplaced comma in it from a rich woman upstairs. This

"misuse of punctuation constitutes an instance of blasphemy that is all the more insidious when one considers that there are marvelous poets born in stinking caravans or high-rise slums who do have for beauty the sacred respect that it is so rightfully owed." (110)

This kind of argument only makes pretentious people look even more full of themselves.

OK, so after all that, the book gets better. There is some real human emotion, some actual pain and some real affection. There is less hiding behind appearances and more letting oneself go. In essence, the characters come to life. I'm sure this is intentional. It's just a question of whether most people really want to read 150 pages before ever suspecting that a book's characters are human.

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