The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
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Book Reviews of The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Book Review: If I could give 10 stars...
Summary: 5 Stars
I have just finished this book and I am simply smitten!
The best book ( by a mile) that I have read in a really long time!
Such appreciation and beauty of the language ( the translator did a good job too) you can rarely see these days! I absolutely love this book, a true masterpiece! I am ordering the first one Barbery have written right away!
I read all the 1-2-3 star reviews...and I am just blown away how shallow people are these days!
This is a BOOK, with a big B at the beginning, not some pulp fiction you've bought to kill some time. Imagine that- there are people out there that are reading for many other reasons than simply killing time! But I guess it is too much to expect in consumer's society that the thinking people would be majority.
I am stunned that this book has 4 stars, as John Grisham's books! Simply incomprehensible for me!
Book Review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog
Summary: 5 Stars
This book fully warrants the appellation - "awesome." It's a striking example of the ultimate in literary art: brilliantly intelligent, philosophically profound, and at the same time exquisitely sensitive to the emotions of her remarkable characters. The work is strikingly well informed by both head and heart. Though the author gives expression to an extraordinary level of both intellectual and emotional intelligence, though she is breathtakingly sophisticated in her understanding of the the human condition, she writes with grace and clarity in the language of everyday life. As an added blessing, her gifted translator manages to capture all of these human and literary strengths in the English version of the original French. "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" is a landmark in the long history of humanity's striving to create meaning and beauty.
Lex Crane
Book Review: Touching and Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
The beauty in this novel goes much further than its pages. The language, an entity in itself is witty and engaging, making me wish ever so badly that my french reading skills were stronger. As we read on, we fall desperately in love with Barberry's quirky, sweet characters. This was one of the few novels that had me laughing out loud every ten pages or so, which greatly annoyed my partner who was reading a book on Buddhist meditation at the same time. In some ways, this novel made me feel all the joy that a "trashy girl novel" offers, but with none of the guilt, because it truly made me think, about philosophy, about art and ultimately about life. I laughed a great deal and cried a little and then I passed it on to a friend who is falling in love with this work, page by page. I may not be the most well-read person in the world, but this is one of my top 5 novels, EVER.Book Review: Yes, there is pretension . . . Who doesn't have some of that?
Summary: 5 Stars
Are the characters pretentious? Certainly. But what is it that is hiding underneath their pretentiousness . . . or even their disguise of "averageness" and dullness? Where is the elegance that is hidden inside? I find Paloma and Renee to be very strong symbols to me of all of us who keep parts of ourselves hidden to protect ourselves. I wonder after reading, just what stories are there waiting to be told, especially by the people in my life that I have pegged? Who are the invisible people in my life? I loved the line where Renee realizes that the two women that have just passed them have not recognized her. Ozu replies, "That's because they've never seen you." Who are the people that I don't see because I am too self-absorbed, preoccupied, or in a hurry.
An absolutely wonderful book. I wept - not for the characters, but because they are "us."
Book Review: What is the Meaning of Life?
Summary: 5 Stars
If you've ever asked yourself this question, then The Elegance of the Hedgehog serves as the closest investigation of that most profound inquiry. While in the beginning, Renee and Poloma seem as supercilious as the rest of the characters in the book, the author then deftly distinguishes them as different from the rest. It is up to you to decide what these differences are and what they mean to the central themes of the book.
The author is a professor of philosophy, and as an academic, myself, I am very impressed by the author's ability to deconstuct the often wayward "raison d'etre" of the modern education system as it pertains to post-modernism, contemporary literary theory, and other (often) contentious frameworks operating in the university system (in Europe and the US).