The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Paloma refers to Renée as having the elegance of the hedgehog.

Renée Michel is a 54-year-old widowed concierge. She has never been to college because she considers herself to always have been poor, discreet, and of no significance.[6] Renée, however is self-taught; she reads works of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant and Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (and even names her cat "Leo"), disdains the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, adores 17th-century Dutch paintings, likes Japanese art-house films by Yasujirō Ozu, and listens to the music of composers Henry Purcell and Gustav Mahler.[7][8]

Renée, who conceals her true self to conform to the lowly image of typical concierges, introduces herself as "a widow, short, ugly, chubby", with "bunions on my feet and, on certain difficult mornings, it seems, the breath of a mammoth".[5] Her outward appearance is summarized by The Guardian reviewer Ian Samson as "prickly and bunioned".[8] When Paloma eventually discovers Renée's identity, she describes the latter in her journal as having the "elegance of the hedgehog"—although like the spines of the hedgehog, she is covered in quills and prickly, within, she has in the words of the English translation of the book quoted by Viv Groskop "the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary—and terribly elegant".[1]

Paloma Josse, a precocious soon to be thirteen-year-old, belongs to one of the conventional families living in the posh apartment building where Renée works.[1][7] Daughter of an important parliamentarian father (a former government minister), and a Flaubert-quoting mother,[7] Paloma has a penchant for absurdism. She regards her sister's scholarship as "cold and trivial" and deems her mother's culture as conventional and useless.[9] Paloma herself values Japanese works, and reads manga, haiku, and tanka. She keeps two diaries, one called "Journal of the Movement of the World" to record her observations of the world around her, and the other called "Profound Thoughts" to record her many and wide-ranging reflections on art, poetry, people and herself. She is introspective, and truly kind, though she tries her best to avoid the inquisition of others. She understands many facets of the world that are unseen by others, and deeply understands the way the world works, and the many perils and pitfalls of adulthood and the many hypocrisies of modern society, and therefore resolves in not an all melodramatic way, to commit suicide. However, a drastic plot twist at the end of the tale opens to her an amazing new truth: beauty, that provides meaning to our lives.

Other characters developed by Barbery in the novel include Kakuro Ozu, the cultured Japanese businessman, and Manuela, a Portuguese cleaner. Ozu, a tenant, shares Paloma's fascination with Renée's masked intelligence and brings her out of her shell (and also happens to set the entire book in forward motion), while Manuela is responsible for cleaning the apartments' toilets and is Renée's only real friend.[8]

Barbery developed the character of Renée because she was "inspired by the idea of a reserved, cultured concierge who turned stereotypes on their head and at the same time created a compelling comic effect";[10] for the author, Renée "opened the door on a kind of social criticism".[10] In an interview with Time magazine, Barbery added that she created characters "who love the things [she does], and who allowed [her] to celebrate that through them".[5] Barbery dedicates the book to her husband, Stéphane, a sociologist, with whom she wrote the book.[9]

The novel's two narrators, Renée and Paloma, alternate in each mostly short chapter, although the former dominates throughout.[7] The novel consists of the "diaries" of the protagonists, and the heading styles and fonts change as it develops, signalling the change of the narrators' character.[11]

Most critics considered Barbery's narrative presentation to be essayistic; the individual chapters are more akin to essays than fiction, as The New York Times' Caryn James expresses it, "so carefully build[ing] in explanations for the literary and philosophical references that she seems to be assessing what a mass audience needs".[7] The early pages of the novel contain a short critique by Renée on the topic of phenomenology.[7]

Barbery incorporates several themes into the novel. References to philosophy, for instance, abound throughout, getting increasingly dense as the story progresses.[5] Barbery confesses to having "followed a long, boring course of studies in philosophy", and comments that "I expected it to help me understand better that which surrounds me: but it didn't work out that way. Literature has taught me more. I was interested in exploring the bearing philosophy could really have on one's life, and how. I wanted to illuminate this process. That's where the desire to anchor philosophy to a story, a work of fiction, was born: to give it more meaning, make it more physically real, and render it, perhaps, even entertaining."[10]

Themes of class consciousness and conflict are also present in the book. Critics interpreted the stance the novel took against French class-based discrimination and hypocrisy as quite radical,[1] although some French critics found that this made the novel an unsubtle satire of fading social stereotypes.[5] There are also literary allusions in the novel, referencing comic books, movies, music, and paintings.[10]

The Elegance of the Hedgehog was well received by critics. In the earliest known review, for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Maurizio Bono writes that "[t]he formula that made more than half a million readers in France fall in love with [The Elegance of the Hedgehog] has, among other ingredients: intelligent humor, fine sentiments, an excellent literary and philosophical backdrop, taste that is sophisticated but substantial".[20] French magazine Elle reviewer Natalie Aspesi pronounced it one of "the most exhilarating and extraordinary novels in recent years".[9] Aspesi, however, tagged the novel's title as "most curious and least appealing".[9] Praising the novel in his review for The Guardian, Ian Samson wrote that "The Elegance of the Hedgehog aspires to be great and pretends to philosophy: it is, at least, charming."[8] In an earlier review in the same paper, Groskop opined that the novel is a "profound but accessible book ... which elegantly treads the line between literary and commercial fiction".[1] She added that "clever, informative and moving, it is essentially a crash course in philosophy interwoven with a platonic love story".[1] A review in The Telegraph conjectured that "[i]f [the novel were] a piece of furniture, it would be an IKEA bestseller: popular, but not likely to be passed down the generations".[21]

A review in The Times Literary Supplement went further, calling the book "pretentious and cynical, with barely any story. It reads more like a tract than a novel, but lacks even a tract's certainty of purpose. The characters are problematic: most are puppets, and those that aren’t are stereotypes".[22]

Michael Dirda of The Washington Post complimented Barbery, saying, "Certainly, the intelligent Muriel Barbery has served readers well by giving us the gently satirical, exceptionally winning and inevitably bittersweet Elegance of the Hedgehog."[18] Louise McCready of The New York Observer praised Anderson's translation of the novel as "smooth and accurate".[23] Caryn James of The New York Times hailed the novel as "studied yet appealing commercial hit", adding that it "belongs to a distinct subgenre: the accessible book that flatters readers with its intellectual veneer".[7] Los Angeles Times' Susan Salter Reynolds wrote that "[The Elegance of the Hedgehog] is a high-wire performance; its characters teeter on the surreal edge of normalcy. Their efforts to conceal their true natures, the pressures of the solitary mind, make the book hum".[24]