Just like most of the books that I read, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” by Muriel Barbery has been on my reading list for a while. I started reading this book about two months ago but had a hard time getting into it so had to pause and read something else in between. I gave it 4 stars but my rating was lingering somewhere between 3 and 4.
The story of “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” focuses on two protagonists – Madame Michel and Palome Solange. Madame Michel works as a concierge at the apartment complex where very rich French people live. She is an autodidact and is extremely well-read and educated but she hides her identity behind her concierge role and makes the inhabitants believe that she is a dumb middle-aged woman who watches trashy TV. Palome Solage is a 12-year-old girl who lives in that block of apartments and is also extremely smart but hides her intelligence from people around her as well as plans to commit suicide as she can’t find meaning in life. While these two characters are unlikely to cross each other, they get acquainted closer when a wealthy Japanese man Kakuro moves into one of the flats. What binds the three together and how do their storylines evolve? I would leave it to you to discover!
I had quite mixed feelings about the book – on one hand, I had a really hard time getting into it and the story was lacking the storyline and plot development for me. The book only started gettings somewhat better while 40% in. On the other hand, I found the language, the message, and the intention of the author to be lovely. You can see below some of the nice quotes that I selected:
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“Thinking back on it, this evening, with my heart and my stomach all like jelly, I have finally concluded, maybe that’s what life is about: there’s a lot of despair, but also the odd moment of beauty, where time is no longer the same. It’s as if those strains of music created a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within never. Yes, that’s it, an always within never.”
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“Oh my gosh, I thought, does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance?”
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“There’s so much humanity in a love of trees, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature… yes that’s it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are – vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth – and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.”
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“But if you dread tomorrow, it’s because you don’t know how to build the present, and when you don’t know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it’s a lost cause anyway because tomorrow ends up becoming today, don’t you see?”
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“All our family acquaintances have followed the same path: their youth spent trying to make the most of their intelligence, squeezing their studies like a lemon to make sure they’d secure a spot among the elite, then the rest of their lives wondering with a flabbergasted look on their faces why all that hopefulness has led to such a vain existence. People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn’t be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd. That might deprive you of a few good moments in your childhood but it would save you a considerable amount of time as an adult – not to mention the fact that you’d be spared at least one traumatic experience, i.e. the goldfish bowl.”
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“Well, when I say Art, don’t get me wrong: I’m not just talking about great works of art by great masters. Even Vermeer can’t convince me to hold life dear. He’s sublime, but he’s dead. No, I’m referring to the beauty that is there in the world, things that, being part of the movement of life, elevate us.”
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“Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, and insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And with each swallow, time is sublimed.”
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“The camellia against the moss of the temple, the violet hues of the Kyoto mountains, a blue porcelain cup – this sudden flowering of pure beauty at the heart of ephemeral passion: is this not something we all aspire to? And something that, in our Western civilization, we do not know how to attain? The contemplation of eternity within the very movement of life.”
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I think the main message that the author is trying to pass to the readers is that even though life is fleeting and full of despair, we can always find some moments of beauty in it. I liked it but the book won’t be my strong recommendation.
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