book review the elegance of the hedgehog

Paloma, who’s careful to conceal just how intelligent she is even from her parents, understands the virtues of hiding from the unworthy. “Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog,” writes Paloma in her journal. Until a Japanese man moves into the building and immediately discerns Renée’s Tolstoy-loving soul, the only one who suspects Renée’s secret life is Paloma, a young girl who lives on the fifth floor. “A woman who is never sullied by vulgarity, although she may be surrounded by it.” Manuela is similarly invisible, despite the fact that – support hose and all – she shines with more aristocracy than the wealthy women she picks up after. 7, where she’s been the concierge for 27 years without exciting the interest of anyone except her friend, the cleaning lady. The cliché, which Renée delights in acting to perfection (going so far as to buy food she would only feed to her cat, because it’s what people expect concierges to eat), is a protective armor that protects her from the unimaginative stares of the wealthy inhabitants of No. “I stand up, careful to drag my feet: the slippers in which they are clad are so very typical that only the coalition between a baguette and a beret could possibly contend in the domain of cliché,” she notes with some pride. Renée Michel has a secret: Behind her housedress and worn out slippers, she hides a keen, questing mind. (Please don’t hold that against the book.) “The Elegance of the Hedgehog,” Barbery’s second novel was a phenomenon in France, winning the 2007 French Booksellers Prize and making headlines because at least one psychotherapist prescribed “Hedgehog” to her patients. “I did not go to college, I have always been poor, discreet, and insignificant.” “I am a widow, I am short, ugly, and plump, I have bunions on my feet and, if I am to credit certain early mornings of self-inflicted disgust, the breath of a mammoth,” Renée Michel informs readers on the first page of Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog.

Aside from that, they never really see her. 7, rue de Grenelle, in Paris, is so very typical of that peculiarly French breed that the inhabitants there sometimes joke about her at their dinner tables.

Book review the elegance of the hedgehog