Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Elegance of the Hedgehog
    The Elegance of the Hedgehog
    The Elegance of the Hedgehog
    Ebook343 pages5 hours

    The Elegance of the Hedgehog

    By Muriel Barbery and Alison Anderson

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The phenomenal New York Times bestseller that “explores the upstairs-downstairs goings-on of a posh Parisian apartment building” (Publishers Weekly).

    In an elegant hôtel particulier in Paris, Renée, the concierge, is all but invisible—short, plump, middle-aged, with bunions on her feet and an addiction to television soaps. Her only genuine attachment is to her cat, Leo. In short, she’s everything society expects from a concierge at a bourgeois building in an upscale neighborhood. But Renée has a secret: She furtively, ferociously devours art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With biting humor, she scrutinizes the lives of the tenants—her inferiors in every way except that of material wealth.

    Paloma is a twelve-year-old who lives on the fifth floor. Talented and precocious, she’s come to terms with life’s seeming futility and decided to end her own on her thirteenth birthday. Until then, she will continue hiding her extraordinary intelligence behind a mask of mediocrity, acting the part of an average pre-teen high on pop culture, a good but not outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

    Paloma and Renée hide their true talents and finest qualities from a world they believe cannot or will not appreciate them. But after a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building, they will begin to recognize each other as kindred souls, in a novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us, and “teaches philosophical lessons by shrewdly exposing rich secret lives hidden beneath conventional exteriors” (Kirkus Reviews).

    “The narrators’ kinetic minds and engaging voices (in Alison Anderson’s fluent translation) propel us ahead.” —The New York Times Book Review

    “Barbery’s sly wit . . . bestows lightness on the most ponderous cogitations.” —The New Yorker
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateSep 2, 2008
    ISBN9781609450137
    Author

    Muriel Barbery

    Muriel Barbery is the author of four previous novels, including the IMPAC-shortlisted multimillion-copy bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog. She has lived in Kyoto, Amsterdam and Paris and now lives in the French countryside.

    Read more from Muriel Barbery

    Related to The Elegance of the Hedgehog

    Related ebooks

    Friendship Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Crimes of the Heart

      Nov 5, 2016

      Like many of his novels, Spanish author Javier Marías’ new book, Thus Bad Begins, isn’t exactly a mystery, though it is mysterious. Here, the 65-year-old perennial Nobel favorite tells the story of Juan de Vere, a young man working for a film directo

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The 10 Best Novels

      Dec 19, 2016

      The 10 Best Novels
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      January Fiction

      Dec 14, 2021

      The Maid by Nita Prose HarperCollins, £14.99 Molly Gray, the narrator of Nita Prose’s startlingly good debut novel, is a young woman who knows her place—and who rather likes it. For “approximately four years, 13 weeks, and five days” she’s been worki

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mr. Rain Jacket

      May 20, 2019

      Mr. Rain Jacket
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      ‘Lessons In Chemistry’ Catalyzes Science, Cooking, And Humor

      Apr 8, 2022

      “Cooking is serious science. In fact, it’s chemistry.” These words may not seem revolutionary today, but 60 years ago the suggestion that an element of women’s work could be approached with the rigor of a laboratory experiment was bold indeed. The ea

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      When I Say Goodbye

      May 31, 2018

      When I Say Goodbye
      16 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How Long Does GRIEF LAST?

      Sep 23, 2021

      How Long Does GRIEF LAST?
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Violets

      Jun 9, 2020

      A day after we made our suicide pact, the bank sent a yellow letter saying we’d lose our house. That night, instead of just killing ourselves, Monique and I set the place on fire. It was easy to start. A mountain of rags soaked in turpentine. Up it w

      18 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Rose - Tinted Glasses

      Nov 10, 2021

      From the corner of her eye, Becca watched a small pack of drunk pixies adding salt into her grandmother’s bone china sugar pot. The sugar pot was the oldest thing in the house, even older than grandmother herself. There would be hell to pay if it bro

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Paul Yoon

      Dec 8, 2017

      This year I read too many wonderful books to name all of them here, but some highlights were: Katie Kitamura’s intoxicating A Separation, which is such a wild and yet disciplined exploration of the idea of the traveler and of grief. Anuk Arudpragasam

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Min Jin Lee

      Jan 30, 2019

      Min Jin Lee
      9 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Elegance of the Hedgehog

    4/5

    3,901 ratings308 reviews

    What our readers think

    Readers find this title beautifully written and thought provoking. The relationship between Renee and Paloma could have been explored more. The characters are memorable and the vocabulary adds depth to the story. Some readers found it emotionally impactful and it may bring tears to your eyes."

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      This is the best book I have read so far this year. It is a funny book with a philosophical vein and lots of "insider" humor and references to long standing philosophical questions. You have to love a book that can use the word autodidact... This summary can be found on Amazon.com. Renée, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknown to her employers, Renée is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building’s tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence.Then there’s Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.Paloma and Renée hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma’s trust and to see through Renée’s timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.
    • 2/5
      Not too enamored of this one.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful!
    • 4/5
      Life can change in an instant. You see the great abyss. You have it all figured out. And then suddenly, it seems, your outlook, your life, changes profoundly. It changes because the love and respect others have for you and because you begin to see into the hearts of others.

      For a little while I was glad to be among those who can appreciate some of the references to philosophical concepts, classic art, and highfalutin vocabulary. In spite of this distraction of erudite references and learned vocabulary I enjoyed the story very much and might very well read the book again in a few years, maybe more slowly.
    • 5/5
      I found this book to be a beautiful well-written fable-like story. It was very unusual but at the same time clever and witty. The main characters are two intellectuals. Renee Michel is a 54 year-old concierge in a Parisian apartment house. She decides to become what society expects her to be. Paloma Jesse is a 12 year-old resident who merely wants to be average but she decides she's going to commit suicide on her 13th birthday because she thinks life is meaningless. When Kakuro Ono, a Japanese businessman, moves in their 3-way friendship causes Renee and Paloma to see life differently. The book is mainly about relationships and having people in our lives that make us feel comfortable to be ourselves and not what other people expect us to be. It also teaches us to find those special moments that give us a reason to live. I found myself really enjoying the ending and would have to say that looking back on the book it was very thought provoking. I would highly recommend this novel to those who love books that make you think about the meaning of life.
    • 4/5
      The Elegance of the Hedgehog contains two narratives--one from the concierge at a high class apartment building who loves to read, listen to classical music, and watch films and who feels she must hide her interests from the rich, shallow tenants of her building and the other from a very bright twelve-year-old girl who is a resident of the building and finds adults and the adult world hopelessly shallow and uninteresting. Partly through each characters' interaction with a new tenant, an elegant, kind Japanese gentleman, and partly through their brief interactions with each other, the concierge and the girl each learn to let go of their more extreme judgements on the world. The novel has little to no action or plot, and it is more philosophy than fiction. I disagreed with many of the conclusions that these characters come to, but I enjoyed the observations they made. And I think I would like having either of them round for supper. Overall a book which bemused me, but which I was happy to read.
    • 5/5
      This book is FANTASTIC. I love the characters and the way they tell their stories, interweaving their journal entries.
    • 2/5
      A very witty and philosophical concierge character, though verging slightly on the burlesque and cliché. Paralell narratives, paralell protagonists, two apparently opposite / conflicting world views coming together. Still, there's this underlying and pervasive sense of negativity and a thoroughly depressing tone across the whole story (confirmed by the finale). You also feel like so much more could have been explored in terms of social critics and funny moments. Feels like an unachieved novel, despite all the hype.
    • 5/5
      Great peek inside French culture and the social classes. The seemingly dimwitted concierge is really a self-educated expert on culture, arts, and philosophy. The relationship between the little girl, the concierge, and the insightful Japanese gentleman is captivating. The strange characters and their internal conflicts make this a wonderful story, even if the ending is a bit trite.
    • 5/5
      This book was absolutely brilliant. Translated from French, it initially seemed like a somewhat pretentious, overly philosophical book. However, after the first few chapters it had really reeled me in, and I was hooked. Yes, there is a lot of philosophy contained in this book, but not for its own sake. The book never gets too fond of itself, and the "artsy" parts of the book are more than justified by the story it tells, which turned out to be extremely gripping. One page would have me laughing out loud, the next page would make me feel genuinely sad. Yes, the setting may be a tad contrived, but... did I mention it is a brilliant story? Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      It has taken me a while to review this because it took me a couple of attempts to read the book. There's no disputing it's incredible well written - the language and imagery is beautiful - but I didn't find this an easy read. I have nothing against a book that's challenging but it does mean that this is a book for a certain frame of mind and one to be read when you can give it your full, unwavering attention.Muriel Barbery's writing deserves that. She has a wonderful grasp of language and her descriptive writing is superb. Even weeks after reading a section of the book I can still see it in my mind as if I had been there. That's impressive writing.I look forward to reading more of Ms Barbery's writing in the future!
    • 5/5
      Whoever translated this from the French is an excellent writer themselves. The language is nothing short of elegant, and reminiscent of Ondaatje. The story is simple but the characters are so vivid and special, they draw you in. Simply a lovely read from start to finish (and the twist in the end isn't bad, either).
    • 4/5
      I love when a book has such love and hate towards it! I must admit, this was definitely not a typical read for me. Despite how "odd" the book was, I continued on. The last 100 pages or so was better than the beginning. However, one of my favorite "profound thoughts" was early on about two dogs and their owners ;-)
    • 3/5
      I read this book in about a day mostly because I had the time and partially because this is not an extremely difficult read. It is not a bad book, but with all the hype and amazing reviews around it, I was a little disappointed.

      The chapters that actually dealt with the plot line was enjoyable. I liked reading about the lives of the people who lived in that building. However, a lot of the books is spent droning on about philosophy and art in a completely unnecessary way. I guess it is supposed to give us an understanding of how intelligent our narrators are, but it just comes off as extremely pretentious.

      And speaking of the narrators, the 12-year-old narrator is ridiculously annoying. If I knew a 12-year-old like that, I would want to just slap her for acting as if she is so superior to the rest of the world. Apparently she doesn't realize that she is just as bad as the people she criticizes.

      I don't know, this book left me feeling kind of conflicted. There are parts that I really enjoyed, but there are parts where I was literally rolling my eyes.
    • 1/5
      Have attempted reading this book 3 times. I just cannot engage with the writing style or the characters. Will put back on the shelf for another go next year.
    • 1/5
      So glad I didn't purchase this. That is all.
    • 3/5
      The two main female protagonists and narrators are living in the same apartment building in a rich quarter in Paris.The first one is Renée, a concierge in her fifties. She’s not your stereotypical concierge, because she reads a lot and knows much. As she doesn’t want to stand out, she hides her knowledge and plays the “naïve” concierge.The second one is a twelve-year-old girl called Paloma. She lives with her parents and her sister in one of the 200m2 apartments. The precocious little girl notices that everybody is living in some kind of goldfish bowl. She’s experienced too much absurdity in live and that’s why she plans to kill herself on her thirteenth birthday.The book now unfolds the inner monologue of Renée and Paloma’s diary entries about everything under the sun. You can find a lot of social criticism and philosophy on these pages.***I expected way more from the whole book, because I had heard so much positive comments about it. Personally the book was a little bit to calm – following the protagonist’s thoughts just got boring and sometimes even annoying. Two examples: Renée explains that she plays dumb, because people expect that from her. But she has got her own prejudices against the other people. She just uses their assumed prejudices as an excuse to stay alone. She doesn’t give them even a chance to get to know her. And at one point Paloma criticizes how everybody is just talking and not doing anything and how words mean nothing. Then I have to ask myself why she wants to write down her thoughts – to leave something back – at all.Barbery just wears out all the potential stereotypes: Only poor people know how to live right. Every school/college/university education is worth nothing, because only native cunning (I prefer the German term of “Bauernschläue” = “farmer’s intelligence”) is necessary in life. As Barbery marks Renée as an atypical concierge, she strengthens the prejudice that the “every-day” concierge must be naïve. In my opinion these stereotypes larded with a few philosophical excursuses are the reason for the book’s success: Barbery writes down what everyone somehow already knew or thought.I was thinking about sorting the book out directly after having finished it. But maybe it’s a book I can fully enjoy only in 10 years from now, when I’m a little bit older. We'll see about that.
    • 2/5
      SPOILERS AHEAD!
      The Elegance of the Hedgehog is both entertaining and insufferable. One initially annoying character gets better (especially if you skim, or even skip, as I eventually did, the pompous philosophy and haiku chapters, which were just too too pretentiously French.)
      Moreover the author got herself in an unfortunate bind: although the book could be a nice chick-lit fantasy with the idealistic message that appearances are deceiving (the story is a delightful, if improbable, cross-cultural, cross-class, older-people romance based on a “meeting of true minds”) the author can’t bring herself to actually consummate the romance, and, rather petulantly, kills her main character off and ends the book. It’s as if she decided that “sad ending” equals “art” (especially if you name-drop a bunch of philosophers and artists, including, naturally, a knowledge of pop culture) and couldn’t accept that her well written novel is an amusing and sentimental popular entertainment. More regrettably, her hasty ending sadly and completely undermines the very message she’s ostensibly selling us about the unimportance of background and class in the "true" connections between people. By its refusal to delve seriously into these issues (through, for instance, character development within a simple, unpretentious story of an unlikely friendship, rather than tedious warmed-over socio-literary digressions) the book comes off as rather inconsequential with a somewhat unpleasant snobby aftertaste.
    • 4/5
      I have been eager to listen to this book, partly because of the large range of opinions from people who have checked this one out. I've seen people only get through a few cds before giving up on it and people who have loved it so much that they've read/listened to the book multiple times. After finishing it, I can understand why. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is the story of 2 characters who live in an apartment building in Paris. Paloma, a 12 year old resident of the apartment is bright and inquisitive and has decided that rather than become a vacuous member of the bourgeois (like the other residents), she will commit suicide on her 13th birthday. The other main character is Renee, the concierge of the apartment, who outwardly behaves just as a concierge should - is brusque and overweight, dresses in frumpy clothes and watches daytime television all day long. But, underneath this disguise is a self-educated Renaissance woman who appreciates art, music and Leo Tolstoy.

      The book starts out VERY slowly changing narrations between the 2 characters. Chapter after chapter is filled with their musings on life and living in the apartment. This is the point that many people decide to give up on this book. But, my advice is 'Stick With it'. About a third of the way into the book, the story picks up and the characters really begin to shine. The audio narration is perfect. Barbara Rosenblat is the voice of Renee, the crabby 'hedgehog'-like concierge. Even without following all of her long philosophical diatribes, I began to really like this complex character. The voice of Paloma is performed by Cassandra Morris who is spot on with her innocent child-like voice.

      Now I want to listen one more time and really pay attention to the beginning - definitely a winner.
    • 5/5
      Life, death, humanity, art, love, loss, society, words, beauty. This was one of the best books I've read. I'll be reading this repeatedly through the future. I read parts of this several times and they never lost their power.
    • 4/5
      Interesting & unusual.
      All kinds of reviews you can read for loving or hating this book.
      For me it was one that stood out from the norm and I may read it again to absorb more than just "the story" (since I'm a cave person reader - zipping thru just for "the story")
      I was hooked at "Leo".
      Read the book, then find the (obscure) movie (French with subtitles).
      Read in 2011.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful writing. That alone makes this book one to keep. I'll probably end up buying a paper copy, so as to have it on the bookshelf. It's a rich story, and the characters in it are people, with internal lives, and depth.
    • 3/5
      3 stars because I enjoyed reading the novel in French, although 1 or 2 stars would better reflect my estimation of its literary worth. Sort of a latter-day Bridges of Madison County(much better written, however, than that one-of-the-worst-yet-most-popular-novels-of-all-time). What irritated me most about the two main characters (the alternating "voices") in the novel, Renée (54 year old concierge of an upscale Parisian apartment building)and Paloma (12 year old "genius" daughter of left-liberal bourgeois parents who live in the building), was their snobbish contempt for almost all of the people around them, characterized en masse as "les riches." R & P claim to be hiding out, hiding their little light under a bushel, so to speak, because they are misunderstood and constrained by social expectations. Almost everyone else is superficial and pretentious, from their point of view. However, R & P struck me as just as mired in prejudice as those they despise. Their "special" sensitivity and intelligence make their "profound thoughts" (Paloma) and aesthetics somehow superior to everyone else's. Oh woe to anything more contemporary than 19th century Russian novels or 18th century French language (Barbery dishes all things "postmodern" with an exception made for a few movies such as Blade Runner, which perhaps she would be surprised to learn is considered the quintessential postmodern film). Japanese culture and style as understood by Barbery(exemplified by the idealized Kakuro Ozu) are incongruously fetishized by both protagonists. 2/3 of the way through, the novel shifts gears and switches from whining, intellectual pretension (discourses on Beauty, Art and Meaning) and faux philosophy to a pretty straight forward Cinderella story. I must say I enjoyed the "dime store novel" plot better than the treatises that preceded it. Killing Renée off at the end, just after she's come out of her shell and transmogrified from an ugly duckling into a beautiful swan under the gaze of Kakuro and Paloma, who see her as she "really" is, is a plot device worthy of any number of cheap romance flicks and novels. Of course, it brought tears to my eyes (oh why couldn't there have been a happy ending? why couldn't she and Kakuro have lived together happily ever after?) which in and of itself, put me on my guard and made me suspicious. Here we go again! My tear-jerk meter was going crazy which means that my emotions were being manipulated. And I HATE to be manipulated.
    • 3/5
      This was really three books in one. The first was a dull and dry exploration of why the two main characters (an older concierge and a young girl in her building) are smarter than everyone else and why they need to hide that fact. This section of the book got lost staring at its own navel. Luckily, a new man moves into the building and brings with him a spark of life. He's smart and refined but feels no need to either hide it or flaunt it. He brings the two female characters out of their shells and the book turns into a beautiful love story. This was by far the best part of the book. The last part of the book is a sudden tragedy that happens in the last 5 or 10 pages. It really comes out of nowhere and ends the love story cold. The young girl finds a new path that won't (hopefully) lead to her destruction, but the abruptness really caught me off guard and soured my taste for the book.
    • 5/5
      Do not get bogged down or hung up on the philosophy or vocabulary in this book, (one reader suggests having a dictionary close at hand)because beneath all of that is a heatwarming, brilliant, witty, bittersweet story.

      I will read this again!

      "Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside she is covered in quills, a real fortress, but my gut feeling is that on the inside, she has the same simple refinement as the hedgehog: a deceptively indolent little creature, fiercely solitary--and terrible elegant. "
      — Muriel Barbery (The Elegance of the Hedgehog)
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. The trio of unique characters -- all wise, authentic and sharing a passion for literature, philosophy and art -- blended unexpectedly together. The writing is beautiful as was the story.
    • 4/5
      This was an enjoyable read! Originally in French, but recently translated into English, it's about a concierge and a 12-year-old girl who live in the same building. They're both intellectual, but they try to hide it from everyone (how very French). The book is all about their relationships with other people who live in that building, and their relationship with each other. I really didn't like the ending (also very French...), but the rest of the book was cute and quite funny!
    • 1/5
      Wow, that's an annoying book. You can expect a pre-teen, especially a smart one, to have these DEEP THOUGHTS...but the book presents them as actual insights. Sheesh. Madame Michel is even more annoying - she's intelligent, but incredibly stupid, with her hiding away. And if you're going to have a character go into paroxysms of rage over a misplaced comma, you MAY not thereafter mess up the language - "seven am in the morning", sheesh. OK, by the end of the book I _finally_ got a clue about the hiding - before that, I'd decided the entire reason for it was so that Paloma and Kakuro would have something to do. But the insights, such as they are, at the end of the book - are too close to the end, too rushed. I slogged through nine tenths of the book with nothing but idiocy. The last tenth is actually good, in relaying insights and understanding, but the well is already poisoned. And then the cheap shot ending, that solves all problems. UGH. I'm sorry I read this, and it's a painful example of why I don't read "literature".
    • 3/5
      Very philosophical backdrop, but far easier to get through than Homecoming, by Bernhard Schlink. I felt the simplest parts to get through were the ones told in the voice of the 12-year-old, while I had to read and re-read the portions told from Renee's perspective. Does this mean I am unsophisticated? Perhaps.
    • 4/5
      If you do not enjoy deep philosophical thought you will not like this book. I have read many of the reviews and can agree with much of what is said both good and bad. I am a thinker, actually I think too much and I like to analyze people, which is why in the end I liked this book. To borrow another reviewer’s words to describe what the book is ultimately about,”It's a book about questioning the stereotypes we assign to others and about questioning the roles we put ourselves in.” I enjoyed both protagonist and shared many of their beliefs. I really enjoyed the snarky attitude of Palmora! The negative part for me was the fact that I was woefully lacking in knowledge of much of the vocabulary Miss Barbery used. Maybe it’s a French thing or it really is my ignorance but I found it an opportunity to look up new words. It was difficult in the beginning and I almost gave up but I hardly ever do that so with a snowbound day I set to it and began to fall in love with the characters and their perceptions of those around them. Definitely not a light read but I think an enlightening one.

    Book preview

    The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery

    Europa Editions

    116 East 16th Street

    New York, NY 10003

    [email protected]

    www.europaeditions.com

    This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously.

    Copyright © 2006 by Editions Gallimard, Paris

    First publication 2008 by Europa Editions

    Translation by Alison Anderson

       Original title: L'élégance du herisson

    Translation copyright 2008 by Europa Editions

    All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

    This work, published as part of a program providing publication assistance, received financial support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).

    Cover/Emanuele Ragnisco

    www.mekkanografici.com

    Cover photo © Randy Faris/Corbis

    ISBN 9781609450137

    Muriel Barbery

    THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG

    Translated from the French by Alison Anderson

    For Stéphane, with whom I wrote this book

    MARX

    (Preamble)

    1. Whosoever Sows Desire

    Marx has completely changed the way I view the world," declared the Pallières boy this morning, although ordinarily he says nary a word to me.

    Antoine Pallières, prosperous heir to an old industrial dynasty, is the son of one of my eight employers. There he stood, the most recent eructation of the ruling corporate elite—a class that reproduces itself solely by means of virtuous and proper hiccups—beaming at his discovery, sharing it with me without thinking or ever dreaming for a moment that I might actually understand what he was referring to. How could the laboring classes understand Marx? Reading Marx is an arduous task, his style is lofty, the prose is subtle and the thesis complex.

    And that is when I very nearly—foolishly—gave myself away.

    "You ought to read The German Ideology," I told him. Little cretin in his conifer green duffle coat.

    To understand Marx and understand why he is mistaken, one must read The German Ideology. It is the anthropological cornerstone on which all his exhortations for a new world would be built, and on which a sovereign certainty is established: mankind, doomed to its own ruin through desire, would do better to confine itself to its own needs. In a world where the hubris of desire has been vanquished, a new social organization can emerge, cleansed of struggle, oppression and deleterious hierarchies.

    Whosoever sows desire harvests oppression, I nearly murmured, as if only my cat were listening to me.

    But Antoine Pallières, whose repulsive and embryonic whiskers have nothing the least bit feline about them, is staring at me, uncertain of my strange words. As always, I am saved by the inability of living creatures to believe anything that might cause the walls of their little mental assumptions to crumble. Concierges do not read The German Ideology; hence, they would certainly be incapable of quoting the eleventh thesis on Feuerbach. Moreover, a concierge who reads Marx must be contemplating subversion, must have sold her soul to that devil, the trade union. That she might simply be reading Marx to elevate her mind is so incongruous a conceit that no member of the bourgeoisie could ever entertain it.

    Say hello to your mother, I murmur as I close the door in his face, hoping that the complete dissonance between my two sentences will be veiled by the might of millennial prejudice.

    2. The Miracles of Art

    My name is Renée. I am fifty-four years old. For twenty-seven years I have been the concierge at number 7, rue de Grenelle, a fine hôtel particulier with a courtyard and private gardens, divided into eight luxury apartments, all of which are inhabited, all of which are immense. 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. I did not go to college, I have always been poor, discreet, and insignificant. I live alone with my cat, a big, lazy tom who has no distinguishing features other than the fact that his paws smell bad when he is annoyed. Neither he nor I make any effort to take part in the social doings of our respective species. Because I am rarely friendly—though always polite—I am not liked, but am tolerated nonetheless: I correspond so very well to what social prejudice has collectively construed to be a typical French concierge that I am one of the multiple cogs that make the great universal illusion turn, the illusion according to which life has a meaning that can be easily deciphered. And since it has been written somewhere that concierges are old, ugly and sour, so has it been branded in fiery letters on the pediment of that same imbecilic firmament that the aforementioned concierges have rather large dithering cats who sleep all day on cushions covered with crocheted cases.

    Similarly, it has been decreed that concierges watch television interminably while their rather large cats doze, and that the entrance to the building must smell of pot-au-feu, cabbage soup, or a country-style cassoulet. I have the extraordinary good fortune to be the concierge of a very high-class sort of building. It was so humiliating for me to have to cook such loathsome dishes that when Monsieur de Broglie—the State Councilor on the first floor—intervened (an intervention he described to his wife as being courteous but firm, whose only intention was to rid our communal habitat of such plebeian effluvia), it came as an immense relief, one I concealed as best I could beneath an expression of reluctant compliance.

    That was twenty-seven years ago. Since then, I have gone every day to the butcher’s to buy a slice of ham or some calf’s liver, which I slip into my net bag between my packet of noodles and my bunch of carrots. I then obligingly flaunt these pauper’s victuals—now much improved by the noteworthy fact that they do not smell—because I am a pauper in a house full of rich people and this display nourishes both the consensual cliché and my cat Leo, who has become rather large by virtue of these meals that should have been mine, and who stuffs himself liberally and noisily with macaroni and butter, and pork from the delicatessen, while I am free—without any olfactory disturbances or anyone suspecting a thing—to indulge my own culinary proclivities.

    Far more irksome was the issue of the television. In my late husband’s day, I did go along with it, for the constancy of his viewing spared me the chore of watching. From the hallway of the building you could hear the sound of the thing, and that sufficed to perpetuate the charade of social hierarchy, but once Lucien had passed away I had to think hard to find a way to keep up appearances. Alive, he freed me from this iniquitous obligation; dead, he has deprived me of his lack of culture, the indispensable bulwark against other people’s suspicions.

    I found a solution thanks to a non-buzzer.

    A chime linked to an infrared mechanism now alerts me to the comings and goings in the hallway, which has eliminated the need for anyone to buzz to notify me of their presence if I happen to be out of earshot. For on such occasions I am actually in the back room, where I spend most of my hours of leisure and where, sheltered from the noise and smells that my condition imposes, I can live as I please, without being deprived of the information vital to any sentry: who is coming in, who is going out, with whom, and at what time.

    Thus, the residents going down the hall would hear the muffled sounds indicating a television was on, and as they tend to lack rather than abound in imagination, they would form a mental image of the concierge sprawled in front of her television set. As for me, cozily installed in my lair, I heard nothing but I knew that someone was going by. So I would go to the adjacent room and peek through the spy-hole located opposite the stairway and, well hidden behind the white net curtains, I could inquire discreetly as to the identity of the passerby.

    With the advent of videocassettes and, subsequently, the DVD divinity, things changed radically, much to the enrichment of my happy hours. As it is not terribly common to come across a concierge waxing ecstatic over Death in Venice or to hear strains of Mahler wafting from her loge, I delved into my hard-earned conjugal savings and bought a second television set that I could operate in my hideaway. Thus, the television in the front room, guardian of my clandestine activities, could bleat away and I was no longer forced to listen to inane nonsense fit for the brain of a clam—I was in the back room, perfectly euphoric, my eyes filling with tears, in the miraculous presence of Art.

    Profound Thought No. 1

    Follow the stars

    In the goldfish bowl

    An end

    Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don’t want to go. The most intelligent among them turn their malaise into a religion: oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence! Cynics of this kind frequently dine at Papa’s table: What has become of the dreams of our youth? they ask, with a smug, disillusioned air. Those years are long gone, and life’s a bitch. I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears.

    And yet there’s nothing to understand. The problem is that children believe what adults say and, once they’re adults themselves, they exact their revenge by deceiving their own children. Life has meaning and we grown-ups know what it is is the universal lie that everyone is supposed to believe. Once you become an adult and you realize that’s not true, it’s too late. The mystery remains intact, but all your available energy has long ago been wasted on stupid things. All that’s left is to anesthetize yourself by trying to hide the fact that you can’t find any meaning in your life, and then, the better to convince yourself, you deceive your own children.

    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.

    I am twelve years old, I live at 7, rue de Grenelle in an apartment for rich people. My parents are rich, my family is rich and my sister and I are, therefore, as good as rich. My father is a parliamentarian and before that he was a minister: no doubt he’ll end up in the top spot, emptying out the wine cellar of the residence at the Hôtel de Lassay. As for my mother . . . Well, my mother isn’t exactly a genius but she is educated. She has a PhD in literature. She writes her dinner invitations without mistakes and spends her time bombarding us with literary references (Colombe, stop trying to act like Madame Guermantes, or Pumpkin, you are a regular Sanseverina).

    Despite all that, despite all this good fortune and all this wealth, I have known for a very long time that the final destination is the goldfish bowl. How do I know? Well, the fact is I am very intelligent. Exceptionally intelligent. Even now, if you look at children my age, there’s an abyss between us. And since I don’t really want to stand out, and since intelligence is very highly rated in my family—an exceptionally gifted child would never have a moment’s peace—I try to scale back my performance at school, but even so I always come first. You might think that to pretend to be simply of average intelligence when you are twelve years old like me and have the level of a senior in college is easy. Well, not at all. It really takes an effort to appear stupider than you are. But, in a way, this does keep me from dying of boredom: all the time I don’t need to spend learning and understanding I use to imitate the ordinary good pupils—the way they do things, the answers they give, their progress, their concerns and their minor errors. I read everything that Constance Baret writes—she is second in the class—all her math and French and history and that way I find out what I have to do: for French a string of words that are coherent and spelled correctly; for math the mechanical reproduction of operations devoid of meaning; and for history a list of events joined by logical connections. But even if you compare me to an adult, I am much smarter than the vast majority. That’s the way it is. I’m not particularly proud of this because it’s not my doing. But one thing is sure—there’s no way I’m going to end up in the goldfish bowl. I’ve thought this through quite carefully. Even for someone like me who is supersmart and gifted in her studies and different from everyone else, in fact superior to the vast majority—even for me life is already all plotted out and so dismal you could cry: no one seems to have thought of the fact that if life is absurd, being a brilliant success has no greater value than being a failure. It’s just more comfortable. And even then: I think lucidity gives your success a bitter taste, whereas mediocrity still leaves hope for something.

    So I’ve made up my mind. I am about to leave childhood behind and, in spite of my conviction that life is a farce, I don’t think I can hold out to the end. We are, basically, programmed to believe in something that doesn’t exist, because we are living creatures; we don’t want to suffer. So we spend all our energy persuading ourselves that there are things that are worthwhile and that that is why life has meaning. I may be very intelligent, but I don’t know how much longer I’m going to be able to struggle against this biological tendency. When I join the adults in the rat race, will I still be able to confront this feeling of absurdity? I don’t think so. That is why I’ve made up my mind: at the end of the school year, on the day I turn thirteen, June sixteenth , I will commit suicide. Careful now, I have no intention of making a big deal out of it, as if it were an act of bravery or defiance. Besides, it’s in my best interest that no one suspect a thing. Adults have this neurotic relationship with death, it gets blown out of all proportion, they make a huge deal out of it when in fact it’s really the most banal thing there is. What I care about, actually, is not the thing in itself, but the way it’s done. My Japanese side, obviously, is inclined toward seppuku. When I say my Japanese side, what I mean is my love for Japan. I’m in the eighth grade so, naturally, I chose Japanese as my second foreign language. The teacher isn’t great, he swallows his words in French and spends his time scratching his head as if he were puzzled, but the textbook isn’t bad and since the start of the year I’ve made huge progress. I hope in a few months to be able to read my favorite manga in the original. Maman doesn’t understand why a little-girl-as-gifted-as-you-are wants to read manga. I haven’t even bothered to explain to her that manga in Japanese doesn’t mean anything more than comic book. She thinks I’m high on subculture and I haven’t set her straight on that. In short, in a few months I might be able to read Taniguchi in Japanese. But back to what we were talking about: I’ll have to do it before June sixteenth because on June sixteenth I’m committing suicide. But not seppuku. It would be full of significance and beauty but . . . well . . . I really have no desire to suffer. In fact, I would hate to suffer; I think that if you have decided to die, it is precisely because your decision is in the nature of things, so you must do it in a gentle way. Dying must be a delicate passage, a sweet slipping away to rest. There are people who commit suicide by jumping out of the window of the fourth floor or swallowing bleach or even hanging themselves! That’s senseless! Obscene, even. What is the point of dying if not to not suffer? I’ve devoted great care to planning how I’ll exit the scene: every month for the last year I’ve been pilfering a sleeping pill from Maman’s box on the night table. She takes so many that she wouldn’t even notice if I took one every day, but I’ve decided to be particularly careful. You can’t leave anything to chance when you’ve made a decision that most people won’t understand. You can’t imagine how quickly people will get in the way of your most heartfelt plans, in the name of such trifles as the meaning of life or love of mankind. Oh and then there is the sacred nature of childhood.

    Therefore, I am headed slowly toward the date of June sixteenth and I’m not afraid. A few regrets, maybe. But the world, in its present state, is no place for princesses. Having said that, simply because you’ve made plans to die doesn’t mean you have to vegetate like some rotting piece of cabbage. Quite the contrary. The main thing isn’t about dying or how old you are when you die, it’s what you are doing the moment you die. In Taniguchi the heroes die while climbing Mount Everest. Since I haven’t the slightest chance of taking a stab at K2 or the Grandes Jorasses before June sixteenth, my own personal Everest will be an intellectual endeavor. I have set as my goal to have the greatest number possible of profound thoughts, and to write them down in this notebook: even if nothing has any meaning, the mind, at least, can give it a shot, don’t you think? But since I have this big thing about Japan, I’ve added one requirement: these profound thoughts have to be formulated like a little Japanese poem: either a haiku (three lines) or a tanka (five lines).

    My favorite haiku is by Basho.

    The fisherman’s hut

    Mixed with little shrimp

    Some crickets!

    Now that’s no goldfish bowl, is it, that’s what I call poetry!

    But in the world I live in there is less poetry than in a Japanese fisherman’s hut. And do you think it is normal for four people to live in four thousand square feet when tons of other people, perhaps some poètes maudits among them, don’t even have a decent place to live and are crammed together fifteen or twenty in two hundred square feet? When, this summer, I heard on the news that some Africans had died because a fire had started in the stairway of their run-down tenement, I had an idea. Those Africans have the goldfish bowl right there in front of them, all day long—they can’t escape through storytelling. But my parents and Colombe are convinced they’re swimming in the ocean just because they live in their four thousand square feet with their piles of furniture and paintings.

    So, on June sixteenth I intend to refresh their pea-brain memories: I’m going to set fire to the apartment (with the barbecue lighter). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a criminal: I’ll do it when there’s no one around (the sixteenth of June is a Saturday and on Saturdays Colombe goes to see Tibère, Maman is at yoga, Papa is at his club and as for me, I stay home), I’ll evacuate the cats through the window and I’ll call the fire department early enough so that there won’t be any victims. And then I’ll go off quietly to Grandma’s with my pills, to sleep.

    With no more apartment and no more daughter, maybe they’ll give some thought to all those dead Africans, don’t you suppose?

    CAMELLIAS

    1. An Aristocrat

    On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Manuela, my only friend, comes for tea with me in my loge. Manuela is a simple woman and twenty years wasted stalking dust in other people’s homes has in no way robbed her of her elegance. Besides, stalking dust is a very euphemistic way to put it. But where the rich are concerned, things are rarely called by their true name.

    I empty wastebaskets full of sanitary napkins, she says, with her gentle, slightly hissing accent. I wipe up dog vomit, clean the bird cage—you’d never believe the amount of poop such tiny animals can make—and I scrub the toilets. You talk about dust? A fine affair!

    You must understand that when she comes down to see me at two in the afternoon, on Tuesdays after the Arthens, and on Thursdays after the de Broglies, Manuela has been polishing the toilets with a Q-tip, and though they may be gilded with gold leaf, they are just as filthy and reeking as any toilets on the planet, because if there is one thing the rich do share with the poor, however unwillingly, it is their nauseating intestines that always manage to find a place to free themselves of that which makes them stink.

    So Manuela deserves our praise. Although she’s been sacrificed at the altar of a world where the most thankless tasks have been allotted to some women while others merely hold their noses without raising a finger, she nevertheless strives relentlessly to maintain a degree of refinement that goes far beyond any gold leaf gilding, a fortiori of the sanitary variety.

    When you eat a walnut, you must use a tablecloth, says Manuela, removing from her old shopping bag a little hamper made of light wood in which some almond tuiles are nestled among curls of carmine tissue paper. I make coffee that we shall not drink, but its wafting odor delights us both, and in silence we sip a cup of green tea as we nibble on our tuiles.

    Just as I am a permanent traitor to my archetype, so is Manuela: to the Portuguese cleaning woman she is a felon oblivious of her condition. This girl from Faro, born under a fig tree after seven siblings and before six more, forced in childhood to work the fields and scarcely out of it to marry a mason and take the road of exile, mother of four children who are French by birthright but whom society looks upon as thoroughly Portuguese—this girl from Faro, as I was saying, who wears the requisite black support stockings and a kerchief on her head, is an aristocrat. An authentic one, of the kind whose entitlement you cannot contest: it is etched onto her very heart, it mocks titles and people with handles

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1