She is the 12 year-old daughter of a parliamentarian and his wife, who holds a Ph. To survive in the social pecking order, Renée has learned to be clandestine.Ĭut to Paloma Josse who lives on the fifth floor.
She is a fan of the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu whose works formed the classics of Japanese cinema. On top of her eclectic reading, she listens to Mozart, Mahler, and Eminem. She names her cat Leo after her favorite writer Tolstoy. A devoted library user, she studies on her own, philosophy, literature, history, art, semantics, Japanese culture… She avidly reads Kant, Proust, and Husserl after work, contemplates phenomenology during work, and considers it not worth her while at either. The reader soon discovers that Renée is an autodidact. I live alone with my cat…įor some reasons, these words attracted me to buy and read this book in the first place. I am fifty-four years old… I am a widow, I am short, ugly, and plump, I have bunions on my feet and… I have always been poor, discreet, and insignificant. Renée’s self description may say just about what other people see on the outside, if they even care to look at her: Although in her mind, she thinks of them as “a class that reproduces itself solely by means of virtuous and proper hiccups”, she keeps her thoughts very private, sharing only with her friend Manuela, the cleaning maid. For twenty-seven years she has served the residents well.
Renée Michel knows too well what this is like… she lives here, in the quarter especially meant for her, the concierge. Its eight exclusive units are home to the upper echelon of French society, the elite in politics, finance, lifestyle and education. This modern tale takes place in a luxury apartment at 7 rue de Grenelle, a prestigious address in Paris. The ripples finally reached North America last September… why so late? But no, it’s an international sensation reaching as far as South Korea, translated into half a dozen languages, sold its film rights, and garnered several literary awards. Only in France you may say, where philosophy is still a compulsory subject in schools. She is a former philosophy teacher in France and is now living in Japan. Hailed as the French publishing phenomenon in recent years, The Elegance of the Hedgehog has maintained 102 weeks straight on France’s best seller lists since its publication in 2006, and sold over 1 million hardback copies in 2007.Īuthor Muriel Barbery has created an intellectual delicacy for us to savor. To read my Movie Review of The Hedgehog (Le Hérisson, 2009), CLICK HERE.
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