Review: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
I bought this book for my "Travels in Books" series as this is set in Paris. Unfortunately for me it could really be set anywhere. It is a novel about the inhabitants of a Parisian apartment building, but it might as well be set in New York or London or anywhere else.
Aside from the fact that it was useless for my series, I found it really boring to read. As mentioned it is about the inhabitants of an apartment building, and while I usually like this kind of book with a larger set of characters brought together in a confined space, this was really not the thing for me. The book focuses mainly on the concierge, Renée, and a 12-year-old girl, Paloma, who lives in one of the apartments with her family. The rest of the characters are seen through the eyes of these two, and they are unforgiving when it comes to judging others. This means that most of the characters seem really unlikeable and since I really didn't like Paloma or Renée either, I was stuck with a book full of unsympathetic characters.
The reason I didn't like the two main characters is that I found them rather pretentious, like the book itself. They are both of above-average intelligence, but they both feel the need to hide this intelligence from others. This just makes them seem arrogant to me, like they think people wouldn't be able to handle their intelligence. Hiding their intelligence from others means that the reader is inundated with long rambling chapters about philosophy, Kant, Tolstoy and phenomenology. On page 216 Renée visits the toilet and completely overthinks it to the point of taking 3 pages to describe this visit and her thoughts about it.
The actual plot of the book completely drowns in all these rambling philosophical thoughts and it takes a good 200 pages for something to actually happen. And when it finally does it is over before you know it as the book is 320 pages long, and the rest is equally full of philosophy rather than plot development.
I almost didn't finish this book, but I persevered in my optimistic hope for a plot. I was disappointed however and ended up giving this book 1 star out of 5 on Goodreads.
Aside from the fact that it was useless for my series, I found it really boring to read. As mentioned it is about the inhabitants of an apartment building, and while I usually like this kind of book with a larger set of characters brought together in a confined space, this was really not the thing for me. The book focuses mainly on the concierge, Renée, and a 12-year-old girl, Paloma, who lives in one of the apartments with her family. The rest of the characters are seen through the eyes of these two, and they are unforgiving when it comes to judging others. This means that most of the characters seem really unlikeable and since I really didn't like Paloma or Renée either, I was stuck with a book full of unsympathetic characters.
The reason I didn't like the two main characters is that I found them rather pretentious, like the book itself. They are both of above-average intelligence, but they both feel the need to hide this intelligence from others. This just makes them seem arrogant to me, like they think people wouldn't be able to handle their intelligence. Hiding their intelligence from others means that the reader is inundated with long rambling chapters about philosophy, Kant, Tolstoy and phenomenology. On page 216 Renée visits the toilet and completely overthinks it to the point of taking 3 pages to describe this visit and her thoughts about it.
The actual plot of the book completely drowns in all these rambling philosophical thoughts and it takes a good 200 pages for something to actually happen. And when it finally does it is over before you know it as the book is 320 pages long, and the rest is equally full of philosophy rather than plot development.
I almost didn't finish this book, but I persevered in my optimistic hope for a plot. I was disappointed however and ended up giving this book 1 star out of 5 on Goodreads.
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