The Elegance of the Hedgehog - Muriel Barbery
There is a tacit admission of the weakness of this book in my edition. The book consists of alternate chapters in the voice of the Concierge of an Paris apartment block (Renée, 54) and the young daughter of one of the wealthy families who live there ( Paloma ,12). The chapters are differentiated by typeface. I feel that this is in part because neither voice is convincing, nor really differentiated by anything other than subject matter. Whether this is a fault of author or translator is undiagnosable by me.
Both characters are self diagnosed intellectuals who think profound thoughts and rush to dazzle us with their profundity. At times it is as if philosophy Professor Barbery has opened the window of her apartment on a stormy Paris and the wind has mixed pages of sophomore essays she was marking with the pages of her novel. I thought I was reading a satire on bourgeois thought who's bite would soon become obvious but unfortunately I wasn't. There are also a few chapters from a Mills and Boon novel mixed through this for good measure.
