Book Club Pick - The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

The Elegance of the Hedgehog was our book club pick for this month and it was a nice change from our previous book club pick, which was a bad chick-lit novel. This one was definitely more serious and book-clubby but still wasn’t one of my favorites. This story is told by two narrators, Madame Michel, a 50-something concierge of an upscale apartment building in Paris, and Paloma, a 12 year old genius who lives in one of the apartments in the building. Madame Michel is a contradiction – outwardly to the residents of the building, she is slovenly and dull. But the “real” her reads Marx and Kant, loves Mozart and Opera and can perform a Japanese Tea Ceremony. Paloma, intelligent beyond her years, is disgusted with her coddled existence, her spoiled sister and family and thus decides to kill herself on her 13^th birthday. The book alternates between the two narrators and I have to say, I enjoyed the pieces narrated by Paloma more. She was fresh, authentic, witty, etc. all the things you want to read in a novel. Madame Michel, on the other hand, really started to annoy me with her attitude. She assumed that no one in her building could comprehend that a woman who is “only a concierge” could appreciate art, literature or philosophy and because of it, spends her entire life hiding who she truly is for fear of being discovered. And she is so condescending about it – she is more of a reverse snob than anyone in her building could ever seem to be. Overall, I enjoyed the novel and the peripheral characters were quite entertaining. I would recommend it, especially as a book club pick, since there are so many things to discuss.