About the author

Muriel Barbery is a French writer born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1969. She is also a professor of philosophy.
Muriel studied at the Lycée Lakanal and then at École Normal Supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud. She has taught at Université de Bourgogne and Saint-Lô IUFM.
Author of her well known novel, L'Élégande du hérisson (The Elegance of the Hedgehog), has also published Une Gourmandise. In 2009 The Elegance of the Hedgehog was made into a film.
Muriel Barbery currently lives in Japan with her husband Stéphane.



References

Fillon, Alexandre. "Muriel Barbery, la surprise de l'année" le figaro.fr. 19/06/07. web. Consulted 25/11/12. <http://madame.lefigaro.fr/feminin/partie-ii-091210-24052>

Something must end, something must begin.

Madame Michel is at her office when suddenly Paloma arrives begging her to let her be there for a while, whenever she is disturbed by her family. The condition that Renée puts her is that she must have her mother’s permission, and she does. It is a quite and very interesting place to be. Madame Michel like Paloma, is a box full of surprises. They are both extremely intelligent but they ask themselves What is the purpose of intelligence if it is not to serve others? What is the point of knowing everything and not being able to share it with someone? 

The only thing that matters is your intention: are you elevating thought and contributing to the common good , or rather joining the ranks in a filed of study whose only purpose is its own perpetuation, and only function the self-reproduction of sterile elite–for this turns the university into a sect. 

Renée is asked out by Monsieur Ozu once more, she refuses to go. Young Paloma does not understand why she refused and Renée unconsciously narrates her sad past. It is quite shocking for Paloma. Madame Michel starts doubting about the meaning of life, and that whether there is an objective or not, and so she asks the eleven-year-old for her opinion. She does some meditation and concludes after the observation of a falling rose petal that it is so we can track down those moments that are dying. 

Paloma realizes that the reason of her depression and suffering is because she couldn’t make anyone else around her feel better. 

If I write more quotes I will spoil the end, and it is a true experience reading it. It is a cocktail of feelings.

Turns out I had it all wrong. The book is not about a girl who wants to commit suicide, but a about a girl who need something in order to continue to live. I am not going to ell you the end of the story, but I can tell you it is unexpected and beautiful at the same time. 

Life is much more than just living through the moment and enjoying, it is about those little things which do not belong to time or space, things that you cannot measure or even express, it cannot be put into words. This holes in time and space do not belong to anyone but you, in most of the cases you are accompanied by a loved one. You can live and live again this moments, they change you. You are no longer the same person, they might be insignificant and happen in a millisecond, yet you feel like it lasted forever. These are the moments you live for.

It’s as if those strains of music creates a sort of interlude in time, something suspended, an elsewhere that had come to us, an always within a never. 

When there is no need for words...

Kakuro Ozu realizes that Renée is not a common concierge, she is clearly an intellectual pretending to be an ignorant. Nobody names their dog Leo, and can quote Anna Karenina without knowing about literature. He sends her a copy of Ana Karenina as a way of saying I got you!

My hunch was right. I have been found out. 

A wave of panic rolls over me. 

Renée is invited over for dinner. Let’s see what happens...

Paloma thinks over the power of voices, of choirs. She might act like a tough girl, but she gets moved easily by the most common and insignificant things. 

In the end, I wonder if the true movement of the world might not be a voice raised in song. 

She hasn’t changed her opinion in taking her life in order to prevent being an adult. She is concerned for teenagers as they think they are adults, and pretend to be one, but why would anybody would be so stupid. 

Teenagers think they’re adults when in fact they’re imitating adults who  really made it into adulthood and who were running away from life. It’s pathetic. 

   Renée decides that it might be a good idea to go to dinner with Monsieur Ozu. She is only a concierge, she has nothing to wear and he is a wealthy famous Japanese movie director. She must dress like a fine person. She borrows a dress and goes to the hairdresser. Renée is a new person. As she enters the apartment of Monsieur Ozu she is astonished by the painting on the wall.

What is the purpose of art? To give us the brief, dazzling illusion of the camellia, carving from time an emotional aperture that cannot be reduced to animal logic. How is Art born? It is begotten in the mind’s ability to sculpt the sensorial domain. What does Art do for us? It gives shape to our emotions, makes them visible and, in so doing, places a seal of eternity upon them, a seal representing all whose works that, by means of a particular form, have incarnated the universal nature of human emotions. (...) So this still life, because it embodies a beauty that speaks to our desire but was given birth by someone else’s desire (....). 

For art is emotion without desire. 

This is probably one of my favorite passages of the book. I believe that there are some experiences that you cannot put into words, experiences where you cannot describe in anyway. In spite of that, this passage is close to what I feel, a painting can really move something inside of you without wanting to. 

When chess becomes an imitation of life

To build 

You live

You die

These are 

Consequences

Paloma was at a dinner party when her sister’s father in law stars talking about Chinese Chess, Go and the rules and objective, he had it all wrong. 

In chess, you have to to kill to win. In go, you have to build to live.

This kept me thinking. Wars happen all the time, people are born an then killed and so on, its a vicious cycle. Why is it that people think like that? In order to succeed you must crush the others, instead of focusing on your own life. Competition is dehumanizing the world. The necessity of progress, the need to be better, to earn money, a materialistic world. 

Live or die: mere consequences of what you have built.

You can not blame someone for the fact that you are unsuccessful, you built that, you worked to get there, it is your responsibility.

We live in a world where everything must be effective. People live to work, not work to live. 

Life goes by in no time at all, yet they’re always in such a hurry, so stressed out by deadlines, so eager for now that they needn’t think about tomorrow. 

What is the point of living in such a wonderful world if we can’t make the time to enjoy it. 

That’s what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people

Games are an imitation of life. We create things to be able to cope with reality, we create an objective in order to live, we must have a mission, otherwise life would be pointless. Games, like art are a way of expression and a reflection of society. Therefore, traditional chess has airs of Imperialism, monarchies, the reflection of the thirst of power. 

I don’t know you, but I have been eager to know, why the title. It made no sense to me. What does a hedgehog have to do with a suicidal eleven-year-old girl and a frustrated concierge?

A new neighbor has moved into the building. He is a Japanese very famous movie director, Monsieur Ozu, Kakuro Ozu. Paloma really enjoys talking to him to practice her Japanese. She is talking to him when suddenly Madame Michel, another neighbor walks by. Paloma is astonished by the intelligence she irradiates. 

Madame Michel has the elegance of the hedgehog: on the outside, she’s 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 terribly elegant. 

I believe there is more to it, but for now I guess is a good example. I had never thought of a hedgehog as an elegant creature, but it might be true, but it is a fact that they are special animals. 

I do not have much to say about the sentence that I’m about to quote, but I loved it. I feel like it is true, and really moving.

Because art is life, playing to other rhythms. 

Keeps on getting better

The strong ones

Among humans

Do nothing

They talk

And talk again

If there is anything fascinating about the book is the powerful ways of starting a chapter. Paloma, the young girl could just say “I was at a dinner then this happen” But the fact that she uses a haiku as a starting line, at least for me, makes me first want to try to guess what the chapter is going to be about and then read it. 

Now this particular chapter is one I really enjoyed. 

As a young girl it is difficult to have voice, to be able to correct an adult. Even if you are right, an adult normally posses the truth. It is a terrible situation, yet a common one. Now, it is worst if you are not able to express it, if your parents prohibit you from speaking and correcting, apparently it is rude. 

When Colombe, the young girl’s sister, agrees with the fact that those who can; and those who can’t teach, those who can’t teach teach the teachers; and those who can’t teach the teachers go into politics, Paloma makes an analysis of the sentence. 

humans live in a world where it’s words and not deeds that have power, where the ultimate skill is mastery of language.

This phrase left me thinking, why is it that the most ignorant succeed, the ones who are good at talking and persuading. Apparently all you need today is persuasion and you will get anything done, there is no longer a need to really know on a subject but to know how to say it, that is the key. If it were the opposite, we would live in a completely different world. Personally, I think that it is important to be informed, know what you are talking about but be able to express it otherwise it is just a bunch of information encrypted which is of no use for anyone. 

Renée continues on making great profound thoughts. 

What do we know about the world? she asks. 

Not a great deal

Kant and Descartes are an example of people who have questioned the fact that everything we might know might not be true. We could be immersed in a dream, or just imagine everything. It is true that we perceive reality throughout our senses, but our senses are not accurate. We pay attention to whatever we want, we cannot say we see or feel everything because that would just be a lie. 

What we know of the world is only the idea that our consciousness forms of it. (...) According to Husserl’s theory, all that exists is the perception of the cat. 

In spite the fact that Paloma and Renée lead completely different lives their thoughts and analysis tend to be similar. 

Renée is always trying to find some connection with the aristocrats, and she finds that tea is one of them.

When tea becomes a ritual, it tales its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things.  (...) The tea ritual (...) a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and of the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. 

The first forty pages... Surprisingly moving

Renée is a fifty four year old woman who works as a concierge in the number 7, rue de Grenelle in Paris. She enjoys reading and learning, but it is not common for a supposedly not educated woman to know so much. Therefore she must be discrete about her extraordinary intelligence. Apparently being in a low class family is something that can hardly be changed, and therefore it is a curse to be intelligent and not being able to do anything with it. “(...) and I was doomed by my tragic destiny to suffer all the more, afore I as hardly stupid.”

On the other hand, we have a twelve year old girl who believes that being an adult is the worst that could happen. 

Throughout this beautiful well written novel we can find many interesting phrases and thoughts.

In this first forty pages I was really moved by the capacity of reasoning of the young girl, not everyone questions so much about their life specially at this age. First of all is the fact that she plans on committing suicide before reaching 13 years old, because apparently for some unknown reason at that age you star the inevitable transformation into an adult where you stop thinking. There is a passage in the book which says “(...)if you commit suicide, you have to be sure of what you’re doing and not burn the house down for nothing. So if there is something on the planet that is worth living for, I’d better not miss it, because once you’re dead, it’s too late for regrets, and if you die by mistake, that is really, really dumb.”  It is funny how we normally do not think on dying, and less in killing ourselves. Yet, this little girl believes that by killing her self she will be saving her self. We tend to think that we will have a tomorrow, and we keep on planning without being sure if we will have a tomorrow. This girl is saying we must live and enjoy life. Why is it that it is normally those who are conscious about their dead that decide to live their life fully, why is is that the question always is what would you do if you knew this was your last day on Earth?

In the same chapter, I found another passage that kept me on thinking, I mean it is pretty obvious but you never really think about it. 

(...) when we move, we are in a way de-structured by our movement toward something: we are both ere and at the same time not here because we’re already in the process of going elsewhere, if you see what I mean. To stop de-structuring yourself, you have to stop moving altogether. Either you move and you’re no longer whole, or you’re whole and you can’t move. 

Now a days we are constantly moving, rushing into something new or just the same old things but we cannot stay still. We must have action in order to enjoy the moment. The question is why is it? Why can’t we find something interesting in the moment and enjoy it?

The young girl doubts of the existence of a god and is shocked by the amount of people who believe in one. “people still believe they’re not here y chance, and that there are gods, kindly for the mot part, who are watching over their fate.”  Some people sit waiting for their destiny to happen instead of doing something with their lives. 

Renée has also some interesting thoughts, for instance the fact that she questions conscience,

It may seem to us that we have always seen and felt and, armed with this belief, we identify our entry into the world as the decisive instant where consciousness is born. (...) For in order for consciousness to be aroused, it must have a name. 

It is true, we can not talk about something that does not have a word assigned, a name that describes it, otherwise we are not conscious of it. I can not recall the first time I felt. In theory you learn almost everything as you grow, but what if certain things you already know before you are born, how does that happen?

In this first forty pages I have managed to reason and meditate on a lot of things about my life, my beliefs, manners and lifestyle. I am really enjoying this book. Let us see what more can this wonderful novel move in my brain.