L'Élégance du hérisson

Muriel Barbery

4 ideas

1. Concierge, suicidal girl, and Japanese newcomer

   At 7 rue de Grenelle in Paris, the widowed concierge Renée Michel reads Tolstoy and Husserl in secret and leaves a television on in her lodge so the wealthy residents will believe she is dull. Twelve-year-old Paloma Josse, who despises the emptiness of her bourgeois family, plans to kill herself and set fire to the apartment on her thirteenth birthday. The new resident Kakuro Ozu sees through Renée when she echoes the opening line of Anna Karenina, and a friendship forms among the three. Soon after, Renée is struck and killed by a dry-cleaning van while running to help a homeless man, and her death leads Paloma to abandon her suicide plan.

2. Hedgehog elegance as defensive concealed refinement

   Paloma describes Renée as having the elegance of the hedgehog: she is prickly and unappealing on the outside, fortress-like, but deeply refined within. The spines are a strategy, not a temperament. By performing the coarse concierge the residents expect, Renée protects her inner life from their scrutiny and contempt.

3. Class assigns roles people refuse to see past

   The residents never see Renée herself. They see the function of concierge, and they cannot register evidence that contradicts it. Renée hides because she believes crossing class lines is punished, a fear shaped by her sister Lisette, who was seduced and abandoned by a rich man's son. Invisibility is imposed by the observers' expectations and then reinforced by the observed person's fear.

4. Meaning lives in brief moments of beauty

   The novel argues that a life can be justified by rare suspended moments of beauty, such as a camellia on moss or a perfect gesture, even if no larger purpose exists. Paloma's journals search for these moments against a world she finds absurd. After Renée's death she concludes that we must look for the "always" within the "never", so a fleeting moment can outweigh despair.

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